Willard Metcalf at Old Lyme

Although he was born in Lowell, Mass., the quintessential Yankee milltown, Metcalf became best known for peaceful views of pastoral New England. After an apprenticeship in Cambridge with landscape painter George Loring Brown in the mid-1870s, he studied under anatomist William Rimmer at the new School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for two years. He nurtured interests in spiritualism and nature.

To support his art training Metcalf became an illustrator, among other things traveling several times to the Southwest in the early 1880s, depicting the Zuni tribe for popular periodicals. Two sketchbooks in the exhibition document his careful recording of ceremonial dances and other Zuni activities.

With his earnings as an illustrator and the sale of some paintings, Metcalf journeyed to the art capital of the world, Paris, where he studied at the respected Academie Julian.

During five years abroad, he spent three summers in Giverny, 1885-87, where he collected birds' eggs, tutored Impressionist leader Claude Monet's children in botany and ornithology and experimented with the French Impressionist style. "Giverny," painted in 1887, reflects the partial extent to which he adopted Monet's broken brushwork and lighter, higher-keyed palette. This early landscape, resonating with brilliant sunshine and deep shadows, suggested a promising future for this careful observer of nature.

An 1887 visit to North Africa inspired paintings such as "Café at Biskra, Algiers" and another that received an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1888.

Returning to the States in 1889, Metcalf settled in New York and began teaching at the Art Students League and Cooper Union. For the next decade or so, his work - chiefly portraits - received a lukewarm critical reception. His shadowed, somber "Self-Portrait," painted around 1890, suggests his uncertainty about his future as an artist.

Soon after the turn of the century, Metcalf began to concentrate on recording the changing moods and seasons of New England. Utilizing a more muted palette than the French Impressionists, he depicted church steeples, farms and small towns nestled in panoramic landscapes in all seasons of the year and under various effects of light. At a time when his native region was undergoing rapid industrialization, urbanization and immigration, the peripatetic artist chose to focus on its pleasant, picturesque aspects.

Metcalf had major solo shows in galleries, and won a medal at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He exhibited frequently as one of "The Ten American Painters" - the others were Benson, De Camp, Dewing, Hassam, Reid, Simmons, Weir and Twachtman, who was succeeded by Chase.

Prominent critic Royal Cortissoz said his paintings offered "truth to the very soul of the American landscape." Metcalf became, in brief, an admired and critical - but not financial - success.

Metcalf's private life was less tranquil; he was thrice divorced, drank heavily and was often strapped for cash. As art historian Thomas A. Denenberg has observed, "Metcalf painted landscapes that depict a harmony absent from his personal life."

In 1903-04, Metcalf spent time with his parents at Clark's Cove, near Damariscotta in midcoast Maine. "An Inlet at Boothbay Harbor" 1904, one of eight Metcalfs given to the Griswold by The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, offers a bright, Impressionist take on the picturesque area.

Metcalf's biographer, Elizabeth de Veer, has written that "at Clark's Cove he rid himself of his nostalgia for France and became first and foremost an American, with a new and profound allegiance to the land." In a similar vein, guest curator and Metcalf authority Bruce Chambers has observed, "Although he had been painting landscapes since he was 16, the now 47-year-old Metcalf seems to have realized that his greatest strength lay in painting American scenery, and particularly the scenery of New England."

Metcalf's commitment to depicting New England deepened during three summers, 1905-07, when he sojourned at Griswold's spacious home and became an active member of the Old Lyme art colony. Led by the irrepressible Childe Hassam, the historic town on the Lieutenant River, replete with historic houses, venerable bridges, picturesque landscapes and various leisure activities, had become a hotbed for American Impressionism - the "American Giverny," as some dubbed it.

Metcalf reveled in the place and the stimulating company of fellow artists. "Completely absorbed by nature, Metcalf devoted days in Old Lyme to painting en plein air, evenings to leisurely meals surrounded by both art and artists and late nights to collecting moths by candlelight from his attic window," writes Griswold Museum director Jeffrey W. Anderson in the exhibition catalog. "It was a place for Metcalf where, as he put it, 'every day is so in line with work.'"

