"Chicago World's Fair," Thomas Moran, 1894. Transparent watercolor with opaque white highlights over graphite on cream, moderately thick, moderately textured wove paper.

 

Masters of Color and Light

Homer, Sargent and the American Watercolor Movement at The Brooklyn Museum of Art

By Stephen May

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Admired for its capacity to convey a sense of immediacy and intimacy and for its special qualities of transparency, color and spontaneity, watercolor holds unique appeal for Americans. Our tradition of kinship with the outdoors and our veneration for the light of the New World have enhanced our appreciation of the medium's fascinating ability to record fleeting changes in nature.

In contrast to other countries, where watercolor has traditionally been considered an ancillary art, used for preliminary sketches for serious oil paintings, watercolor in America has evolved into a major medium comparable to oil. That tradition has encouraged some of our most gifted painters to create watercolors as finished works of art.

The vulnerability to light and inherent fragility of watercolors necessarily limits the time they can be exposed, adding to the mystique and appeal of works whose public display is limited to brief intervals. All these factors contribute to making "Masters of Color and Light" a remarkable and welcome exhibition.

To help celebrate its 175th anniversary, the Brooklyn Museum of Art has mounted this splendid survey of American watercolors, drawn entirely from its magnificent permanent collection. The 150 works by American masters from the late Eighteenth to the mid Twentieth Century, selected from the museum's trove of 800 watercolors, are reminders of the often underappreciated treasures of this great museum.

On view through August 23, the exhibition not only documents this nation's great achievements in this medium but suggests how attitudes toward watercolor work have changed over two centuries - and the key role the Brooklyn institution has played in this history. Almost all the big guns have works on view. There are also jewels by lesser-known artists and some by major painters whose work in this medium is often overlooked.

Among the absentees are John James Audubon (1785-1851), the finest American watercolorist of his day, whose works are a prominent part of the permanent collection of The New York Historical Society. Andrew Wyeth (b. 1917), one of the best of our living watercolor painters, has numerous fine works in the medium in "Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth," on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through August 30.

Brooklyn's impressive collection has been built on three important watercolor acquisitions in this century, starting with the purchase in 1900 of 345 carefully detailed gouaches illustrating the New Testament by French master James Jacques Joseph Tissot. This was followed in 1909 by the acquisition of 83 watercolors by John Singer Sargent, generally considered America's second finest practitioner in the field, and the 1912 addition of a dozen watercolors by our greatest watercolorist, Winslow Homer. Since then, a series of exhibitions has continued the museum's prominence in the field, facilitating augmentation of the collection.

Only a handful of other American institutions - the Carnegie Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Worcester Museum of Art come to mind - can boast watercolor holdings comparable to Brooklyn's. So it is a major event when a large number are brought out for display.

Organized chronologically and to some extent thematically, the show begins with examples by topographical artists little known today, who meticulously documented American city and landscape views in watercolors often intended for publication as prints. On view is a nostalgic vignette by the better-known William Rickarby Miller (1818-1893), who chronicled scenes around Brooklyn and New York in mid-Nineteenth Century.

Until the 1850s watercolors continued on the periphery of serious art in this country, a popular medium for women and an accessory of genteel culture. Professionally trained artists worked as oil painters, using watercolors primarily for preparatory studies.

Watercolors rise to greater stature in America's artistic pecking order began in the late 1850s and 1860s, largely in response to the writings of celebrated English critic John Ruskin, himself a gifted amateur watercolorist. His manual of self-instruction, The Elements of Drawing (1857), advocating detailed study of nature in watercolor, was widely read and followed in this country. Ruskin's championship of watercolor as an exhibition vehicle gave the medium enhanced respectability.

In the early 1860s a group of artists, known as the American Pre-Raphaelites, embraced Ruskin's program of fastidious renderings of nature in the precise and intimate medium of watercolor. Their approach is epitomized in the show by the deft, delicate work of John William Hill (1812-1879), whose "Apple Blossoms" (circa 1874) reflects Ruskin's advocacy of depicting flowering plants against the sky. Likewise, the meticulously detailed landscapes and botanically accurate still lifes of John Henry Hill (1839-1922), as in "Fringed Gentians" (circa 1867), reflected Ruskin's agenda.

