si Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/julianaldenweiraOOweir JULIAN^ ALDSN WEI\ Julian Alden Weir AV^APP%ECIA TIOV^ OF /IIS LIFE AND WOI^KS The 'Phillips Publications ^(umber One E. P. Dutton iS Company New York 1922 Copyright, 192 1, by 'The Century Association of New Tork City Copyright, 1922, by E. P. Dutton & Company of New York City D. B. Updike, The Merry mount Press, Boston JULIA^ALDSN WEIT^ tAn Appreciation of His Life and Workt CONTENTS Julian Alden Weir By Duncan Phillips Weir the Painter By Emil Carlsen Weir By Royal Cortissoz Reminiscences of Weir By Childe Han am The Tile Club By /. B. Millet Weir the Fisherman By H. de Raasloff A Letter From Augustus Vincent Tack A Letter From C. E. S. Wood List of Paintings [ ™ ] LIST OF ILLUSTRA TIOJ^S Portrait of Julian A/den Weir frontispiece From a photograph, by Pirie MacDonald An Alsatian Girl following page 120 Owned by Phillips Memorial Gallery, IV ashington Portrait of Robert W. Weir, the Artist's Father Owned by Mrs. J. Aid en IV eir, New Tork City Roses Owned by Charles L. Baldwin, New Tork City The Road to the Old Farm Owned by Charles L. Baldwin The High Pasture The Farm in Winter The Donkey Ride The Gray Bodice Plowing for Buckwheat The Border of the Farm The Orchid Upland Pasture Owned by Phillips Memorial Gallery Owned by Charles V. Wheeler, IV ashington Owned by Mrs. J. Alden IV eir Owned by T'ke Art Institute, Chicago Owned by Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh Owned by Mrs. Robert C. V ose, Boston Owned by Frank L. Babbott, Brooklyn Owned by National Gallery, IV ashington [ ix ] LIST OF ILLUST^T/O^S A Gentlewoman Owned by National Gallery, W ashington The Plaza— Nocturne Owned by Horatio S. Rubens, New Tork City Pan and the Wolf Owned by Phillips Memorial Gallery Little Lizzie Lynch Owned by Mrs. H. M. Adams, Glen Cove, L. I. Pussy- Willows Owned by Mrs. "James IV all Finn, New Tork City The Spreading Oak Owned by Colonel C. E. S. IV ood, Portland, Oregon The Fishing Party Owned by Phillips Memorial Gallery Portrait of Miss de L. Owned by T'he Corcoran Gallery of Art, W ashington Knitting for Soldiers Owned by Phillips Memorial Gallery Afternoon by the Pond Owned by Charles L. Baldwin Portrait Bust, by Olin Warner Owned by Mrs. Olin IV arner, New Tork City Portrait of Julian Alden Weir, by Wolfinger Owned by Mrs. J. Alden W eir [ * 1 The copyright of the Weir Memorial Volume has been acquired from the Century Association by Mr. Duncan Phillips, of the Phillips Memorial Gallery, in order to gain a wider circulation for the book than is possible with a private publication . Eight illus- trations have been added at the end of the book preceding the List of Paintings, together with the announcement of the Phillips Memorial Gallery. The book now appears as one of The Phillips Publications. The eight added illustrations are as follows: Flower Girl Owned by Mr. W. S. Stimmel Woodland Rocks Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington The Open Book Owned by Mr. John Gellatly Photograph of Julian Alden Weir Owned by Mr. Duncan Phillips Building the Dam Owned by Mrs. J. Alden Weir Visiting Neighbors Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington Reflections, from an Etching Owned by Mrs. J. Alden Weir Roses Owned by Phillips Memorial Gallery Only J 1 2 copies with the added illustrations and text, as outlined above, have been printed. Committee on Publications J. B. Millet, Chairman Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. Leila Mechlin Charles D. Lay Dorothy Weir Mahonri Young Elizabeth Hudson Gifford Beal Ex Officio Duncan Phillips Dwight Clark Marjorie Phillips Augustus Vincent Tack Trustees of Phillips Memorial Gallery JULIA^ALDSN WEI%^ By Duncan Phillips I SINCE the passing, so recently, from our midst of J. Alden Weir, the best critical opinion, in his own country at least, has crystallized rapidly and acclaimed him with a remarkable degree of confidence as a man for the ages, as one who now enters upon a splendid destiny of imperishable and ever increasing fame. I do not feel certain that Weir will ever be one of the popular painters who are appraised at or above their real value by the general public. He never carried his heart on his sleeve, never painted pictures which correspond to "house- hold words," never tried to entertain nor to educate the crowd, nor to organize a following and start a "move- ment." He was contemptuous not only of sentimentality, but of sensationalism and of the notoriety which so often passes for fame, and in his own manner of painting, so marked was his restraint that he tended to an expression of unconscious austerity. Yet he was the most approach- able and genial of men. The very essence of his art — what makes it great — what will make it immortal — is [ 3 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI\ the warm and glowing lovableness which underlies the reserve. Weir believed that art does not deserve all the time and talk men spend upon it if it does not stimulate to finer issues our dormant faculties for living. If the value of art is measured according to its expressional power, then the art of Weir is very great even if it is not entirely easy of access. It is the pure gold deep in the earth which we must dig to find, not the cheap gilding on the gaudy surface of commercial ornaments. We have lost in Weir a painter of a great tradition — an artist absolutely individual and independent of any School, yet one who belongs in the company of all those masters of truthful observation and personal expression in painting who have cared more for true and fine relations of color and tone and of light and shade, and for true and fine in- terpretations of beauty and character in the visible world, than for the formal analysis of abstract esthetic principles and the repetition of formulas for classical design. Weir was beloved by all factions in the rather overheated air of dis- putation in which, strange to say, art seems to flourish. There never was any doubt where he stood. Although [ + ] AN APP%ECIA TIO^ a member of the National Academy since 1885, and Presi- dent of that body from 1915 to 1917, he was nevertheless an adventurous spirit himself, open-minded and sympa- thetic in regard to the adventures of the younger men, and frankly opposed to the tyranny of traditions and to all dogmatic intolerance. His reasonableness was so sweet that poseurs were shamed to sincerity and extremists so- bered to moderation by his influence, recognizing in him a spirit no less young than theirs, but mellowed by a big sincerity and a temperate and judicious poise and a loyalty to high ideals. In his own work there is fundamentally a selection and a fusion of what was best in the truly great artists of many centuries. However, so fresh was his point of view, so spontaneous and ardent his response to the stim- ulations of life, so self-reliant his character and so fond of experiment his boyish nature, that slowly, even labo- riously, yet surely, he evolved and created for himself a technique which is his alone in the history of art, and the perfect medium for the expression of what he had to say. Old Masters as different as Velasquez and Rembrandt, Chardin and