For Metcalf, this was, Chambers writes in the catalog, "the most pivotal period of...[his] career...neither his own painting nor American Impressionism would ever be quite the same again."

Like other artist/guests at Miss Florence's elegant but faded mansion, Metcalf received crucial encouragement for his work from this remarkable woman, as well as benefiting from the modest room and board.

Metcalf's homage to his hostess, "May Night" 1906, on loan from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, is perhaps his most celebrated work. Incorporating elements of Tonalism and Impressionism, it depicts the white-gowned figure of Florence Griswold gliding across the front lawn toward the moonlit mansion. "Metcalf used the darkly luminous façade of the old mansion to symbolize the New England past," says Denenberg. This wonderful canvas also suggest the magical charm Miss Florence and her place held for artists.

When she saw the completed "May Night," Griswold proclaimed it "heavenly," telling Metcalf that "It's the best thing you've ever done." The artist offered her the painting as "the only way I can pay for my board," but Griswold refused and predicted it would be "snap[ped] up at once" when shown in New York.

In fact, when exhibited at the Corcoran in 1907, "May Night" won the Clark Gold Medal that carried a cash award of $1,000. The museum promptly bought the painting for the then staggering price of $3,000. The first contemporary American painting purchased by the Corcoran, to this day it is a special treasure among the museum's impressive holdings.

In Old Lyme, Metcalf executed not only some of his best works, but developed the artistic philosophy that guided the rest of his career. "Go out and paint what you see," he told a fellow artist, "and forget your theories."

Because in his mature paintings Metcalf let his subject matter dictate his technique, these works reflect a variety of approaches, ranging from the refined and delicate to the expressive and robust. Each shift in brushwork and texture was calculated to elicit specific effects of light, atmosphere and mood.

"The Poppy Garden," 1905, from the Manoogian Collection, inspired by French Impressionist titan Claude Monet and his friend Hassam (on the Isles of Shoals), offers a floral field animated by energetic brushwork that produced daubs and dashes of brilliant color, set against a body of blue-gray water and pale blue sky. In this and other landscapes, Metcalf incorporated Impressionist techniques of diffused light and broken color while maintaining meticulous definition of form.

By contrast, in "The First Snow (No. 2)," 1906, loaned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Metcalf conveyed the onset of winter by delineating the shapes of newly formed drifts and the snowy landscape with smooth passages of paint.

Some of Metcalf's Old Lyme paintings sought to capture the mood and sense of place in generalized landscapes. Works such as "Flying Shadows (No. 1)" and the particularly lovely "A Family of Birches," 1907, reflect his assured approach to rendering the pastoral beauties of the countryside.

He was also drawn to record such local landmarks as the venerable "Bow Bridge," 1906, that spanned the Lieutenant River just below the Griswold house and "Johnny-Cake Hill," 1905, a historic site reached by a winding road that became a characteristic of his work.

The intensity of Metcalf's vision is suggested by paintings reflecting changing seasons around Old Lyme. The joys of spring with its bright and blossoming foliage are featured in "Dogwood Blossoms (No. 1)," offering a glimpse of a verdant landscape through a screen of blooming trees, and "May Pastoral," 1907, offering a dramatic perspective on the onset of the season in muted tones.

One of his most interesting views is "Lyme Hillside (Study for Pasture)" of 1906, a rare pastel that preceded an oil painting. The vividly hued work evokes the heat, wind and brilliant colors of a Connecticut summer.

Metcalf's feel for the transitional moods and vivid colors of fall in New England is reflected in "Early Autumn (No. 1)," 1905, and in "Early October," 1906. His affinity for winter is demonstrated in "The First Snow (No. 2)" of 1906, which conveys a palpable sense of the cold and whiteness of that season.

