Betty Parsons in Maine

Katherine Bogden 

I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn’t deeply in love with the state of Maine. There is something in the wild, coastal waters and thick, old-growth woods that instantly casts away the urbanite in me and calls forth my rural roots. For someone working in the field of 19th and 20th century arts, this is probably a good thing, for countless painters have traveled to our easternmost state to paint and take in the area’s plethora of natural beauty.

These works are, for the most part, easy to recognize—sometimes almost down to the exact location. There are others, however, that represent the state in a less literal manner. One such painting is Moonlight—Maine by Betty Parsons. Intrigued by this dramatic painting, we recently decided to see what more there was to know about Betty Parsons and my favorite state.

Although it is well-known Parsons traveled widely, we didn’t know if she had spent extensive time in Maine or merely passed through. What first clued us in that she might have spent extensive time there was a very brief quote from a 1975 New Yorker profile written by Calvin Tompkins in which Parsons states:

After Europe, I went out to Wyoming for three weeks and stayed with my friend Hope Williams, who has a ranch near Cody. I did a lot of painting there. And then I was at my cottage in Maine for two weeks.

That she owned a cottage in Maine certainly suggested she spent more than passing time in the state! We poured back over monographs on the artist, countless articles and interviews, determined to find more on this “cottage in Maine.” And yet all we found were two small connections to Maine: a review from 1957 which mentions the artist’s images of “The Maine woods,” and a photograph in Lee Hall’s Betty Parsons: Artists, Dealer, Collector with the caption: Calvert Coggeshall, Betty Parsons, and Jack Tilton, Newcastle, Maine, 1977 (pictured here).

After perusing even more documentation, we became worried we would never find more on this mysterious “cottage in Maine.” It wasn’t until weeks later we finally thought to contact Gwyn Metz, a close friend of Parsons’s who had helped us in the past. Gwyn has always been a generous resource on the artist, and this time was no different—she was full of answers: not only had Parsons visited Maine, but she had in fact owned a cottage in Sheepscot, which is located a short distance from Newcastle, where two of Parsons’s good friends also had residences—Calvert Coggeshall and Pauline Fenno. Coggeshall, it turns out, was one of the reasons Parsons first began to visit the state sometime in the late 1950s, and Fenno was the one to sell Parsons a “cute little house” in need of renovation sometime after. Although Gwyn remembers Parsons using her Maine home primarily as a rental property, she assured us the artist made frequent visits to the state, visits which continued until the very last decade of her life.

Autumn Landscape: The Tonalist and Impressionist Point of View

John Francis Murphy
Autumnal Landscape
(possibly Arkville, NY), 1898Carol Lowrey

My recent blog on Emile Gruppé’s Vermont scenes (coupled with a pleasant drive upstate), has prompted some further musings on autumn landscapes by American painters. However, this time, I’m going slightly back in time to peruse some Tonalist and Impressionist pictures from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Charles Warren Eaton
November, Montclair, ca. 1890sThe writer George Eliot described autumn as a “delicious” time of year and rightly so, in view of its colorful foliage and golden atmosphere, which appealed to artists with a love of nature and an intuitive approach to painting. This was certainly true of J. Francis Murphy (1853-1921), Charles Warren Eaton (1857-1937) and Bruce Crane (1857-1937) , who were associated with Tonalism, a very suggestive mode of painting that became fashionable during the 1880s. Preoccupied with conveying mood, Tonalists liked autumn because it was a transitional time of year––a much more poetic season than summer. Painted at contemplative times of day such as dawn and dusk and in varying types of weather, their fall landscapes typically feature isolated rural locales which they depicted with a limited palette of harmonious colors and with expressive brushwork that made forms blurry and indistinct––an approach that imbued their work with a gentle lyricism and a feeling of relaxation. I’m not at all surprised that Tonalist landscapes found their way into the parlors and dining rooms of contemporary collectors such as William T. Evans and George Hearn, providing them with a welcome visual refuge from their harried lives in the New York business world.

Bruce Crane
Autumn Landscape, 1933Tonalism and Impressionism were contemporaneous movements, each reaching its high point in about 1915. You can see the difference between the Tonalist take on autumn and that of the American Impressionists when you compare the works I’ve just mentioned with Willard Metcalf’s (1858-1925) The Red Oak No. 2 (below). Considered one of the finest interpreters of the American countryside (one critic dubbed him the “Poet Laureate” of New England scenery), Metcalf painted this view of a sunlit upland pasture in Cornish, New Hampshire, on a bright day in October of 1911 (the date, title and location are inscribed on the verso of the canvas). With its structured composition and broken brushwork, the painting is, in my opinion, a classic interpretation of autumn in “good old Yankee land,” the lively hues (look at that resplendent shade of blue!) reminding us that, in contrast to the Tonalist emphasis on ambiance, the Impressionists were concerned first and foremost with color and light. Whether you prefer the romantic aesthetic of the Tonalists or the more direct and optimistic Impressionist vision of Metcalf, I’m sure you agree with me that these painters all reveled in the beauty of autumn––a season that’s always been popular with those who wielded a brush.