Gainsborough, Constable and Corot, would [ 5 ] JUL/A^ ALD8N WEI\ have recognized in Weir an artist of their unmistakable kind. Jean Francois Millet stood before the prize-winning picture which Weir, a Beaux Arts student at the time, had painted for his landlady of the Inn at Barbizon, and exclaimed, "Tout a fait distingue." Where Corot, Monet, and Manet left off, Weir carried on. I realize that I should not be hazarding an opinion nor daring to estimate the ultimate place in history of one so near to me in time and so dear to me in memory. I loved Alden Weir, and now that he is gone it is more difficult than ever for me to write of him as an artist in a manner altogether free from the bias of my affection for him as a man. Fortunately in this case the man and his work were one. It would be difficult to estimate the man and his own special and indispensable quality without reference to his work which perfectly expressed him. On the other hand, it would be most unprofitable to study his paintings from the merely technical standpoint, since there is no tech- nical merit in his work, however great, that explains the enchantment of his art, which is absolutely a matter of personal charm; charm plus nobility breathed into his [ 6 ] AN APP%ECIA TIOO^ best drawing and pervading that unerring instinct for fine choices which we may call his taste, so that his art and his personality seem to be somehow compounded and insepa- rable, and his paintings the radiations of his own spirit, sincere, sensitive, almost shy, yet virile and joyous. It seems to me that the two outstanding points that I wish to emphasize are, first, Weir's special capacity to make us see and feel that ordinary human experiences are desirable and delightful, and the world (to each his own world) full of places and people inexplicably attractive and worth knowing. Second, the personal independence which pervaded everything he did and found for itself a well-pondered and ultimately perfected medium of expres- sion, so well adapted to it that it seems part of it, the spirit of the artist animating and refining the rather rebel- lious substances of the copious pigment which he loaded and manipulated mysteriously. There is a third point which I wish now to stress — his Americanism, his combination of certain traits which we like to think of as characteris- tic, not of what is common but what is best in the Amer- ican. In this third aspect of his art we shall only be con- [ 7 ] JUL/A^ ALD8N WEIT^ sidering again the first and second, for they complete my very simple conception and interpretation of Weir the artist and Weir the man. His Americanism was, let me admit at once, of a special rather than a complete or com- posite character. As has been said of him, "From the America of immigration and quantity production he stood apart. His task was to fix the survival of the older Amer- ica," the Anglo-Saxon America of the founders of our old families, more particularly yet, the America developed in New England and New York. Weir carried into Amer- ican painting, writes Frank Jewett Mather in The Weekly Review, " a quality of esthetic conscience akin to that of William Dean Howells and Henry James in his earlier phase. Whether his theme was a New England village or farm or a finely bred American girl, earnest, trained in scruple and nicety of thought and conduct, always he thought to tell the truth of the matter, neglecting none of the finer shades and overtones." Now this subtlety of observation and this delicacy of feeling are not generally considered qualities either of American art or of American character, at least not by [ § ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^ those who usually talk loudest and longest about what they call " the American note" or "the American flavor" in books and plays and paintings. There is a cult nowa- s across the sea and among the European-minded art critics of our eastern cities for Americanism in art. What- ever good work is done that does not give the American flavor or sound the American note can be excused by these critics as an excellent by-product, but must be dis- couraged as liable to interfere with the production of the genuine American article. Indeed, the American article in art has become one of our successful industries. The con- tinental relish for the American flavor is now catered to consciously and carefully by novelists, dramatists, musi- cians, architects, sculptors, and painters, impatient to ac- quire European reputations. To be sure, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain did not have Europe in mind when they created out of the raw fabric of their own experiences Leaves of Grass, The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Huckleberry Finn, yet even these great authors were subject to the lure of a foreign vogue for their native products, and they all lived to luxuriate in their [ 9 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI^ own homely Americanism. Whitman especially seemed confident of his future influence with the European- minded critics. He was always arrogantly self-conscious in proclaiming that he thundered with the voice of a new continent and of a new evangel. Unquestionably there was in the man a glowing enthusiasm for the human species and a rapturous exaltation about the American social ex- periment. The European-minded critics are certain that Old Walt represents what American art is or should be. They insist that America is not only frank and free and brave, but also vulgar and vain and fond of creating a sen- sation. Now it is true, perhaps, that our American sym- phony calls for a few blaring thrills of brass, but after all, the big bass tuba cannot speak for the whole orchestra. The paintings of J. Alden Weir unconsciously express the reticent, innate idealism which guides and guards the better known materialism of America. It is an injustice to ascribe to the average American an indifference to that grace of spirit which we call refinement. We may be a shirt-sleeves Democracy, but we have our own standards. The attitude of the average American to that indefinable, [ " ] AN APPT{ECIA T/O^ unmistakable something which the old colored servants of the South used to call "quality" — the quality of their masters — curiously corresponds to that indefinable, unmis- takable something in a work of art which artists and critics also call quality, recognizing an air of esthetic aristocracy. In the mind of Alden Weir the refinements of observation and emotion to which he was ever bring- ing his big, genial, whole-hearted tribute seemed to re- quire from him also a technical language of similarly subtle and particularized distinction. He could suddenly become absorbed and fascinated by the momentary effect of a long familiar and unremarkable scene. I remember his picture of the corner of a high pasture, just a bit of sunshine playing along a stone wall and over a well-worn foot-path, and a silvery green tree outspread against a warm blue sky. The design of the picture I discovered later to be original and delightful, but my first pleasure was that of recognition. I seemed to have passed that way many a time, and to have noticed unconsciously just such an effect of