Lucien Abrams: A Cosmopolitan
in Connecticut
March 21 - June 1, 2014
Wall panel text and labels from the exhibition
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- Artist Lucien Abrams (1870-1941) imparted a cosmopolitan
flavor to his Impressionist paintings, depicting North Africa, France,
and Texas, in addition to Old Lyme. This exhibition, organized by the Old
Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas, and elaborated by the Florence Griswold
Museum, is the first to examine the work of Abrams, who contemplated subjects
as diverse as Algerian watering holes, New England circus tents, and shady
plazas in the American southwest. Abrams's style is equally diverse, acknowledging
an appreciation for Cézanne and Renoir and incorporating a vivid
coloristic sensibility that aligned him with the Post-Impressionists and
even the Fauvists. The artist brought to the American Impressionism practiced
in colonies such as the one in Old Lyme a greater awareness of succeeding
European artistic styles, facilitating the embrace of a more modern sensibility
by members of the Connecticut colony. Abrams is an important figure in
the evolution of American Impressionism in the twentieth century, and his
work was recognized at the time as adding modern vitality to the movement.
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- Born in Lawrence, Kansas, Abrams moved with his family
to Texas, where his father was a prosperous land agent for the railroads
and a pioneer of the oil industry. His mother, daughter of a U.S. Congressman
and Minister to Argentina, helped establish several cultural institutions
in Dallas. Abrams studied at Beloit College in Wisconsin before graduating
from Princeton with a degree in architecture in 1892. Intent on becoming
a painter, he enrolled at the Art Students League for two years before
traveling to Paris in 1894. He studied at the Académie Julian, Académie
Colarossi, and Whistler's Académie Carmen as well as seeking out
Old Master paintings to copy in museums. During these early years, Abrams
focused on the figure and worked in a dark color palette, but his interest
would soon turn to landscape, and with that, to travel. He painted in Italy
for several months in 1896; visited Giverny, home of Claude Monet and site
of a flourishing art colony, in 1898; traveled to Belgium and the Netherlands
in 1900 and 1902, and to Spain in 1901. He explored France, making his
way to Le Pouldu, Pont Aven, and other spots in Brittany and Normandy popular
with artists. Pictures painted there feature looser brushwork and a lighter
palette as Abrams adapted to working outdoors. From 1908 on, Abrams painted
primarily in Provence near Cassis, Martigues, and Marseille, where his
works reflect the dazzling light of Southern France. And, like many French
colleagues attracted to the exotic subject matter available in France's
North African colonies, Abrams spent the winter of 1905-06 in Algeria.
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- Abrams would live in Europe through 1914, making annual
trips to America between 1899 and 1907. While here, he painted in Mystic
and Rockport, as well as on Maine's Monhegan Island. Both at home and abroad,
Abrams adapted his technique with each stop on his itinerary, thus his
work evolved with his travels. Describing his cosmopolitan approach, Abrams
said, "My art was developed, not in the schools, but by independent
study before nature, not trying to copy, but to interpret, to find order
in chaos, and put it in plastic form." His thorough immersion in the
European art world acquainted him with advanced movements such as Fauvism,
with its expressive brushwork and bright colors, while his awareness of
American developments such as Ashcan School realism reveals itself, for
example, in his focus on street life around 1905-07.
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- Lucien Abrams arrived in Connecticut in 1914 with a world
of experience honed through traveling and living abroad. Leaving the Continent
upon the outbreak of World War I, Abrams sought a community where he could
live among other artists, as he had in Europe for over a decade. Perhaps
introduced to Old Lyme by painters met during his foreign travels, or by
his former teacher Frank Vincent DuMond, Abrams and his new French wife,
whom he married in 1915, became key members of the Lyme Art Colony after
settling into a house on Johnny Cake Hill Road. Both became active supporters
of the Lyme Art Association, where Abrams shared with the colony both new
work and paintings executed in Europe -- a well-appreciated infusion of
the modern sensibility in the colony's second decade. "I have always
wanted to combine the methods of the Old Masters with the freedom of the
Moderns," he told his wife in 1926-a marriage of tradition and the
contemporary that updated the Lyme School while respecting its roots.
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- First Gallery
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- Brazos River, Texas, ca.
1886
- Ink on paper
- Private Collection
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- Abrams was photographed at this same spot on the Brazos
River in August 1886. This drawing is probably a self-portrait.
