Impressionist Giverny:
American Painters in France, 1885-1915, Selections from the Terra Foundation
for American Art
May 3 - July 27, 2008
(above: Richard E. Miller, The Pool, c. 1910, oil
on canvas. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection)
(above: Theodore Wendel, Flowering Fields, Giverny,
1889, oil on canvas. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel
J. Terra Collection)
Labels and wall texts from the exhibition
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- Impressionist Giverny: American Painters in France,
1885-1915
- Florence Griswold Museum
- May 3 July 27, 2008
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- More than 350 artists from eighteen different countries
worked in Giverny between 1885 and 1915. The vast majority of them were
from the United States, and artists from England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia,
and Canada created a predominantly Anglo-Saxon environment. The discreet
presence of Claude Monet, who settled in the village in 1883, attracted
them, but it alone did not suffice to make Giverny such a popular destination.
Painters chose Giverny because they sought a picturesque location, not
far from Paris, where they could combine plein air painting and
a social life among fellow artists. Many of them visited for only a few
days, while others stayed for long periods and purchased homes and studios.
Within just a few years, American artists transformed this quiet Norman
village into an active colony. Impressionist Giverny: American Painters
in France, 1885-1915 includes fifty paintings produced in Giverny by
American artists during these thirty years. The exhibition is organized
in four sections that follow the chronological and thematic evolution of
the colony from its origins in Barbizon-inspired landscapes to its impressionist
views of the village and its decorative depictions of women in gardens.
Drawn entirely from the Terra Foundation for American Art collection, these
paintings demonstrate the importance of Giverny in the development of American
Impressionism.
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- LANDSCAPES AROUND GIVERNY
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- In 1887 a small group of North American artists settled
in Giverny for the season -- John Leslie Breck, William Blair Bruce, Willard
Metcalf, Louis Ritter, Theodore Robinson, Henry Fitch Taylor, and Theodore
Wendel. Some appeared ignorant of Monet's presence in the village, but
at least two of them, Robinson and Metcalf, had already been there during
previous summers. Giverny attracted them because it was new -- a village
not yet claimed by masses of artists as was the case with colonies already
popular in Europe since the mid 1800s such as Barbizon, Pont Aven, or Grez-sur-Loing.
These pioneers wanted to create their own vision of the site.
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- Artists set up their easels along the streams or on the
hillside and became acquainted with their newly adopted village from a
distance. At first they chose motifs that seemed familiar to them. Several
pictures painted along the Epte River, for example, show a shared interest
in quiet streams and foliage. These pictures demonstrate a preference for
the rich, earthy colors and realist style of the Barbizon School. Gradually
artists in Giverny began to experiment with impressionism, inspired by
Monet with whom a few of them had direct contact, and also by the dramatic
light and landscape of the region. Within just a few months, many began
to employ a more luminous, high-keyed palette, and loose, spontaneous brushworkcharacteristics
of impressionism.
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- John Leslie Breck (1860-1899)
- Garden at Giverny (In Monet's Garden)
- Between 1887 and 1891
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Like many American artists, Boston painter John Leslie
Breck studied in Munich and then at the Académie Julian in Paris.
In 1887, he was among the first Americans to settle in Giverny where he
remained for several years and adopted an Impressionist technique. He became
friends with Claude Monet who invited him to paint in his garden. In this
picture, Breck used clusters of small brushstrokes to depict colorful flower
blossoms. The light that floods the garden makes the colors interact, creating
an atmosphere infused with colored light. Thus the white flowers are tinted
green where they appear to touch the grass, and the garden path turns blue
in the shade.
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- Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931)
- Landscape with Figure
- 1888
- Oil on panel
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858-1925)
- The River Epte
- 1887
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858-1925)
- The Lily Pond
- 1887
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Later known as a leading American Impressionist, Willard
Metcalf worked in Giverny between 1886 and 1888. Artists in the village
often represented the banks of the Epte during these early years, and there
is a similarity in composition. The realist style of the painting and its
subtle palette of greens and browns relates well to Metcalf's pictures
from Grez-sur-Loing in the Fontainebleau forest, where he worked in 1885.