light and color. Memories came back to me of walks in the country — of days on a farm. It is [ » ] JULIA^ALDSN WEI\ wonderful that some little songs and apparently casual little landscapes have such power to make the fugitive moods which come and go with the ordinary round of our days and nights almost haunting in their persistence and poignancy. So also with Weir's portraits. He could see distinction in an apparently ordinary model and make us see what he had seen to like and admire. Whether convinced or not, our hearts go out to him for feeling that way about people ; for saying and believing and repeating that homeliness covers but cannot conceal the beauties which are real and endeared by association, and distin- guished not by conventional comeliness but by essential character. Of such a kind was the idealism of Weir, and in spite of the European-minded critics, we know that this chivalry of thought and this idealizing love of fa- miliar things are traits of the fundamental, the original American. His themes were American, his mind was American, his method was American, and he was American heart and soul. Many stories of his patriotism are told. Al- though forty-six years old at the time of the war with [ 12 ] AN APP%ECIA T/OJAC Spain, he volunteered for active military service. I shall never forget the fire in his eyes as he spoke of our na- tional dishonor in the unhappy early years of the World War. Nor will the splendid memory fade of that inclem- ent day when Weir, old and ill and lame, but buoyant, ardent, eager to show his colors, marched with the artists in the Preparedness Parade. It is only natural that Weir's national spirit should have been strong, for the child is father of the man, and Weir's childhood was spent at West Point, where his father, Robert W. Weir, was professor of drawing from 1834 to 1877 in the U. S. Mil- itary Academy. J. Alden Weir was born at the Point, August 30, 1852, one of sixteen children. From all ac- counts Julian was a normal, active, athletic American boy and, needless to say, an imaginative one. I have heard an anecdote told of his childhood which shows his early ini- tiative and enterprise. A friend remembers that one moon- light night he was found with some small companions, half-way up a very tall ladder which the boys had placed against the steep wall of an old barn. Julian explained that they were going to try to get up to the moon which, to [ n ] JULIA^ALDBN WEIT^ their excited eyes, appeared to have landed big and bright right on top of the roof. There was nothing precocious either in his mind or in his talent in these early years. In fact, he showed no exceptional talent in the days when he first tried his hand at drawing, under his father's in- struction, in that old barn back of the house. Nevertheless, the boy's enjoyment of pictures developed rapidly, and he was determined to become an artist. His taste preceded his talent, and he showed very soon that art was his natural language, that the root of the matter, so to speak, was in him. Given this inherent, esthetic instinct, and the pa- tient, self-reliant tenacity of purpose which characterized him from the first, and sooner or later he was certain to succeed. As a newspaper critic once shrewdly suggested — if Weir in his student days had worked in an intimate re- lation with some great artist who had been also a con- genial spirit and who would have helped him to mature his individuality of mind and hand, a master who would have borne the same relation to him that Twachtman bore to Ernest Lawson, he would probably have arrived and [ H ] AN APP%ECIA TTO^i found himself and formed his own peculiarly distinguished style much sooner. The man who almost, though not quite, performed this service for Weir was the Frenchman, Bas- tien-Lepage. Weir went to Paris to study painting in 1873, and was enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts under Ge- rome, the painter of large, historical tableaux which show infinite labor in archeological research and imitative draw- ing. Consequently the pictures young Weir painted during his first year in that studio were "a la Gerome," and that means the antithesis of what he himself was destined to do. Although he never lost his admiration for Gerome as a teacher and was always glad to have had such ground- ing in correct drawing and minute observation as the pupils of this stern old painter could not fail to receive, yet it was not long before the student saw the coldness and hardness of the method of his master, and even before he left the studio, other lights were leading his undecided steps in very different directions. Gerome disapproved violently of Courbet and the Impressionists, yes, even of Millet and Corot, but to his credit be it said, he never interfered with the temperamental predilections of his [ 15 ] JULIAN^ ALDSN WEI^ pupils. He trained them conscientiously and solicitously in their drawing, but when they knew how to draw, he sent them on their separate ways with his warning. In 1873 Weir met for the first time Jules Bastien-Lepage, and subsequently became the intimate friend of this bril- liant young Frenchman who, like so many other artists destined to an early death, matured rapidly and achieved in early youth both a style and a reputation. Bastien at twenty-five seems to have been regarded as a leader, as a cbere maitre by the group of art students who gath- ered around him and were his comrades. Alden Weir was of this group. In the book on Modern French Masters (Century Co., 1896), which presented biographical appreciations by Amer- ican painters, the chapter on Bastien-Lepage was written by Weir. It is full of intimate talk about the subjects which were of supreme interest to the Parisian art stu- dent of his time. Many a pupil of Gerome shared Weir's revolt against the artificiality and the perfunctory elabo- rations turned out with great effort in the name of art for the applause of the populace and for the awards of [ 16 ] AN APPT{ECTA TIO^ the Government. There was a great cry for a return to nature. At Mile. Anna's restaurant, in the particular circle where young Bastien dined with his admirers hung a pic- ture of a French holiday in Spring, which he had given in payment of his account. This picture was decorated by the boys when Bastien failed to win the Prix de Rome with his picture of "The Angel Appearing to the Shep- herds," and not one of the group but felt assured of their wisdom as superior to that of the members of the academic jury who had so stupidly failed to honor themselves in hon- oring their idol. Bastien invited them all to visit him at his home in the village of Damvillers during the fete of the village, and Weir describes the experience with delight in the memory. As he says, "We loved Bastien for his honesty, his truth, and his sincerity," and he always re- tained a good part, if not all, of his boyish enthusiasm for the French realist's art, with its genuine love of nature and human nature, its unaffected simplicity, its kinship of line to Holbein, its popular adaptation of the subjects of Millet and the true values of Manet. I have touched at some length on the atelier of Gerome [ *7 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEIT^ and on the friendship with Bastien because there is some- thing significant in the fact that, unlike so many others who felt the force of Gerome's teaching and the charm of Bastien's friendship, Weir showed no lasting trace of the influence of either man. One of the few subjects upon which Weir often felt impelled in later days to speak with some severity was the tendency of teachers of painting in all periods to impose their own methods upon their pupils, thus encouraging them to become dependent imitators, and preventing the discovery and development of their own individual powers of observation and expression. I remem- ber how proud he was of the success of one of his pupils whose method was in no way suggestive of his own, yet who had thanked him fervently for his instruction and in- spiration, and the insight into his own special qualities without which he would never have attained self-realiza- tion. In his own student days Weir was unconsciously directing his own course and choosing to take to himself only what he would eventually need. As a student Alden Weir painted genre, still life, por- traits, and landscapes, and only his very earliest works, [ *8 ] AN APP^ECIA TZOWi which he destroyed, showed the influence of Gerome. I have seen evidences of his extraordinary versatility in these formative years; a charming head of a young Breton girl, a group of French children burying a dead bird, delicately drawn in a manner suggestive of Boutet de Monvel, a Vollon-like still life, a romantic figure composition with light and shade showing the influence of Italy, finally a bright and rather tight little landscape giving promise with its joyous intimacy of mood of the great landscape poems of later periods. The handsome young American evidently was adaptable, impressionable, responsive to many influences and all of them fine ones. But he had not found himself in those days. He was travelling pleas- ant ways, seeking beauty everywhere, searching for him- self and exerting an unconscious direction over his search, but failing yet to find his own individual expression. In 1876 he went to Spain, and thenceforth Velasquez became his God of painting. It was only after seeing Velas- quez that Weir really caught up with the advances made in his own time by such men as Whistler, Fantin, and Manet. Returning to the United States in 1877, he spent t *9 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI\ the next two years in New York in a sumptuously deco- rated studio in the Benedict Building. It was then that he painted "The Muse of Music," a very handsome and well- painted canvas in the grand manner, formal and not en- tirely sincere, for the grand manner did not come natu- rally to Weir, who was always what the French call an "Intimist." In 1880 Weir won a medal in the Salon and went with Bastien to Belgium. In the summer of 1881 he went to Holland with his brother, John F. Weir, and John H. Twachtman. This was the beginning of the intimate friend- ship of Weir and Twachtman. From all accounts it was a delightful summer, and Weir grew to reverence Rem- brandt for tone and poetry and Franz Hals for his bold mastery of medium, and as never before to love land- scape motifs, the immense skies of Holland with their ever changing and never failing fascination of light. In 1883 Weir was again in Paris, and on this trip he was chiefly interested in the Impressionists, becoming so con- vinced of their importance that he purchased many of their works for Mr. Erwin Davis, who had commissioned [ 20 ] AN APP%ECIA TZOWi the young American painter to buy for him some repre- sentative examples by the contemporary Frenchmen, rely- ing upon his taste and his already celebrated eye for true quality in works of art. Fortunately, through Weir's in- fluence, the "Jean d'Arc" by Bastien and the "Woman with Parrot" and "Boy with Sword" by Manet passed from the Davis collection to the Metropolitan Museum, where they are monuments to the wisdom of Weir, and where they have exerted a powerful influence in the de- velopment of American art. By this time Weir's taste was formed. It remained for him, however, to work out his own artistic destiny and save himself from the quick- sands of eclecticism. It is said that when Weir came back from Paris in 1877 he was in appearance, in taste, and in manner a charming Parisian. Although the years abroad had been for him a period of great inspiration and enjoyment, and although Europe had given him his education as an art- ist, yet he never seems to have even seriously consid- ered the idea of living outside of his own country and, after his return in 1883, he married and settled down [ 21 ] JULIAN^ ALDSN WEI%^ on a farm in Connecticut, exhibiting pictures with regu- larity in New York and Boston and becoming the most American of Americans. He made hosts of friends with his enchanting smile and his genial sportsmanship. One knew that under the surface there was rugged manliness which could be aggressive, but one knew also of the kindness and tenderness of the man and his high ideal for art and conduct. He was soon elected a member of the Tile Club, which included among many of New York's most repre- sentative men in the various arts, William M. Chase, Frank D. Millet, Edwin A. Abbey, F. Hopkinson Smith, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. During this period his style was still in the process of being formed through the knowledge gained by constant experiment. He knew what he wanted to say. The American portraits and land- scapes which he wished to paint were already in his mind's eye, but at the exhibitions during the 8o's Weir was rep- resented by pictures which won the praise of the more discerning critics for their quality rather than for their originality. He revealed what he had learned in Europe, and his aim seemed to be, what with Chase it always was, [ " ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^ to show America la bonne peinture^ the intrinsic beauty of surface obtainable in oil painting which ought to be cherished for its own sake. It was what America needed at the time, this emphasis of the young men upon art for art's sake, this insistence that in art, subject, however pre- tentious, is of no consequence without style which may dignify the slightest subject. Weir's still life of this period is as distinguished as that of Vollon and superior to what Chase and Emil Carlsen were doing then. Collectors are proud to-day if they have kept the luscious paint- ings of roses arbitrarily relieved against dark backgrounds, which they probably acquired without due appreciation of their historical importance. These things possess so delicious and unctuous a pigment, so charmingly render- ing their subjects with especial regard to richness of tone and texture, that they would make Weir sure of a repu- tation as a painter's painter even if he had not gone on to greater achievements. While America was learning to recognize "quality" in painting through just such mas- terly works as these by Weir, the young painter himself was experimenting with new methods, new ideas, and a [ 23 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI\ new palette. The portraits which he