Decorative Impressionism
Encyclopedia
However, use of the term has been revived in recent decades by the influential and prolific art historian William H. Gerdts
William H. Gerdts
William H. Gerdts is an American art historian and Professor Emeritus of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Gerdts is the author of over twenty-five books on American art. An expert in American Impressionism, he is also well known for his work on nineteenth-century American still life...
to describe the figurative works of not only Frieseke, but some of his Giverny compatriots including Richard E. Miller
Richard E. Miller
Richard E. Miller was a major American Impressionist painter and a member of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists. Miller was primarily a figurative painter, known for his paintings of women posing languidly in interiors or outdoor settings. He is best described as a Decorative...
, Louis Rittman and Robert Reid. The same term has been applied to other Giverny school painters who painted the figure including Guy Rose
Guy Rose
Guy Rose was an American Impressionist painter who is recognized as one of California's top impressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
, Karl Anderson and Karl Albert Buehr
Karl Albert Buehr
Karl Albert Buehr was a painter born in Germany.Buehr was born in Feuerbach - near Stuttgart. He was the son of Frederick Buehr and Henrietta Doh . He moved to Chicago with his parents and siblings in the 1880s. In Chicago, young Karl worked at various jobs until he was employed by a...
. Decorative Impressionism describes a way of painting the human figure that attempts to reconcile academic techniques with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist influences.
The works of these artists tend to be either high-key outdoor depictions of women in languid poses, or interior scenes with the figures illuminated by natural light from windows. Many of these highly decorative paintings have a recognizable influence from Japanese art or Japonisme, with the strong use of patterns in the backgrounds. The work of the originators of first Decorative Impressionists was popular from about 1905 until the mid-1920s, but the style continued until at least the middle of the 20th century through the work of some of the students of the Giverny painters and, the style has been revived in recent years by some contemporary figurative painters.
Giverny
While American artists had been painting in the small village of GivernyGiverny
Giverny is a commune in the Eure department in north-western France. It is best known as the location of Claude Monet's garden and home.-Location:Giverny sits on the "right bank" of the River Seine where the river Epte meets the Seine...
since the 1880s, the group of painters who developed the characteristic style known as Decorative Impressionism settled in Normandy after the turn of the 20th Century. They came to a similar way of working because their academic training was similar; they were aware and interested in the developments of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
; and wanted to adopt some elements from these movements into their own work. Each of them had their own way of working, their own degree of solidity on their figures and their own style of brushwork, but they were all joined together by the beauty of their subjects and their decorative approach.
Frederick Frieseke was a Michigan born and Chicago-trained artist who had studied in Paris. The American expatriate settled in Giverny in 1906 where he painted female figures in outdoor settings, often using a pastel palette. Influenced by Renoir, Frieseke's canvasses were carefully designed and he often juxtaposed one pattern against another. Richard Edward Miller was raised and trained in St. Louis, Missouri and he studied in France at the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
briefly before his first large figurative works paintings were accepted in the Paris Salon. His early works featured well-drawn figures with more loosely rendered backgrounds, but after he settled in Giverny, his work became brighter and he developed a style where his figures were well modeled, but the backgrounds were often patterns of small brush strokes.
The California-born artist Guy Rose
Guy Rose
Guy Rose was an American Impressionist painter who is recognized as one of California's top impressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
studied in San Francisco and Paris, coming first under the influence of the Naturalist School and then French Impressionism. He is often described as the most French of the California Impressionists and he visited Giverny before finally settling their with his wife Ethel in 1904. Rose was both a landscape and figurative painter and in Giverny, he painted female figures in outdoor light, keeping the draftsmanship he learned in Paris for the figures and using a more Impressionist style for the setting.