In Giverny, Metcalf focused on plein air painting and began to combine
realist and Impressionist techniques. Metcalf exhibited this painting in
Boston in 1889, and it received positive reviews.
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- Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858-1925)
- Oat Field, Giverny
- 1888
- Oil on panel
- Rogers and Sally Lorensen Conant Collection
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- [label below goes with a drawer full of bird eggs that
will be in a case]
- Bird eggs gathered by Willard Metcalf in France, labeled
by the artist
- Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of Mrs. Henriette Metcalf
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- Metcalf collected these eggs while exploring the lush
French countryside around art colonies such as Grèz-sur-Loing and
Giverny. His handwritten labels indicate that he visited Giverny in May
1885, which would make him the first American artist in the village. These
specimens form part of a collection of eggs, bird nests, and moths to which
Metcalf continued to add after his return to the United States.
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- Louis Ritter (1854-92)
- Willows and Stream, Giverny
- 1887
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)
- Winter Landscape
- 1889
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)
- From the Hill, Giverny
- Between 1889 and 1892
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)
- Étude pour &laqno; Vallée de la Seine
vue des hauteurs de Giverny »
- 1892
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Guy Rose (1867-1925)
- Giverny Hillside
- 189095
- Oil on panel
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Wendel (1859-1932)
- Brook, Giverny
- ca. 1887
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Wendel (1859-1932)
- Flowering Fields, Giverny
- 1889
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- After study in Cincinnati, Theodore Wendel traveled to
Munich in 1878 or 1879 where he studied with Frank Duveneck and adopted
a dark palette and academic realist style. In the late 1880s, Wendel spent
several seasons in Giverny with Theodore Robinson and Willard Metcalf.
During this time, he experimented with Impressionism, using brighter colors
and looser brushstrokes. The composition and subject evoke Monet's landscapes
of the time, but Wendel's colors are more subdued. He probably painted
this picture in 1887 but may have dated it after his return to the United
States, in preparation for the Society of American Artists exhibition in
New York in 1889.
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- Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1936)
- Les Jeunes Peupliers, Giverny, 1890
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Jonathan D. Carlisle
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- This is one of the earliest known landscapes that Butler
painted in Giverny, where he had arrived in 1888. His fluid brushwork and
use of intense colors to articulate the attenuated shapes of the poplar
trees demonstrate his admiration of Monet's work. The affection was not
mutual: Monet initially opposed the artist's courtship of his stepdaughter,
Suzanne Hoschedé.
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- THE HOTEL BAUDY AND THE AMERICAN GIVERNY
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- Every artists' colony had a hotel that catered to artists,
offered inexpensive rooms and studios and, perhaps most importantly, frequent
social events. In Giverny, artists adopted the Hôtel Baudy as their
headquarters, filling the dining area with their pictures, painting in
the garden, playing tennis on the courts out front, and holding masquerade
balls, billiard games, and art exhibitions. Angélina and Lucien
Baudy opened their hotel in June 1887, hoping that the first artists working
in Giverny would soon lead to a steady stream of international guests.
They were not mistaken and, over the years, welcomed hundreds of artists
as well as businessmen, journalists, and tourists. The Baudy couple adapted
their business to their mostly English-speaking artist guests. Angélina
began to serve tea and pudding and to cook American specialties, such as
Boston baked beans. She also started to sell art supplies from the respected
Parisian company Lefebvre-Foinet. Artists dedicated paintings to Angélina
as tokens of friendship and, at times, in lieu of payment. Despite the
presence of other inns in the village, the Hôtel Baudy remained the
favored gathering place among artists.
- Approximately a dozen of the artists who visited Giverny
eventually made their way to Old Lyme-the American Giverny. Florence Griswold's
boardinghouse served the center of the community, similar to the Hôtel
Baudy. As they had at Giverny, artists painted panels on the dining rooms
walls of the Griswold House. Painters who frequented both colonies include
Lucien Abrams, Martin Borgord, Louis Paul Dessar, Charles Ebert, Edmund
Greacen, Willard Metcalf, George Glenn Newell, Ivan Olinsky, Lawton Parker,
Allen B. Talcott, and Charles M. Young. Works by many of them may be seen
in these galleries and in the Griswold House.