exhibited at this time indicate the chosen direction of his progress, but they were considered, and correctly so, inferior to his still life. They showed his desire to emulate the wonderful dull blacks of Franz Hals and Manet, and their even more wonderful flesh tones kept gray and flat by a diffusion of enveloping atmosphere rather than accented and modelled in arbitrary light and shade. But Weir missed the magic of these secrets known only to Hals and Manet, and to- day his early portraits seem rather dull and austere. The turning-point in Weir's artistic life came in 189 1, when at the Blakeslee Galleries he showed for the first time a collection of landscapes in high key of color and with the transparent shadows of the French Luminarists. A second important landmark was the exhibition at the American Art Galleries in 1893 of works by Weir and Twachtman, together with pictures by Monet and Bes- nard, which were included for purposes of explanation. The newspaper critics, who had considerable influence at that time, applauded the celebrated Frenchmen so that their pictures were acquired by a few daring collectors, [ 2 + ] AN APP%ECIA T/OJ^ but these same critics lacked the courage to recommend the American disciples whose more conservative pictures failed to find many who were bold enough to either pur- chase or praise. Monet was purchased as a curiosity be- cause of his foreign vogue. Twachtman, even more of a curiosity than Monet in his method, was utterly incom- prehensible and, being an American, negligible. It must be remembered that during this period Americans were so much obsessed by foreign paintings that they were inclined to be dubious whether any art, good or at least original, could come out of their own country. Weir was fond of telling a story about one of the few sales recorded at this exhibition. A certain collector over whom Weir had an influence, but whose admiration for Weir's work did not extend to Twachtman, was finally persuaded to buy one of Twachtman's landscapes which Weir had pronounced great and worth its weight in gold. Weir would not consent to sell this collector a picture of his unless he also bought an example of the art of his friend, whose work he insisted was finer than his own. The result was that Weir selected a picture for the collection, and the [ 2 s 3 JUL/A^ALDSN WEI^ collector condescended to humor him and acquired it. Proud of his purchases and glad to appear to the two artists as a daring patron of their adventurous method, the collector invited both artists to his house to dinner. Weir arrived late and found Twachtman ill at ease and dejected. At the first opportunity he inquired the cause. "My God," growled Twachtman, " have n't you noticed? They have hung my picture upside down." Weir and Twachtman had become zealous converts to this new style of painting; the application to canvas of broken colors which, by the demonstrations of Monet, had been proved capable of recombination, not by mixture on the palette but by juxtaposition, fresh from the tubes, so as to give a closer suggestion of light. Both had promptly set to work to study the great Out of Doors with new eyes. While still painting and exhibiting tonal pictures of most discreet conservatism, Weir and Twachtman were preparing to apply Monet's method to American subjects, and to carry it on with modifications which would make it more adaptable to individuality of expression and more amenable to beauty. No one else, perhaps not even the [ 26 ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^ artists themselves, realized the importance of the steps they were taking. These American pupils were to surpass their French masters by making their method more flexible and more spiritual, while retaining all the truth and all the vitality. But the first experiments were not impressive. In fact, Weir's earliest effects of sunshine were often weak, suggesting a sun trying to come out of a fog. The tonal harmonies were charming, however. The soft colors sug- gested to the contemporary critics the qualities of pastel. Weir had won a reputation as an accomplished painter of still life, so the critics were on their guard against any hasty accusations of incompetence. But people said — yes, even some artists who should have known better — "Too bad; another good man gone wrong," and the critics damned with faint praise, and only one or two seemed to realize the tremendous importance of this forward march by two gallant spirits not content to stand still. A little later Childe Hassam and Theodore Robinson came back from France with sparkling rainbow palettes and began to paint with a greater facility in the new style, an earlier attainment of their full powers than the early efforts of [ 27 ] JULIA^ ALD8N WE 77^ Weir and even of Twachtman. But the two great Ameri- can painters of spiritualized naturalism proceeded on their own way, showing the results of their study of Monet, but unlike Hassam, their intention to depart from his method and to adapt it to their own ends. What matters it now that those early landscapes of Weir were loose without much strength, transparent in the shadows but without much light ? The important fact is that they were great art in the making. And they intrigue us ! We are conscious of something very personal and somehow very original trying to get itself said in a language not yet entirely familiar. Occasionally there is a wonderful work of art full of a touch- ing poetry and of vividly remembered atmosphere ; of im- pressions absorbed in moments of sensitive response and transferred to canvas with an art which seems, as yet, more a matter of lucky inspiration than of confident mastery of method. I have a small landscape of about this time, a country lane in Spring with a glad sun shining and a hint of bird- song in the sweet, still air. There are radiant pinks and tender greens, an endearing touch, a lyric charm. Usually [ 28 ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^i the sun in the early Weir landscapes did not shine so well. But they are invariably full of dimly lighted or partially shadowed places which are marvels of tone. It certainly is not difficult for us now to see the great Weir emerging out of these lovely pictures which in their day were accounted failures. Some critics had faith in them. Clarence Cook wrote in 1891, "Weir sees as the Venetians and Velasquez rather than as Raphael, Diirer, and Ingres, with their hard, precise, and analytic eyes. And these new works show no violent change. They are the logical outcome of Weir's artistic tendency since his return from Europe. Only the has changed. The man is on his way." Here at least was one critic who saw that Weir was approaching, if in- deed he had not already arrived at, that starting-point of all the art that is truly great — when the method is discovered, and occasionally the scope and aim of it realized, whereby one's own innermost individual Something may be given to the world to add to the sum of the world's treasure. [ 2 9 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEIT^ II SO, after ten years of experiment and cultivation, the art of J. Alden Weir came at last to fruition. He was destined to say in his chosen way