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- Abrams's family owned large amounts of land in Brazoria
County, where the Brazos River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The artist's
father W.H. Abrams (1843-1926) was the land agent for the Texas & Pacific
Railway Land Trust. He managed land for the railroad west from Dallas to
Sierra Blanca (near El Paso) and east to New Orleans. He aided in establishing
new towns along the lines, even naming some. He administered up to four
million acres of land, selling and leasing it for oil and gas development
for the Land Trust and the state of Texas.
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- Colonel Abrams's personal real estate included land in
Brazoria County leased to the Texas Company (later Texaco) where, in July
1920, a well came in which became the first major well in the West Columbia
Field in South-East Texas. Earlier that year a well drilled on Abrams land
in Mitchell County initiated the first significant oil production in the
Permian Basin in West Texas.
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- Academic Figure Study, February
1895
- Charcoal on paper
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- After studying under Frank Vincent DuMond and others
at the Art Students League in New York, Abrams departed for Paris in 1894.
There, he focused on perfecting his command of figure drawing. Portraits
and figure studies in oil would play a prominent part in Abrams's work
over the next ten years, and he would exhibit these pictures at both the
Paris Salon and in America.
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- Untitled [Woman in White],
n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- This allegorical depiction of a woman in classical garb
holding cymbals was done as a study for a mural that Abrams painted for
his mother's house in Dallas. The home where Abrams grew up had ornately
carved woodwork as well as fine furniture, carpets, decorative arts, and
original paintings. The artist's mother was a patron of the arts in Dallas,
helping to organize and serving as first president of the Dallas Symphony
Orchestra Club in 1901 and helping to found the Dallas Art Association
in 1903. This cultured upbringing would shape Abrams's outlook and cosmopolitan
tastes, which included a love of music.
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- Among Abrams's sketches are notes about a composition
called The Spirit of Music, which may be the title of the allegorical
painting to which this study relates. The photograph seen here shows the
artist's model.
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- Photograph of a model for musical allegory. Family of
Lucien Abrams.
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- Untitled [Seated Lady in
Hat], n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- In the first decade of his career in Paris, Abrams's
work consisted largely of portraits like this one, painted in a dark color
palette. The somber tone and female subject are not unlike the work of
the American Alfred Maurer, Abrams's neighbor in the studio building where
they lived in Montparnasse. While Maurer would quickly embrace Fauvism
and channel his work into a modern vein, Abrams spent the years after about
1906 focusing on landscape, and with it, developing a brighter coloristic
sensibility informed by painting en plein air. When he returned
to figures after 1910, Abrams's works would carry over this lighter tone,
as embodied in this exhibition by pictures such as Woman in Blue.
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- Arab Girl, Bou Sa'ada, Algeria,
1906
- Oil on wood panel
- Private Collection
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- Bou Sa'ada was a well-known caravan center in Algeria,
on the route from the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean. As an oasis,
it attracted Berber nomads and others who came to trade in its markets.
Abrams sketched the hooded costumes of the traders both on paper and in
oil, taking small wood panels outdoors in order to paint en plein air
directly from his subjects. While some of his Algerian works focus
on single figures, others survey street life more broadly in a suggestion
of Abrams's attraction to Ashcan School realism.
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- Abrams's interest in painting female models in Algeria
reflects the Orientalism he absorbed from his teachers, some of whom were
identified with the enthusiasm for depictions of the Middle East in French
academic art. The woman's enveloping costume may have appealed to Abrams
as both an exotic subject and a chance to play with the almost abstract
shapes created by the masses of fabric.
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- Kabyle Woman, 1906
- Oil on wood panel
- Private Collection
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- The Kabyle people are a Berber ethnic group native to
northern Algeria, where Abrams spent the winter of 1905-06. Women of the
tribe held particular fascination for Europeans as they were active alongside
men in armed struggles to fend off French colonization in the 1850s and
gained a reputation as brave warriors. In addition to his own sketches
of the Kabyle, Abrams also brought home tourist photographs of tribe members.
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- Abrams exhibited this painting with the Old Lyme sketch
group and at Montross Galleries, New York, and the Dallas Woman's Club
in 1928.
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- Man in Robes, Algeria, 1905-06
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Algerian River Scene, ca.
1906
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- This scene of women bathing in a pool was painted at
Bou Sa'ada, Algeria, where Abrams spent the winter of 190506. The
town grew up around an oasis, depicted here, that offered water to caravans
crossing the Sahara. Abrams himself journeyed over the desert to reach
the town, traveling by automobile despite fierce winds that, by his driver's
account, buried the primitive road in sand and forced grit into their eyes,
ears, and luggage.