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- [Montage of historic photographs of artists at the Hôtel
Baudy]
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- Karl Anderson (1874-1956)
- Tennis Court at Hôtel Baudy
- 1910
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Edmund Greacen (1876-1949)
- The Seine at Vernon
- Oil on canvas
- Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart
P. Feld
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- Here, Greacen depicts the River Seine at Vernon, a town
near the legendary village of Giverny where a group of younger, less established
artists painted the local landscape in 1909 and 1910. After he returned
to America, Greacen summered in Old Lyme from 1910 to 1921, where he was
joined by a former resident of Vernon, the artist Ivan Olinsky.
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- Louis Paul Dessar (1867-1952)
- Giverny Landscape,
1892
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Jeff Cooley
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- Dessar developed a poetic appreciation for rural life
while painting at Giverny between 1891 and 1893. In 1900, he became the
first artist who had worked at Giverny to visit Old Lyme. He soon bought
a farm and traded the French countryside, where he had continued to summer,
for its Connecticut counterpart and the art colony that was quickly emerging
at Florence Griswold's boardinghouse.
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- Letter from the artist Sears Gallagher (1869-1955)
to his brother Percy, written from the Hôtel Baudy, Giverny, August
4, 1903. 4 pp.
- Collection of Helen Stearns Palmer
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- This letter, composed on stationary from the Hôtel
Baudy, provides a taste of an American artist's experience in Giverny.
Gallagher describes Giverny as "a great resort for landscape painters,
especially of the Impressionist school." He praises the beauty of
Monet's garden to his brother, a landscape architect, but observes, "I
do not expect to get inside." Twice in the letter, Gallagher refers
to the by-then common practice of contributing paintings to the Hôtel
Baudy, the colony's social center: "all the artists have left sketches
in the hotel so the walls are lined with panels. I suppose it is up to
me to leave something."
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- Vintage postcard of the Hôtel Baudy, once owned
by American artist Sears Gallagher
- Collection of Anne Czepiel
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- VILLAGE LIFE
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- By 1890, colony artists turned their attention to the
village and its inhabitants. Louis Paul Dessar and Theodore Robinson painted
villagers or posed their models in peasant clothing. Dawson Dawson-Watson
and Thomas Buford Meteyard set up their easels in the middle of the street
to paint the village during the day and at night. This focus on local people
and houses marks the artists' independence from Monet who never depicted
villagers. And yet, Giverny artists paid close attention to Monet's favorite
motifs, and haystacks soon became a mythic symbol of the village. Monet
painted numerous canvases featuring haystacks in different effects of atmosphere,
light, and shadow. When exhibited in Paris in May 1891, these pictures
sold quickly and attracted a great deal of attention. That summer, John
Leslie Breck painted a series of sketches showing haystacks at different
times of day. But whereas Monet sought to capture the envelope of atmosphere
surrounding his stacks, working in various seasons, Breck seems to have
wanted to work through these changes in a short period of time, repeating
the same forms from one identically sized canvas to the next. Giverny artists
continued to depict the village and its inhabitants until the turn of the
century when their interest shifted to the intimacy of their private gardens.
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- John Leslie Breck (1860-1899)
- Studies of an Autumn Day, no. 1-12
- 1891
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- John Leslie Breck (1860-1899)
- Morning Fog and Sun
- 1892
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- John Leslie Breck (1860-1899)
- Autumn, Giverny (The New Moon)
- 1889
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- This romanticized scene of French rural life combines
divided brushstrokes of pure color in the foreground with more blended,
highly finished brushwork in the distance. It is as if John Leslie Breck,
who had embraced Impressionist techniques in other Giverny pictures, was
not yet able to abandon his academic training. This canvas differs from
other works Breck produced in the village because it probably was not painted
outdoors; its large size indicates the artist intended it for exhibition.
It won an honorable mention at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. The
subject of the shepherd was popular among Americans who understood the
implied religious associations.
