In "The Big Ben of Westminster,” 1900, statues and the spires of Westminster Abbey to the right are dwarfed by the looming, legendary clock tower. "Juxtaposing the old and the new, the natural and the manmade, the grounded and the transcendent, Richards' painting, created at the beginning of a new century, speaks most obviously of time and change and the cyclical permanence of a world neatly ordered and contained,” notes art historian Leigh Culver. Bryan R.D. Hemming Collection.
:Anna Richards Brewster (1870–1952) came to maturity in America's Gilded Age when increasing numbers of women sought to become professional artists in the face of daunting odds and societal inhibitions. While many of her compatriots dropped out, she persevered, becoming a skilled and appealing painter, and leaving a significant oeuvre that is today enjoying revived interest.
Brewster traveled extensively, had studios in England and the United States and experimented with Barbizon tonalities, brighter hues of Impressionism and realism. Her work was influenced by her father, Rembrandt, J.M.W. Turner, Childe Hassam and Edward Hopper.
Brewster had the advantage — and disadvantage — of being the daughter of William Trost Richards (1833–1905), a noted land- and seascape painter associated with the Hudson River School and the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. She benefited from watching him work, traveling with him on painting excursions, and he was her first teacher. On the other hand, her accomplished work was often viewed in the shadow of her father's acclaimed canvases.
Moreover, she had to contend with the widespread idea of her time that women were "weekend" artists, painting and drawing as a social divertissement, and the belief that women had neither the energy, strength nor perseverance to produce first-class art. In these contexts, her life was filled with struggles and setbacks, achievements and triumphs as she worked to establish a place in the male-dominated art world of her day.
Overall, Brewster's commitment to leading a model Christian life and being a good daughter and wife often clashed with her desire to be an independent artist and succeed in the marketplace.
In "Mount Etna From Taormina, Sicily,” no date, Brewster featured the gorgeous blue of the volcano and its echo in flowers in the foreground. "The active volcano, framed by a sunlit portico of flowering plants, suggests potential destructive violence in an otherwise picturesque Italian idyll,” observes art historian Leigh Culver. Scott and Hamilton Brewster Collection.
Her work is owned by a number of museums, and there have been sporadic exhibitions of her art, most recently in the 1980s. In the last few years, there has been renewed interest in Brewster, both for the quality of her oeuvre and for her role as a successful artist in challenging times.
The struggles and achievements of her career are documented in "Anna Richards Brewster: American Impressionist," on view at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art & Science through June 14. Comprising 50 plein air scenes, still lifes and portraits in oil, watercolor, gouache and pen, it is organized by independent curator Judith Kafka Maxwell in collaboration with Susan Brewster McClatchy, a grandniece and longtime admirer of Brewster.
Anna Richards was born in Germantown, now a section of Philadelphia, the youngest of six children, and raised in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Her father recognized her talent early on and became her first teacher. Her early paintings show the influence of his precise, Ruskinian style. "A Knight Errant," painted around 1885 when she was 15, offers a romanticized view of a chivalrous knight assisting a comely young lady on horseback.
Starting in 1890, classes with John La Farge and William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League in New York encouraged her to adopt a brighter palette and freer brushwork in the Impressionist manner. These departures from her father's realist style did not sit well with him. "He was critical of these new directions," observes art historian Wanda M. Corn and became "an exacting critic." Nonetheless, she retained throughout her career the careful drawing techniques she had learned from her father. In 1890, she won a National Academy of Design prize for the best work by a woman in the United States.
