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For more on the Worcester Art Museum, see the first post in this series. In this post (the final in the series) we look American paintings of the late19th and early 20th centuries at the WAM, and see how they compare with the European ones that we’ve looked at.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/XrYzIqCaY9A.

Ca. 1830-1833: Blunt

This unsigned work has been attributed to John Samuel Blunt (1798-1835), a native of New Hampshire who was apprenticed from ages 14 to 21 in the workshop of John Ritto Penniman. (See last week’s post.) There his tasks included gilding frames, ornamenting lamps, painting signs, and decorating ship’s figureheads. He later painted seascapes and portraits in Boston and Worcester. At age 37, Blunt died of yellow fever on a voyage from Texas to Boston. More on Blunt here; on his seascapes, here; on this painting, here.

Scholars point out that Blunt’s portraits are notable for their high finish and their “fancy” elements: here, the calling card, bouquet of roses, coral necklace, etc.). To me, the clue that this artist hasn’t had much formal training is the symmetry of its elements: look at the coral necklace, neckline, sleeves, arms, even the note on the table. Human beings seldom arrange themselves in quite such an orderly manner.

Ca. 1831: Blunt or Plummer

This unsigned portrait might be the work of Blunt (see above) or of Edwin Plummer (1802-1880), who also worked in Massachusetts in the 1830s. Looking at Plummer’s works here, I’m voting for Blunt.

As in Blunt’s portrait of Frances Motley, the artist is clearly more interested in simplifying forms to geometric shapes than in studying anatomy … but those nearly spherical leg-of-mutton sleeves are unforgettable! More here.

Ca. 1870: Homer

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), a Boston native, is famous for New England seascapes. No fewer than ten of them were on display at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. But here he shows that he can convey a sitter’s character as well, with what seems to me deliberate ambiguity. Is this schoolteacher stern, or merely anxious? The WAM’s site notes that after the Civil War women began to serve as teachers – one of their first roles outside the home.

1877: Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), born near Boston, went to Paris to study at age 21, then moved to London at 25. He never returned to the United States. Although he wasn’t formally associated with the Impressionists (he refused an invitation to exhibit with them), his brushwork is reminiscent of theirs. In the 1860s, Whistler switched to a nearly monochromatic palette and to focusing on decorative arrangements of shapes and colors. The most famous of the paintings in this style is “Whistler’s Mother,” or, to give it the artist’s title, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, 1871.

Whistler was a leader of the Aesthetic school, which challenged Victorian mores by aiming for beauty without moral or social aims: “art for art’s sake”. John Ruskin (1819-1900), England’s most revered art critic for some 30 years, accused Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” with works such as Nocturne in Black and Gold, 1874. In 1878, the year after the WAM’s painting was done, Whistler sued Ruskin for libel. He claimed Ruskin’s derogatory comments had damaged his sales. Whistler won the case but was awarded only a farthing, and forced to declare bankruptcy.

The sitter for the WAM’s painting was Maud Franklin, Whistler’s mistress and model, who bore him two daughters and was herself a painter. More on this painting here.

1890 & 1905: Sargent

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was born in Florence of American ex-patriate parents, and spent most of his life in Europe; but he’s still considered an American painter, and one of the most important ones of the 19th century. After studying in Paris, he rocketed to popularity as a portraitist, painting members of some of Britain’s noblest and America’s wealthiest families. Sargent had a flair and a bravura style that were unique, and he always made his sitters look fabulous.

Except … Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) B. Dewey, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, was 34 when the portrait above was painted. She looks beautiful but rather tired and worried. That’s so unusual for a sitter in a Sargent portrait that I looked her up to see if she died young. Nope: she lived to age 94. I’d love to compare a photograph of her with Sargent’s portrait, just to see what he had to work with. Lizzie’s husband, Francis Henshaw Dewey II, was a director of a bank, a railroad, and a telephone company. More on this portrait here.

If you’re interested in the lives of the rich and famous, read the Wikipedia bio of Frances Evelyn (“Daisy”) Greville (1861-1938), wife of the 5th Earl of Warwick, mistress of the future Edward VII, known as the “Red Countess” for her support of British socialists. Her unorthodox behavior was apparently the inspiration for the popular music-hall song from 1892, “Daisy Bell“. (“It won’t be a stylish marriage / I can’t afford a carriage / But you’ll look sweet / Upon the seat / Of a bicycle built for two.”)

This is one of Sargent’s very large canvases, an impressive 9 feet tall. In the detail above, you can see the florishing brushwork. Sargent has increased the elegance of the his sitter by elongating her figure. Photos of Lady Warwick (below) make for a fascinating comparison. The WAM’s site points out that for this time, what she’s wearing is less extravagant than it might have been.

1909: Benson

Frank Benson (1862-1951), born in Salem, Massachusetts, was trained in Paris and became a founding member of The Ten, a group of American Impressionists from Boston and New York that included Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, and Thomas W. Dewing. From 1889 to 1917, Benson taught at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, influencing a generation of painters.

The sitter in the WAM’s portrait, Edith Perley Kinnicutt, was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement. Her husband was banker and broker Lincoln N. Kinnicutt of Worcester. Chances are she’s every bit as wealthy as most of Sargent’s sitters, but in this painting she doesn’t have the verve of Sargent’s sitters, does she? In fact, the only portraits Benson painted that come close to the energy in Sargent’s are those of Benson’s children: examples here. More on this portrait here.

More

• For the Resurrecting Romanticism conference in October 2023, I’m working on a talk on art at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, a.k.a. the Columbian Exposition. One of the questions I’ll be addressing is why the organizers of the Exposition, and the painters whose works appeared there, were so very keen to surpass the buildings and exhibitions of the 1889 Paris world’s fair. To remind myself of the development of European and American painting over time, this series of posts is a quick overview of European portraits from the Renaissance to the 19th century, followed by American portraits. Eventually I’ll post on other paintings at the Worcester Art Museum.
• If the history of Western painting interests you, check out my Innovators in Painting: a 140-page survey focusing on innovations that gave painters more power to make their viewers stop, look, and think about paintings.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here. For examples of favorite recommendations from past years, click here.