Willard Leroy Metcalf
The Red Oak (No. 2), 1911

Emile A. Gruppé and the Autumn Splendor of Vermont

Carol Lowrey

Here we are in the midst of autumn, a time of year when “October’s poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.” Penned by Nova Bair, these words immediately bring to mind the landscapes of Emile A. Gruppé (1896-1978), a painter I had the opportunity to write about in 2008 when Spanierman Gallery organized a major exhibition of his work (Emile A. Gruppé (1896-1978)). Born in Rochester, New York, Gruppé was the son of the painter Charles P. Gruppé and the brother of the sculptor Karl Gruppé. After studying with his father and with influential teachers such as John F. Carlson and Charles Hawthorne, he went on to establish a reputation for his vigorously rendered portrayals of the harbors of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he settled in 1929. However, Gruppé is also linked with the artistic tradition of Vermont, a region of mountains, lakes and rivers that he visited from the early 1930s and into the 1960s.

Although Gruppé spent a number of winters painting outdoors in the Green Mountain State, he made the majority of his trips in the fall, when dazzling foliage and golden sunshine would transform the countryside into a colorful mosaic of light and color. I love the way he captures this quality in The Hills of Vermont, a painting that also demonstrates his practice of interpreting shapes as broad masses to create what he called “the big effect.”* You see the same approach towards form and color in Old Buttonwood Trees, Vermont (both works date from the 1950s-60s), but here Gruppé takes the opportunity to explore the decorative potential of the buttonwoods––trees being among his favorite motifs and there are certainly plenty of them in Vermont. Look at the way he creates a “tree screen” by allowing the winding branches––replete with the final vestiges of fiery leafage––to move upwards and outside of the canvas, as if seeking the warm rays of the sun. His dynamic brushwork (very much in keeping with his outgoing personality) captures the anatomy of these ancient sentinels and suggests the animation within the natural world, ranging from the fluctuations of sunlight and shadow on the setting to the movement of clouds across the sky. Over the years, many artists have responded to the scenic beauty of Vermont, among them Aldro Thompson Hibbard, Willard Leroy Metcalf and Neil Drevitson; in my opinion, Gruppé’s autumnal views are the most robust and convey the most emotion, revealing his obvious pleasure in the process of painting and his ability evoke a sense of place, time of day and season.

*See his book, Gruppé on Color: Using Expressive Color to Paint Nature, ed. Charles Movalli (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1979), 138.

From the Archives: A Letter from Gershon Benjamin

Katherine Bogden 

Back in 2007-8 I had the great pleasure of assisting with the exhibition and catalogue for Over Seven Decades: The Art of Gershon Benjamin.

From a research standpoint, this was no small undertaking. Benjamin and his wife Zelda left behind no less than nine boxes of (previously unsorted) archive materials, which included everything from reviews clipped from newspapers and magazines to personal letters, professional correspondence, photographs, sketches, award certificates, legal paperwork—and the list goes on.

Although sorting and organizing this material was a tremendous amount of work it was also immensely rewarding. Besides helping us trace Benjamin’s steps from his time in Canada through his New York years and up until his death in Free Acres, New Jersey in 1985, these documents helped answer our more abstract questions: what went on in the mind of the artist, beyond the brush?

Benjamin's letters read like windows through the canvas, giving both tangible evidence of his inspirations (such as the Greek sculptures he discusses below) and what he was after in his work—in Benjamin’s case he was always trying to capture the essence of the object (or as you’ll read in his letter, the “soul”).

I found the letters between Benjamin and Zelda particularly interesting for a number of reasons:

Firstly, they range across his career from before their marriage, when Zelda still lived in Canada, until late in their marriage when they wrote to each other while away—when Zelda traveled with her acting company or Gershon traveled to Gloucester or other places to paint.

Secondly, in many cases because both husband and wife archived so much of their lives we have both Benjamin’s letters to Zelda and Zelda’s letters to Benjamin, providing at times complete conversations.

And lastly, it is in his letters to Zelda that Benjamin often seems the most candid, the most free with his words—and from these we glean what it must have been like to know the artist himself.

I’ve selected a single letter from the archive, from the then-young Benjamin, written to Zelda (the letter is addressed to “Hilda Cohen” which was Zelda's name at the time, when she married she dropped "Hilda" and went by her middle name, Zelda), in 1923, just after he reached New York. Zelda had recalled that upon reaching the city Benjamin had immediately stowed his suitcases and headed off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this letter gives us no reason to doubt the story.