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- While numerous French artists painted in Bou Sa'ada,
their works fell for the most part under the heading of Orientalism --
depicting the Algerians as exotic and alluring in the context of harem
life. Here, Abrams takes a more detached view, observing the women from
a distance with their backs turned to his gaze, and taking equal interest
in the town's distinctive architecture and otherwise arid landscape.
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- Study for Algerian River Scene, 1906
- Graphite on paper
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Donkeys with Herder, Algeria,
1905-06
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Cooking in a Square, Algeria,
1905-06
- Oil on wood
- Private collection, Connecticut
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- Man by a Stream, Algeria,
1905-06
- Oil on wood
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Camel Train, 1905-06
- Oil on wood
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Two sketches of Algerian figures, 1906
- Charcoal on paper
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- A photograph exists of Abrams with these two sketches
in his studio in Algeria, one on the easel and the other on the wall. Abrams
sketched in pencil or charcoal outdoors and also painted studies in oil
on panel. In the studio, he incorporated figures such as these into larger
compositions.
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- Photo of Lucien Abrams in his Algerian studio, 1905 or
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- Stream in the Sahara, 1906
- Oil on panel
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Although many of Abrams's depictions of Algeria are painted
in the earthy tones of the desert, here he enlivens the landscape with
patches of red, orange, and green. While many of his Algerian studies have
a quick, reportial quality, Stream in the Sahara reminds us that
around this time Abrams was also acquainting himself with the coloristic
sensibility of the Fauvists, an avant-garde group of painters he had seen
in France. Abrams would exhibit this painting at the Lyme Art Association,
where his use of color still seemed modern and fresh a decade later.
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- Untitled [Stucco street corner],
n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- This painting likely depicts a street corner in Algeria,
where Abrams painted in the winter of 1905-06. A former student of architecture,
Abrams must have been drawn to the planar surfaces of the walls that dominate
the composition. While most of Abrams's other North African paintings feature
people, the focus on architecture alone here is unusual in the artist's
body of work and results in a painting that is almost abstract. This sort
of formal experimentation looks ahead to the artist's engagement with modern
art movements upon his return to France.
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- Le Pouldu, 1912
- Oil on canvas panel
- Private Collection
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- Le Pouldu is a small town is Brittany in northwestern
France. The landscape and peasants of the region, with their distinctive
white hats, attracted artists such as French Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin,
who moved from Pont-Aven to Le Pouldu in 1890 seeking a simpler life. Other
artists followed, finding great interest in region's culture and people,
who seemed to outsiders to be untouched by modern life. Abrams painted
in Brittany several different years while living in France. He exhibited
a depiction of Pont-Aven done in 1906-07 at the Paris Salon and at the
National Academy of Design in New York in 1908.
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- Déjeuner en Provence,
ca. 1910
- Oil on canvas
- McNay Museum, San Antonio, Texas
- Gift of Mrs. Morgan Chaney
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- This view of a girl eating lunch in the courtyard of
the Hôtel Cendrillon in Cassis, France, embodies the informality
of subject and style that is so characteristic of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
Everyday moments, captured in a loose technique that reflects how rapidly
the observations were made, are typical of such works. Here, Abrams's motif
and execution attest to his admiration for the work of the Post-Impressionist
painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and the intimate mood suggests the work
of Pierre Bonnard. The stylized monogram with which Abrams signed Déjeuner
en Provence may be an homage to his former teacher James McNeill Whistler.
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- Abrams exhibited this work at Old Lyme in 1929; at Durand
Ruel Gallery in New York and at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1934.
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- Woman in Paris, ca. 1912
- Oil on panel
- Private Collection
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- In the past, the sitter in this painting has been misidentified
as the artist's wife. Abrams worked extensively with the unidentified model
depicted here in 1912 and 1913, showing her both reading and sewing. Although
he had focused on figures during his early years in France, landscapes
came to dominate his work between 1900 and about 1910, after which figures
again become prominent in his practice.
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- Girl in a Turban Sewing,
1913
- Oil on panel
- Private Collection
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- Women reading or sewing became a common subject for French
Impressionist painters such as the American expatriate Mary Cassatt (1844-1926).
While she often depicted her intimate circle of family and friends, the
bachelor Abrams engaged a model to pose for him in Paris several times
in 1912 and 1913. Here, the model's attention to the task of sewing helped
establish the informal mood that Impressionists, including Abrams, continued
to prefer as an antidote to the rigidity of academic portraiture.