Another Ruskin aficionado who focused on detailed, decorative botanical works was Fidelia Bridges (1834-1923), whose "Wisteria on a Wall" (1870s) suggests why she achieved significant success as a professional artist.

Perhaps the most loyal Ruskinian over an extended time was Henry Roderick Newman (1843-1917), who recorded scenes with precision and perception throughout his peripatetic career, which extended well into the Twentieth Century. There has been a revival of interest in this gifted expatriate's work in recent years.

By 1870, watercolor began to receive critical attention, active patronage and support of top-rated artists, principally through the American Watercolor Society. Established as a formal organization in 1866, it was modeled on British watercolor organizations that had led the way in promoting the medium in England.

Since 1867 the Society has held watercolor annuals that continue to this day. During the heyday of the American Watercolor Movement, 1870-1885, these exhibitions attracted substantial press coverage and attracted patrons.

With 11 works on view, William Trost Richards (1833-1905) is deservedly one of the stars of the exhibition. A dedicated Ruskinian and active Watercolor Society member, he turned out an enormous number of highly accomplished coastal and marine watercolors in the course of a distinguished career. Drawing on subjects from his travels in Europe and summers in New England resort communities, Richards became one of the country's best-known watercolor painters.

Richards' fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), better known as a teacher and realist painter in oils, worked in watercolors for a short time early in his career. His commitment to precise detail, growing out of his Parisian academic training, is reflected in "Whistling for Plover" (1874).

Participants in the American Watercolor Society, anxious to validate the importance of their medium, began to create large works specifically designed for public display. Sizable "exhibition" works by Bellows and Richards, stalwarts of the Society, helped elevate watercolors above their previous status as accessories to oil paintings. Lively debates ensued about whether watercolorists should employ only classic wash techniques or should make free and creative use of the medium by employing gouache and other opaque applications.

At the center of the show, fittingly, is a room filled with works by the most celebrated American watercolorists, Homer and Sargent. Each, along with Richards, has 11 works displayed.

The finest of all Americans in the medium, Homer (1836-1910) created more than 600 watercolors, along with about half as many oil paintings, over the course of his 50 year career. "You will see, in the future, that I will live by my watercolors," the artist once predicted. With their strong sense of surface design, innate color sensibility and pronounced narrative content, Homer's watercolors are universally admired today.

The Brooklyn Museum's initial acquisition of a dozen Homer watercolors, purchased from his brother/executor Charles soon after the artist's death in 1910, has since been augmented by 11 more Homers in the medium. For this exhibition the curators chose works executed at Houghton Farm in New York, the Adirondacks, Quebec, the Caribbean, Florida and on and off the coast of Maine.

Exercising great restraints, the curators chose to display only 11 watercolors from its large holdings of works by Sargent (1856-1925). Although a lifelong expatriate - and specialist in international society portraits - Sargent was anxious to have his watercolors preserved in an American public collection on the East Coast, and readily accepted the museum's offer to buy 83 in 1909. A decade earlier Sargent had encouraged the Brooklyn institution to acquire Tissot's watercolor series of "The Life of Christ," which it did in 1900.

The most memorable Sargent of all is "Bedouins" (circa 1905), in which two fierce-looking, armed nomads in vibrant blue robes and headgear gaze intently at the viewer. This work reflects Sargent's fascination with the Middle East, which he visited frequently while conducting research for the Boston Public Library commission, on which he worked from 1890 to 1916.

The presence of so many masterworks by Homer and Sargent in one room inevitably invites comparisons between their quite different approaches to watercolor painting. To many, Homer's work is intense, serious, solid and direct, while Sargent's is flashier, lighter and more fanciful.