The artist elaborates a bit here—no doubt to impress his future wife—stating he is sending her sketches of “original sculpture by Michelangelo” (we believe the sketches were actually done from plaster casts of Michelangelo sculptures which are part of the Museum’s permanent collection).

Below is an excerpt from the letter (I’ve corrected his spelling):

Just a few studies I made during my visit to the “Metropolitan Museum of Art.” They are all from original sculptures by “Michelangelo.” One is a study of a statue or rather one of his many slaves! It depicts a young person in a strange struggle for freedom from what we do not know, his arms are free—only a thin lace encircling his body is seen. It is to me one of the most tragic figures in the whole of the Museum and impressed me most.

The strange part about it, is, when first you look at it, it appears to be a woman—only after a close examination you notice it is a figure of a male strong and powerful! The whole thing has a monumental feeling—with a great symbol behind it—it is to the internal meaning of life—it carries with it all the softness and hardness. There seems to be two strange beings struggling with each other like monsters they want to devour each other, it is the two natures in the human being that the Greek Artist wished to portray—it is to me the most beautiful work of art my eyes have yet seen….

And later:

Darling Zelda I could not help think of you when I did those sketches they are really yours for you…you were in my mind—strange is it not dear Zelda that when I was most thrilled looking at these [illegible] works of art, I seemed to see your face continually. A close resemblance to you, seemed very obvious in all the Greek sculpture—the same youthfulness, nimble body—boyish charm. With it all you see in the whole ensemble a great tragedy—their faces always carry a sad note—that note is the symbol of their soul—that note is also your soul.

Gershon

Thursday August 9/1923

Danny Simmons reviewed in The New York Times

Danny Simmons: From There to Here was reviewed by art critic Benjamin Genocchio in The New York Times this past week.  Though critical of a few of the works, overall it is a positive review of the artist's debut exhibition at Spanierman.  Genocchio also remarked, "The paintings in this show, pulsing and occasionally brash, are very different from the usual polished but staid art that you see hanging in galleries in the Hamptons. They shake things up." We are happy to be pushing the bounds of the East Hampton art community! 

Genocchio writes:

Totemic, mythic imagery abounds, giving the best of the paintings visual force and a disquieting strangeness. Whimsy is also prevalent, be it in the artist’s twisted looping lines or amped-up color schemes.

Mr. Simmons, 56, lives in New York, where he has been showing in galleries and museums to growing acclaim since the mid-1990s. He regularly spends summers in East Hampton, where one of his brothers, Russell Simmons, the hip-hop impresario, owns a home in the Georgica neighborhood. His other brother is the rapper and minister Joseph Simmons, who stars as Rev Run in the MTV reality show “Run’s House.”

The Spanierman show of almost 50 paintings comes with a handsome color catalog. It tells us that Mr. Simmons likes to rise at 5 a.m. to paint, working in silence and allowing his paintings to grow intuitively, a method he shares with many of the best abstract artists. It is a risky, gutsy way to make art, somewhat hit or miss, but when it succeeds, the results are a marvelous tangle of lines, shapes and collage elements, including, in one work, bits of wood nailed to the canvas.

Take a look at the entire review, Sensuous Abstractions, on the NYTimes website.

Any readers out there who saw the exhibition?
What was your impression of Simmons's work?

Danny Simmons: From There to Here will be showing until Nov. 23, 2009.

Plaid Puzzlement ...The Paintings of Dan Christensen

Lisa N. Peters
When we were helping the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, in organizing the retrospective of the work of Dan Christensen that opened there last May, it emerged that a group of paintings Christensen created from 1969 to 1971 stood out and were different, or so it seemed. . . .

These large (many wall-size) geometrically conceived canvases with discreet flat areas of color, appeared a departure in Christensen’s oeuvre from the freeform spray gun works that preceded them as well as from his later work, in which he pushed automatist methods with the spray gun to their limits in blurred circles, infinite lozenges, swirling ribbons, and rich drizzle marks that seem to ricochet off the surface. The paintings with their clean horizontal and vertical stripes drew the attention of everyone who saw them, maybe because instead of having the stillness of so much hard-edged geometric painting, they seemed to project a glowing energy.

Those who knew the artist referred to these works as “Dan’s plaids,” but we were unclear about their origins and how they fit into the context of his art and time. We decided to find out by devoting an exhibition to them. We were able to hang sixteen of them in our current show, which along with the four in the exhibition organized by the Kemper (opening October 23 at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln), enables these works to receive a spotlight they haven’t been given before, while allowing us to find the answers to the questions that had been raised.