Metcalf's love of fishing and, particularly, his avid pursuit of trout is documented by his tranquil, atmospheric "The Trout Book (No. 1)," 1907, one of many canvases on the theme.

Metcalf's last stay in Old Lyme ended abruptly in 1907 when his first wife, with whom his relations were strained, ran off with a younger painter. Metcalf immediately decamped for Maine, never again to return to Miss Florence's "ministering hand."

For the remainder of his career Metcalf traveled around New England, searching for subjects and inspiration. The Griswold exhibition displays some fine examples of his post-Old Lyme achievements.

His continued passion for fishing is documented in "The Trout Pool, November" 1910, one of a series of trout streams he painted in western Connecticut, while "Hudson River in February: Bear Mountain," circa 1920, painted while he was in Peekskill, N.Y., suggests both his awe at the might of the river and his concern about the encroachment of development in the Hudson Highlands.

Metcalf's finest winterscapes were painted in Cornish, N.H., between 1909 and 1920. That scenic area, boasting of both an active art colony and snowy winters, lent itself to contemplative works, such as "Thawing Brook (Window Shadows)," 1911. Bathed in brilliant sunshine, the scene unfolds in the hands of a master nature lover who, as Dartmouth art curator Barbara J. MacAdam has observed, "uses broad swaths of lavender and violet to transcribe lengthening shadows and more scumbled areas of white to capture the reflective qualities of sunlit snow."

Accompanied by his second wife and infant son and daughter in 1914 Metcalf summered in Hadlyme, a small town on the Connecticut River. In "Summer at Hadlyme," 1914, the 56-year-old artist celebrated his new family life with an affectionate depiction of his wife and young daughter in their rented cottage, with a sunny garden visible through the doorway.

The following year, during the first of five summers in Waterford, near New London, Metcalf painted a warm and loving portrait of his young daughter, "Child in Sunlight," 1915. On the verso he proudly inscribed "Rosalind Metcalf, 3 yrs, 9 mos., Painted at Pleasure Beach..."

In the last five years of his life as his marriage disintegrated, he drank a lot and was often ill. In spite of these mounting problems, he continued painting around New England and Upstate New York, and enjoyed successful sales of works. In 1923, a painting created in Kennebunkport, Maine, was sold for $13,000, the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist. In 1924, The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of his Vermont landscapes, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

One of his last major works, "The Village in Spring" painted around 1923 in Springfield or Woodstock, Vt., epitomizes Metcalf's vision of a New England village harmoniously surrounded by verdant nature. It is an appropriate coda to a distinguished career.

Just after large exhibitions of his works opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and New York's Milch Galleries in 1925, Metcalf suffered a fatal heart attack. Proud to the end, his will instructed his executors to do away with any paintings that might damage his reputation or his estate's value; a few "academic studies" from the late 1880s were destroyed.

Along with many of his contemporaries, Metcalf's art fell out of favor for decades after his death. Tangible evidence of the renewed appreciation for his work is the escalating prices his paintings have commanded in recent years.

Nature lover and master craftsman, Willard Metcalf produced a body of highly accomplished work that celebrated the wonders of rural New England and virtues of his own Yankee heritage. Depicting landscapes in the process of seasonal transformation, his paintings provided a nostalgic look back to a pristine world that was fast disappearing and offered reassurance about the enduring beauty of nature. As this lovely exhibition makes clear, his sojourns in Old Lyme were key to his considerable achievements.

A fully illustrated catalog, with essays by Chambers and the Griswold's former curator, Amy Ellis, and entries by Ellis's successor, Emily M. Fiorentino-Weeks, is interesting and informative. It sheds new light on the crucial role Old Lyme played in Metcalf's career, and is available for $29.95. Lectures and educational programs at the museum will offer additional insights into the themes of the exhibition.

The Florence Griswold Museum, located on an 11-acre site on the Lieutenant River, is at 96 Lyme Street. For information, 860-434-5542 or www.flogris.org.