something that needed to be said about his native land, and to say it more exqui- sitely, with greater delicacy of feeling and distinction of style, than lay within the powers of any other American. The large, formal figure compositions, the still life, rich in texture and very personal, the sombre, solid portraits, and such masterly landscapes, in the manner of Barbizon, as "The Old Connecticut Farm," were only practice for the ultimate themes. When he had thoroughly mastered his craft and learned from experience and won for himself a hearing and established a reputation, he then delib- erately turned his back on everything he had done," dis- regarding the material success which could have been his for the asking had he continued along more traditional lines, and broke ground in untilled fields. Chalky, per- haps, and a little weak, the earliest landscapes in high key, yet they were eloquent nevertheless of the great American [ 30 ] AN APP7{BC/A T/OWi painter who had finally found himself and who could be counted upon for an ever increasing mastery of his method and for works of the most personal, inimitable artistry and the most sensitive and beautiful emotions. Having discov- ered and attained to his own predestined style, his work became, for the first time, the spontaneous natural expres- sion of his own life and character. Thereafter his pictures form links of record of a rare personality devoted with single-hearted sincerity to the expression of the simplici- ties of life, the finer every-day experiences of which are revealed only to spirits of singular sweetness. The rare in- timacy of the pictures of Weir, their true delight in little things and familiar surroundings, their wholesome joy in life's untroubled hours of serenity and health and genuine contentment, remind me of Chardin, the difference being that the Frenchman's special pleasure was in the domestic interior, whereas Weir's was out of doors, on the farm, in the fields and woods, and at the hospitable hearth only after nightfall. But both men wrote in terms of exquisite tone, color, and atmosphere their appreciation of the quiet joys of just being alive from day to day, with a chance to observe [ 31 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI\ how lovely things really are if we know how to see. Ve- lasquez had taught him how to see, how to find the ele- ments of beauty anywhere and to make for himself, by means of exquisite craftsmanship, true patterns of form and line and texture, and of colors harmonized in light and air; a world of enchanting realities. It is, however, of Chardin's sensitively chosen scale of values, particularly his gamut of lovely grays and tawny tones, that Weir's palette reminds me; of Chardin in the portraits and still life and of Corot in the landscapes. Chardin, Corot, and Weir, they all had an intimacy of spirit which makes their art particu- larly ingratiating. For them art became a part of their own lives and their way of conveying to others their satisfaction in life. From the time when Weir first began to exhibit his paintings in the new method there is no better way of knowing his life than through his art. Very personal also are the landscapes which Weir painted on his own farms. He spent six or seven months of each year in Connecticut, where he owned two country places, and where he hunted and fished in season. He would spend alternate summers at Windham and Branchville. The place [ 32 ] AN APP%ECIA T/OWi at Windham is an estate of three hundred and fifty acres, and has been in Mrs. Weir's family for one hundred and fifty years. A ball in honor of Lafayette was once given in this house. Each generation of Mrs. Weir's family has added to the original structure, until now it is large and rambling and full of quaint charm. There are ancient forest trees round about, which many of us know in the landscapes not only of Weir, but of his friend, Emil Carlsen, who lived nearby for many summers. The other place at Branchville is of two hundred acres, heavily forested with fine old timber. The old house has an immense living-room with an old oak floor, and its windows are quaint Dutch ones which Weir brought from Holland. Once, when a party of friends joined Weir for a week of fishing in the spring, three cords of wood were burned in two days in the two vast fireplaces at oppo- site ends of this room. Six-foot logs are offered up, and the sacrificial blaze is a roaring one. It is pleasant to think of Weir's handsome, silvered head in the firelight, his eyes merry with anecdote or softened with sentiment. He was a delightful story teller and a great listener to the stories of others. His big laugh was of a kind that warmed the heart. [ 33 ] JUL/A^ALDSN WEI\ His mind was alert and active, keen and shrewd in criti- cism, yet generous and tolerant, the mind of a big man. He loved animals, especially dogs. It would be hard to find pic- tures more intimate in their charm than the water colors he painted of his own hunting dogs asleep around his hearth after a hard day in the woods. Fishing was a passion with Weir. Recently I was looking over his scrap-books, and most of the press clippings were not about art at all, but about "The Elusive Trout," "Beguiling the Tom Cod," "The Sensitive Salmon." It may seem rather surpris- ing that among his landscapes we find few records of the sport he loved so well; no pictures of little rivers where he waded hip high, or of shadowy pools into which he dropped his tempting flies ! Evidently he felt that art had no more to do with sport than with politics and business. It was his life work to search for beauty and then to express it. Sport was his relaxation, into which he could plunge with whole-hearted gusto, leaving art behind. There are two pictures entitled "The Fishing Party," both very lovely landscapes with figures enveloped in silvery sun- shine, but they are for connoisseurs of rare beauty — not [ 34 ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^ for sportsmen. He was fond of telling stories, but not on canvas. I do not remember a single story-telling picture from his hand. One of the most charming and one of the most com- pletely representative of Weir's paintings is "The Donkey Ride," showing his daughters, Dorothy and Cora, when they were little girls, mounted on dainty and demure gray donkeys against a beautiful background of hillside and summer sky. From a decorative standpoint this picture is a thing of extraordinary loveliness. There is no modelling and no atmosphere, for everything has been deliberately kept flat to convey the joy of a mellow old tapestry. The well- worn leather of the old saddle and the rough hair of the donkey are realistic in effect and tempt us to touch them, so wonderful is the " vraisemblance," but these textures are lovely for their own sake and, although each bit suggests vividly the character of what it represents, yet there is an abstract beauty which ties every part together. Charming of course as a poem on all happy American childhood in the country, yet this picture is chiefly valuable perhaps be- cause of its design, which is as fine as those by " old mas- [ 35 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI\ ters" of the Far