We were lucky in moving forward that the artist’s widow Elaine Grove was able to not only speak to us about these works, but to be the subject of an interview that we included in our catalogue. A sculptor and painter herself, Elaine met Dan in 1967 at the famous New York City artists’ haunt, Max’s Kansas City. Her recollections of this heady time when artists were at the forefront of the radical transformation taking place in American life have a freshness only possible for someone who has lived through this time from its midst. In the interview contained in the catalogue, Elaine not only answered our questions about the plaids, but provided a sense of the richness of the context from which they emerged.

As Elaine explains, the plaids were less a departure from the sprays, but an evolution. She states:

“The spray gun paintings have a more airy feeling to them, whereas there is more tightness and solidity to the plaids, but both are still a matter of paint interacting with other areas of paint. The later calligraphic stain period of Dan's work speaks similarly to the spread of paint as does the paint in his plaid paintings. He's dealing with the same issues in all the periods of his work, but they are handled and addressed in different ways within each period.”

As to why Dan seemed to leave the plaids behind, Elaine responded:

“He stopped painting them for the same reason that he stopped painting other kinds of paintings. He did them until he felt that he had said all that he could about that type of picture making. Once he figured out how to make a certain type of painting really well, it ceased to be, for him, as interesting to paint. He would then move forward to something else he could explore.”

Elaine also pointed out an especially interesting factor in the art world of the time that was key to Dan’s development, which has not previously been given much recognition in scholarship on the era. That is that the period that Dan moved forward was one in which different innovations in acrylic paints were becoming available at the time. Elaine notes: “Sam Golden, (later the founder of Golden Paints) was a chemist for and partner with Leonard Bocour at Bocour Paints. He developed and introduced new gels and mediums that could be used to thicken paints and extend the pigment. One could paint and produce impasto effects without having to use up so much expensive pigment. Some mediums were transparent, and Dan began exploring how you could add pigment to a gel and put that over straight bands of color. This led into his white and dark slab paintings, which were also squeegeed.”

Grove thus explained how the plaids, rather than a departure in Christensen’s art, can instead be seen as a natural stepping stone along the way for this artist for whom painting was a constant adventure that he seems to have had almost no choice but to pursue.

The full interview provides a true sense of this extremely exciting time in the history of painting.

It seems a rare occurrence for a show to provide such a satisfactory and fascinating answer to the question around which it was organized, but this is truly a show one needs to see to get the full impact of what these works are about.

Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings

John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Miss Helen Brice

Carol Lowrey

John Singer Sargent (1867-1925) was a versatile artist who painted landscapes, still lifes, intimate genre scenes and religious allegories. However, the first thing I think about when his name comes up is his activity as a grand-manner portraitist. Without doubt, he was the most successful and prolific portrait painter of the Edwardian era, producing more than 800 likenesses over the course of his career and attaining the reputation in England and the United States as the “Van Dyck” of his day. What was it that made Sargent’s work so special? It was a combination of technique––soft, buttery brushwork and a sensitive handling of color––coupled with his ability to capture the look and personality of his cultured, upper-class clients, among them such notables as Mrs. Henry G. Marquand, wife of the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner and the architect Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes; as a Boston critic wrote in 1888, “Style is the predominant characteristic of [Sargent]; all of his pictures are permeated with it. Nothing is commonplace; nothing is conventional. There is . . . [a] palpable atmosphere of refinement, ease and––tranchons le mot––aristocracy.”

The sense of privilege and gentility we associate with Sargent’s portraits comes across beautifully in this depiction of Helen Brice (1874-1950) (pictured above), from 1907. A daughter of Calvin Stewart Brice (1854-1898), an Ohio-born railway magnate and U.S. senator, Helen was a well known figure in the social circles of Manhattan and Newport during the first half of the twentieth century. She’s shown here at the age of thirty-three wearing an elegant gown and cashmere shawl, posed with her shoulders back and her head held in a way that gives her a proud, regal bearing. Her gaze is averted away from the viewer, endowing her with a sense of inner contemplation and poise. I wonder how she felt about sitting for the famous Sargent, who had painted luminaries on both sides of the Atlantic. In my research on Miss Brice, I found out that she never married, but she led a full (and one would like to think, happy) life replete with balls, dinner parties and nights at the opera, charity events, travel abroad and leisurely summers in Rhode Island.

“Society Portraits by Modern Masters on Exhibition,”
New York Times, 16 February 1913, p. X2

The Brice portrait was exhibited at important venues in New York (see article above), London, Venice, and elsewhere, and it was also included in Sargent’s memorial exhibition, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1925. Retained in the family until 1980, it is also among the last portraits Sargent would create, a final bloom in the triumphant bouquet of a career; by about 1910, tired by the demands imposed by his portrait work, he painted fewer likenesses in order to devote most of his time to informal oils and broadly brushed watercolors inspired by his travels abroad.