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- Ballerina, n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- This large, full-length figure is unusual in Abrams's
body of work. The dancer's pose and costume recall the study for an allegorical
mural Abrams prepared for his mother's Dallas home, elsewhere in the exhibition.
But here, the artist has incorporated a fabric backdrop that recalls the
treatment of patterned planes in works by Henri Matisse.
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- Femme au Grand Chapeau, 1910
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- One of Abrams's most successful portraits, Femme au
Grand Chapeau, demonstrates the artist's embrace of Post-Impressionism.
The figure and background are loosely drawn and thinly colored, likely
due to the artist's use of quick-drying, transparent tempera paints. Although
Abrams greatly admired the work of Renoir, and owned several of that artist's
paintings, Femme au Grand Chapeau reveals the extent to which Abrams
absorbed the lessons of Renoir's portraits of women, but pushed beyond
them toward a more drastic flattening of form. The muted color palette
of this painting would reappear in the floral still lifes Abrams executed
in Old Lyme in the 1920s using Weimar tempera paints.
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- Untitled [French landscape
with olive trees], 1909
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- Abrams owned several large photographs of the work of
Paul Cézanne, whose depictions of Provence reflect a modern approach
to form. Like Cézanne, Abrams here represents the Provençal
landscapes in flat planes of color to suggest the shapes of the trees and
mountains. The acid tones also acknowledge Abrams's appreciation for the
work of the Fauvists, a group of French avant-garde painters known for
their exuberant brushwork and bold colors. Fauvists Henri Matisse and André
Derain painted in Provence only a couple of years before Abrams's arrival.
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- Jardin Normand (Artichokes and Cabbages), 1913
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- Abrams painted the lush and colorful garden of artichokes
and cabbages seen here in the summer 1913 at St. Jouin, France, in Normandy.
When he returned to America the next year, the vibrancy of this Post-Impressionist
landscape and bold brushwork would give way to a more muted palette and
a more delicate touch.
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- Capucines (Nasturtiums; Poppies and Nasturtiums),
1913
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- In the summer of 1913, Abrams painted at St. Jouin, in
the Normandy region of France. The area had become a popular resort for
those from northern French cities such as Paris in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Located not far from the dramatic cliffs at Etretat
made famous in the canvases of Claude Monet, St. Jouin appealed to Abrams
for its gardens rather than its beaches. While there, he also painted Jardin
Normand (Artichokes and Cabbages), which hangs elsewhere in the exhibition.
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- Abrams exhibited Nasturtiums at the State Fair
of Texas in 1914, at Old Lyme in 1924, at Durand-Ruel Gallery in New York
in 1934, and again in Dallas in 1934.
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- A Date Palm, Spring 1913
- Tempera on canvas
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- A Date Palm represents one
of Abrams's most daring forays into Fauvist color. Painted with tempera
in the spring of 1913 in Cassis, an area where several French Fauvists
congregated, the picture exhibits extensive use of blues, reds, and greens
in almost unadulterated form. Although Abrams declined to apply colors
in the completely arbitrary way favored by Fauvists such as André
Derain, he does flirt here with non-local color-a key development in Post-Impressionism's
tilt toward abstraction.
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- Au Parc Borély, n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Private Collection
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- Constructed between 1767 and 1778, Parc Borély
surrounded a château in the city of Marseille, France. In 1860, the
city bought the property to convert it to a public park. Impressionist
painters were fascinated by these new public spaces, including broad boulevards
and parks, where people could watch others and be watched themselves as
they promenaded along the paths and gardens. Abrams spent time in Marseille
in 1909 and painted several views of the park and château.
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- Château Borély, Marseille, ca. 1909
- Oil on wood
- Private Collection, Connecticut
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- Abrams spent time in Marseille in 1909 and painted several
compositions that included the park and château built by the Borély
family in the eighteenth century. By the time of Abrams's visit, the grounds
had become a municipal park and the château had been converted into
a museum of archaeology.
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- The formal gardens around the château included
a number of fountains such as the one seen in the foreground. While the
French aesthetic of garden design produced grounds notable for their symmetry
and grandeur, Abrams instead chose a perspective off to the side, condensing
the space between the façade and the fountain. The more compressed
space and asymmetrical point of view lend the scene the sort casual air
favored by the Impressionists, who strove to depict the landscape as one
might experience it during a walk.
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