East or of the eighteenth century, when Japanesque caprice rather than classic convention ruled. Often, by the way, we are reminded of the spirit of the eighteenth century in England. As Royal Cortissoz has observed, " There is the old English flavour of those win- some color prints, 'The Cries of London,' in such a pic- ture as 'The Flower Girl' — a canvas which cheers and charms us like a quaint and ever refreshing song of long ago." Scarcely less adorable than "The Donkey Ride" is the other donkey picture entitled "Visiting Neighbors," repre- senting Cora Weir tying her donkey to a garden gate at about noontime of a summer's day. Whereas "The Donkey Ride" was not only a donkey ride but a decoration, this picture is first and last just a vivid glimpse of the real world at Branchville, Connecticut, and of a little girl who had a good time with that particular donkey, and who used to tie it to that particular rustic fence which her daddy had noticed took on just that grayish violet tone at that hour of the sunflecked green midday. The quivering joyous languor of the hour is conveyed in the artist's most mas- [ 36 ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^ terly manner. The tree trunks are rough and beautifully true, the texture of the bark suggested in striated brush strokes of violet and brown. The drowsy gray donkey and the little girl are immersed in sun and air. As the little girl would say, "It's the good old summer time." There is a monotony of content everywhere. How it stills the soul to feel a little breeze in one's hair, to stretch one's body till it thrills, to play with children and animals, to be a child again and follow the lure of one's own caprice in the great outdoors! Richard Hovey, poet of comradeship and the open sky, has put the mood into living language: "O good, damp, smell of the ground, O rough, sweet, bark of the trees, O clear, sharp, cracklings of sound, life that 's a thrill and abound With the vigor of boyhood and morning And the noon-time' 's rapture of ease! Was there ever a weary heart in the world, A lag in the body's urge Or a flag to the spirit's wings ? Did a mans heart ever break For a lost hope's sake? For here there 's such lilt in the quiet And such calm in the quiver of things'* [ 37 ] JUL/AJ^ ALD8N WEI\ Back of the old farm-house at Branchville is the rocky hillside which Alden Weir has immortalized in that epic picture of the American farmer amid soil and sky entitled, "Plowing for Buckwheat." Weir did not want us to think that the frame for this picture would contain all that was worth transcribing. He wished us to understand that his viewpoint was more or less unstudied, that what he painted was a hastily selected part of the big world of cloud-shine and old trees and fallow, fertile fields which stretched im- measurably above and beyond the borders of his canvas. This largeness of nature worship and this unconscious function he performed of painting American epic poetry accounts for what has been called a carelessness on Weir's part in composing his landscapes. We have seen that in "The Donkey Ride" he could satisfy those who require a pattern in a picture, but the essential Weir was more concerned with expressing the big though simple emotions which nature gave him, than with the patterns which could be arranged out of her raw materials. If you are a lover of open American hill country, not the culminating majesty of mountain peaks, nor the perfection of paradise valleys, [ 38 ] AN APPT{ECIA T/OJVi but just nice livable, lovable farm land, neither too opulent nor too austere, then you will enjoy yourself in the land- scapes of Weir. The season is usually summer, the hour morning or approaching noon, with overhead light in a pale sky. In the "Plowing for Buckwheat" great, billowy clouds are crisply accented against the azure in silvered brilliancy. A drowsy heat pervades the air. It feels good to drop down on some sweet-smelling hay under a friendly tree and look up. An imperceptible breeze stirs the upper branches. The distant woods are mellowed by travelling shadows. It is pleasant to watch the slow, brown oxen, the sunbaked hillside, and the farmer who turns from his plow with a friendly "how-d' do." In "The Fishing Party," the sun under which we stand seems to silver the ferny fore- ground, the sky so subtly modulated in key from the hori- zon up, and the distant woods beyond the open fields. Across a little bridge pass the white-clad figures of friends going a-fishing. If only one could hear the hum of insect life and of incidental, unimportant human voices, the sen- sation of any sunny summer day on a farm would be com- plete. And Weir was no more true in recording day than [ 39 ] JUL/A^ALDSN WEIT^ in remembering night. He fascinates with the exact effect of a spooky darkness as fitfully glimpsed in the flare of a rusty old lantern. In painting people instead of places, it is fascinating to see Weir's mind concerned with different problems and expressing beauty and character with a technical method of combed lines and varied surfaces for conveying a sense of flesh and fabric under diffused light, which is perhaps even more individual and distinctive than the short stroke, the embroidering touch employed so wonderfully for the landscapes. In the many paintings in oil and water color celebrating the charm of children, one is led to believe that Weir's genius was never more inspired than in the interpretation of childhood. Who can forget the sweet and demure little girl whose kitten slumbers in her gently folded arms? This picture deserves to rank among the great por- traits of children. Even Sargent's "Beatrice and the Bird Cage" is not more beautiful than the "Little Lizzie Lynch" of Weir. Sargent became tender and reverent in painting children, but when they grew up he saw them in his worldly way, wisely and without sentiment. Weir's human- [ 4° ] AN APPT{ECIA T/O^ ity did not stop with children. His imagination was deeply moved by the old-fashioned American girl as he loved to think of her, in her sensitive, radiant youth, full of her sweet contradictions, free and frank and fine of body and soul, the comrade and playmate of man, yet more puritan than pagan, with an inarticulate reserve coming up at the first hint of sentiment, to conceal depths of dear, mysteri- ous, feminine emotion. All this we seem to know about Weir's young American woman without, of course, ever stopping to analyze her, which would be destructive of the charm the artist makes us feel in her presence. Weir was the inspired interpreter of a chosen American type that is marked by a penetrating sort of refinement which he rev- erenced and to which he could impart a charm through the chivalric graciousness and the hellenic joyousness of his own mind. This refinement which he saw and sought to express was not at all a matter of class or race, although the New England woman of old Anglo-Saxon lineage was a favorite theme. In the portrait of Miss de L. at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, we feel Weir's interest and respect for a type which might be called middle class [ 4* ] JULIAN ALD8N WEFE^ European. We rather think that she is a Jewess of European parentage. Perhaps