Lawton S. Parker
Lawton S. Parker
Lawton S. Parker was an American impressionist painter.Born in Fairfield, Michigan, raised in Kearney, Nebraska, Parker studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He traveled to France and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After return to the United States, he resided in Chicago and taught at...
was an artist and teacher who traveled frequently between the United States and Europe and he settled in Giverny in 1903. Even though Parker shared a Giverny garden with Frieseke, he is not credited with painting figures in garden settings extensively until about 1909. Then, he painted the same sorts of subjects as his Giverny companions. Edward W. Greacen was a New Yorker and he arrived in Giverny in 1907 where he painted a series of garden and domestic subjects in a painterly manner, with a clear French influence. The Chicago-trained painter Karl Anderson was only in Giverny a short time, but it changed the direction of his career and he will always be identified with the French village because he adopted the same subjects and a similar way of working.
Karl Albert Buehr
Karl Albert Buehr was a painter born in Germany.Buehr was born in Feuerbach - near Stuttgart. He was the son of Frederick Buehr and Henrietta Doh . He moved to Chicago with his parents and siblings in the 1880s. In Chicago, young Karl worked at various jobs until he was employed by a...
came to Giverny about 1909 and spent summers there until 1912. In Giverny, he turned to painting women in outdoor light, leaving behind the darker tonalities and landscape subjects of his earlier work. Buehr too became associated with Giverny and with French Impressionism and he passed his confidence in the Impressionist palette to his many students.
A younger artist, Louis Rittman, was Russian born and Chicago-trained and he came to Giverny in 1911 and spent the next eighteen summers there, even during World War I, when most of the Americans had left for home. Rittman was highly influenced by Frieseke and he painted women in interior and outdoor settings, usually approaching the figure with some delicacy and handing the background in a manner reminiscent of French Impressionism.
Another American painter whose work clearly falls under the description of "Decorative Impressionism" is Robert Reid
Robert Reid (painter)
Robert Lewis Reid was an American Impressionist painter and muralist.-Life and work:Robert Reid was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under Otto Grundmann, where he was also later an instructor...
. Although Reid was not part of the Giverny Colony, he was Paris-trained and at the same time it was active, he was working out his own solution of how to reconcile his academic training with a decorative aspect. His solution was different from the Giverny painters. He used boldly decorative compositions, full of cool tones, that had a distinct organic influence that made them reminiscent of Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
.
A second generation
Because several members of the Giverny Colony were teachers and mentors to a number of other American painters, their style of painting lived on through the works of their students. Two of these artists, the Chicago trained painters Theodore LukitsTheodore Lukits
Theodore Nikolai Lukits was a California portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of some of the most glamorous actresses of the Silent Film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspired works, figures drawn from Hispanic California and his pastel landscapes have all...
and Christian von Schneidau
Christian von Schneidau
Christian von Schneidau was a well known California portrait painter who was recognized for his paintings of Hollywood stars and the Los Angeles elite. During the Roaring Twenties he painted Mary Pickford and other figures from the film industry as well as a number of outdoor figures done in the...
both ended up in California, where American Impressionism remained popular for a longer time than anywhere else. Both Lukits and Von Schneidau were students of the Giverny Impressionist Karl Albert Buehr, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they both excelled and won traveling scholarships. Both were also students of Richard E. Miller. Lukits studied with Miller in St. Louis, when he was a young prodigy and von Schenidau studied with him in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
where Miller lived until his death.
Lukits was already doing large, decorative works with well modeled figures and highly patterned backgrounds in Chicago in 1918 and 1919 and he continued the practice in California, with many works of Asian subjects like the silent film actor Katiyama Sojin
Sojin
Sōjin Kamiyama or just Sōjin was a Japanese film actor. He appeared in over 70 films between 1917 and 1954...
and portraits like "Mrs. Ray Milland" (1942). Theodore Lukits used the term "Decorative Portraits" himself in describing such works, so the alignment with Brinton's original thesis is clear. Like Miller's work, the artist painted the figure quite realistically, but created the background with more decorative elements. Von Schneidau did several large, very decorative portraits that were exhibited widely in the 1920s and reproduced including "5'O'clock (Mrs. Elwood Riggs)" and "Mary Pickford (Reading the Sundial).
External links
- California Art Club Home to Several Giverny Impressionists
- Village of Giverny Web Site Monet's Village of Giverny
- Giverny Impressionism Web Site
- Musee American in Giverny
- Collection Assembled by Industrialist Daniel Terra