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- Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939)
- Giverny
- 1888
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939)
- Giverny: Road Looking West toward Church
- ca. 1890
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Born in London, Dawson-Watson first visited Giverny in
1888, the same year that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. In
this village scene looking west along the principal street, the harsh light
of midday creates patches of deep, violet shadow. The Hôtel Baudy,
with its three upper windows, occupies the middle right of the scene while
the steeple of Sainte Radegonde church rises in the right background. Dawson-Watson
reduced the receding road at the center of the canvas to a bright triangle,
textured by vigorous brushwork in variations of the palest tones. After
several years in Giverny, Dawson-Watson traveled to the United States where
he would spend the rest of his life. In 1893, he arrived in Hartford, where
he introduced the city to Impressionism as a teacher at the Hartford Art
Society.
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- Louis Paul Dessar (1867-1952)
- Peasant Woman and Haystacks, Giverny
- 1892
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Thomas Buford Meteyard (1865-1928)
- Giverny, Moonlight
- Between 1890 and 1893
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Between 1890 and 1893 Meteyard often worked in Giverny,
following the example of Claude Monet and John Leslie Breck by painting
a series of haystacks. Meteyard never fully embraced Impressionism, however,
and this painting, with its nocturnal subject and mysterious mood, demonstrates
his interest in symbolism. Meteyard depicted the quiet street scene with
simplified areas of paint and captured the deep purple shadows cast by
moonlight. Meteyard participated in avant-garde circles in Paris and exhibited
with the group of artists and illustrators known as the Nabis. Upon his
return to the United States in 1893, he worked as a graphic artist. He
moved permanently to England in 1906.
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- Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933)
- Autumn Afternoon, Giverny
- n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)
- Père Trognon and his Daughter at the Bridge
- 1891
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)
- The Wedding March
- 1892
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson was among the first American painters
to stay in Giverny, and he became friends with Claude Monet. This picture
depicts the marriage of American painter Theodore Butler to Claude Monet's
step-daughter, Suzanne Hoschedé, in 1892. Painted from memory, it
depicts the couple en route from the town hall in the upper right background
where the civil ceremony has already taken place to the church where the
religious service will begin. Robinson produced a strong composition with
diagonals to break up the space and paid close attention to color harmonies
and the lessons of Impressionism. Robinson returned to the United States
late in 1892, after many years in Giverny.
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- Theodore Robinson (1852-1896)
- Femme au canard
- ca. 1891
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Robinson (18521896)
- Blossoms at Giverny
- 189192
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
- This painting is nearly identical to a painting by Robinson
entitled In the Orchard at the Princeton University Art Museum.
The two pictures depict a flowering tree, a woman, and a girl seen from
an upstairs window. The dramatic viewpoint negates distance, and the light,
loose brushstrokes render the branches in the upper portion of the painting
almost abstract. Robinson often worked from photographs as preliminary
studies for his paintings, and Blossoms at Giverny still has faint
gridlines visible. These pictures relate to serial painting, a concept
initiated by Monet, yet Robinson chose to show sequential moments in time
rather than different atmospheric effects.
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- FRIENDS AND FAMILY
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- Around 1900, many artists settled in the village with
their wives and children, renting or buying houses. A family atmosphere
balanced the frenzied social events held at the Hôtel Baudy during
earlier seasons. Models were chosen from among a tight circle of friends
and family members, and paintings captured scenes of domestic happiness.
Theodore Butler painted numerous vibrant canvases of family members engaged
in everyday activities. Long established in Giverny, Butler played an important
role in the continuation of the colony. In 1892 he married Suzanne Hoschedé,
Claude Monet's step-daughter, and, after her early death, married her sister
Marthe. This familial closeness with Monet allowed Butler to serve as a
link between American artists and the French master. Frederick and Mary
MacMonnies were also key figures in Giverny. After several summers in the
village, they began leasing and later purchased a magnificent ancient priory,
a large property enclosed by stonewalls. Mary lived year-round in the house
and painted her garden in different seasons. Frederick welcomed numerous
American students, dividing his time between the village and Paris. Students
and visitors enjoyed tranquil days painting outdoors and blissful summer
evenings of concerts and dinners. The MacMonnies created a comfortable
environment isolated from the rest of the village
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- Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1936)
- Lili Butler Reading at the Butler House, Giverny
- 1908
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1936)
- Le Déjeuner
- 1897
- Oil on canvas
- Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago. Daniel J.
Terra Collection
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- Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1936)