As skilled plein-air artists, each responded brilliantly to tropical light and fauna, Sargent in the Mediterranean and Homer in the Caribbean. Each responded to exotic cultures with compelling images, such as Sargent's "Bedouins" and Homer's "The Turtle Pound." In any case, it is a joy to see so many of their best watercolors under one roof.

Painterly approaches to watercolor, reflecting international influences and inspirations, are evident in a picture by Thomas Moran (1837-1926), the English-born artist best known as chronicler of the American West. He carried his veneration for the colors and style of British watercolor whiz J.M.W. Turner into his work in both oil and watercolor.

Front and center as one enters the gallery devoted to Twentieth Century work is a large and compelling picture by one of the century's finest watercolorists, the underappreciated Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). Because he painted in the small towns of Salem, Ohio, and Gardenville, N.Y. - away from the power centers of the art world - and often employed overlapping strokes in large works that have the solidity and monumentality of oil paintings, Burchfield's watercolor achievements have been somewhat overlooked.

Last year's well-received traveling retrospective and a fine, comprehensive exhibition now on tour, document why this gifted, idiosyncratic artist belongs in the front ranks of American watercolor painters. "Life Cycles: The Charles E. Burchfield Collection," organized by the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo is on view at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington through September 6. It travels to Queens, N.Y., through March 28, 1999.

Another masterful Twentieth Century watercolorist, John Marin (1870-1953) is represented by only one work, "Deer Isle" (1914), but it is a winner. A great admirer of Homer's work, Marin utilized a cubist vocabulary and transparent washes to create memorable images, such as this of the Maine coast, where he summered for decades, and the New York metropolitan area.

Another Twentieth Century leader, Burchfield's friend and fellow interpreter of the American Scene, Edward Hopper (1882-1967) specialized in depicting the loneliness of individuals in contemporary society and the play of sunlight and shadow on architectural facades. The latter is demonstrated here in "The Mansard Roof" (1923), a freely painted, nostalgic depiction of grand old mansion in Gloucester, Mass.

Another artist inspired by Gloucester was Stuart Davis (1894-1964), best known for oil paintings influenced by jazz and objects of popular culture. In "Coordinance" (1934), he employed bold watercolor strokes in one of a series of works depicting how a single line could create the illusion of space.

Among the diverse artists contributing outstanding watercolors to the exhibition are Childe Hassam, Charles Demuth, Milton Avery, George Ault and Reginald Marsh. Particularly noteworthy are a remarkable set of blue calligraphic curls by Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986).

One of the most poignant images in the show is Jacob Lawrence's "Funeral Sermon" (1946), which evokes the scene of his sister's funeral. This great artist, who has recorded aspects of the African-American experience in narrative form, usually works in tempera or gouache.

Another touching work is "Pasquale's Vision" (1948), Mitchell Jamieson's depiction of a thin, barefoot boy scrawling images of death on the pavement. Jamieson (1915-1976), who worked principally around Washington, is one of several virtually unknown artists in the exhibition whose work deserves greater recognition.

Another interesting work, apparently atypical of the rest of his output, is "Catskill Stream" (circa 1932) by Gordon Stevenson (1892-1984), who made his living painting society portraits in oil.

Among the most intriguing pictures on view are two boldly hued, vaguely abstract watercolors by MacKnight (1880-1950). Once a major watercolorist, embraced by the establishment (Isabella Stewart Gardner named the only gallery at Fenway Park honoring a living artist after him), he was favorably compared to Homer and Sargent in his heyday. But his base was largely limited to New England, he came to be categorized as a Sargent follower, he stopped painting after the early death of his son, and his work was eclipsed by the rise of Modernist values. Today MacKnight is virtually unknown to the public.

This is a satisfying, thought-provoking exhibition. Kudos to those who over the years assembled this extraordinary collection of watercolors, and to the current curators at the Brooklyn Museum for presenting it in such a richly rewarding manner.

Bearing the same name as the exhibition, the fully illustrated catalogue, written by Linda Ferber and Barbara Dayer Gallati highlights the Brooklyn Museum watercolor collection. Published by Brooklyn Museum of Art/Smithsonian Institution Press, it sells for $55.