she is a dressmaker or manages a small shop. She has been good looking, but years of drudgery and disappointment have exacted their toll. She is a brave woman. So it is always with the types chosen by Weir. He sets us wondering about them. The men also are in- terpreted with profound sympathy and understanding, their physical beings so suggested that we feel their living pres- ence in the pigments. The portrait of his brother, Colonel Weir, is a masterpiece and, as the subject requires, is rug- gedly painted in a style which would have done injustice to his gentler sitters. And the portrait of the great poet- painter, Ryder — what a noble head! We know that this man is a genius, and that he lives in a world of his own invention. Weir was Ryder's guardian angel. Some day there will be a tale to tell, a revelation of all that the great- hearted Weir was to poor Ryder, and it will be the basis for a most beautiful legend. No two men could have been more different. There was never anything literary or mys- tical about Weir, and yet he understood Ryder's poet soul, and in his portrait we share his reverence for the superb [ + 2 ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^i intellect and greatness which animated the lonely dreamer whose eccentric personality and shabby appearance might have attracted mere curiosity and pity from the casual observer. Perhaps the finest of Weir's many interpretations of feminine character is "The Gentlewoman " of the National Gallery in Washington — a person of rather austere intel- lectual type, one might assume at first glance; yet soon enough we recognize that she is really a gentle, gray lady whose meditations are sound and sweet. It is delightful to remember her, the simple lines and colors of her dress, the unobtrusive dignity of her hands, the smouldering light in her downcast eyes, as of spent moments and bright memo- ries. With infinite sympathy and admiration her youth has been revealed in the very embarrassment of taking leave of her for always. Yet we see that the art of living is ever at her command, and that the years will add to her exquisite distinction. Hers is a personality before which we stand uncovered, introduced by a very courteous gentleman who knows her worth, and whose praise is as fine a tribute to Woman as ever an age of chivalry could boast. The man [ 43 ] JULIA^ ALD8N WEI\ who created this portrait was not merely an accomplished painter; he was a great artist and inspired by a great ideal. If "The Gentlewoman" is Weir's masterpiece in the idealized naturalism of his figure paintings, the " Pan and the Wolf" may be chosen (it was his own choice) as his most important landscape. Certainly it is the most im- pressive, because of its classic grandeur of design. The artist seems to have said to himself, " Now, suppose I try a classic landscape as Corot would have painted had he lived a little longer." And so — there is the same glamour of twilight on the edge of a wood, of color lingering in the western sky, of the illusions that linger in a green glade silvered in dew-drenched dimness, of antique figures in a dreamy dusk. But now there is added pale air that trembles, transparent shadows on the rocks and jewelled gleams woven through the mystery of dark and light to make the memory of oncoming night not only more beautiful, but more true. To challenge comparison with Corot was a dar- ing thing to do, yet the comparison was inevitable, nor does Weir suffer by it. The Frenchman may have been the greater master of design and the more perfect painter, but [ 4+ ] AN APP^ECIA T/O^C he confined himself to a much narrower range. Weir was incapable of repeating the "Pan and the Wolf" as Corot repeated over and over his dance of dryads, or of Italian- ized shepherds in sylvan settings, where every tree is in its proper place. The two men were most alike, and most spon- taneous and delightful, when they were content to repre- sent the familiar scenes they lived in and learned to love. Corot pleases me most in his bright little paymges inti- mes of sunny country roads and his well-loved lake near Ville d'Avray. It seems to me that it is not the Weir of the "Pan and the Wolf," but of such landscapes as "The Old Connecticut Farm," the "High Pasture," the "Visit- ing Neighbors," "The Fishing Party," the "Plowing for Buckwheat," "The Spreading Oak," the "Birches at Windham," the "Building a Dam," "The Hunter's Moon," the "Afternoon by the Pond," and the "Wood- land Rocks," who will live forever as the poet-painter who sang the song of spring and summer and autumn in the American countryside, the song of American sunshine, of sweet American breezes rippling through summer leafage, the song of American skies, and of New England fields, for [ 45 ] JUL/A^ALDSN WEI\ all their stones, and of friendly woods, not in spite of but because of their slender second growth. Weir loved nature too much in particular places to alter the aspect of his familiar world. If an ideal loveliness is in his landscapes, it is the idealism again of the man's own nature expressing its joy in reality through a magic of beautiful painting. Weir's wonderful versatility and courage for new ex- periments, the adventurous spirit of the man, continued into his old age, and it is a joy to record that, in many ways, his latest pictures are his best. There seemed to be an ever increasing mastery in his method of solving each problem. Never before had he been more certain to achieve beauty of texture and solidity of form, evanescence of light and concealment of labor. The "Knitting" of 19 18 has exquisite transitions of light and the most enchanting tones. The modelling achieves on a flat surface and with- out apparent effort a perfect realization of weight as well as of form. The drawing is profoundly sensitive and express- ive of the subject, a wholesome American girl day-dreaming as she knits her helmet of gray wool for the boy who will fight for her rather more than for Democracy. In spite of [ 46 ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^C fatal illness and failing strength, J. Alden Weir, in this affectionate tribute to the American woman in the war, did his bit with all his accustomed genius, nobility, and charm. On the 8th of December, 19 19, Weir died of heart fail- ure after a protracted illness, through which he had been inexhaustibly cheerful, patient, and productive. He will always symbolize for me in his life and express for me in his art the wholesome sagacity of choice, the nervous com- plexity of purpose, the high unformulated ideals, the virile simplicity of soul of our own United States. [ 47 ] WEI\ Tf/6 TAINTE\ By Emil Car/sen JULIAN Alden Weir's noble simplicity, generosity, and lovable personality lives in his every picture. As the man was, so are his works. He saw beauty and truth in nature, and with his fine temperament and his accumulated sci- ence he knew how to translate this beauty as few painters before his time. His art stands alone, and is perfect of its kind. To paint a study of a young girl with a book or a fan, or a musical instrument, telling no story, to paint a simple landscape of a few trees against a hillside, and to make from such simple motives a great work was Weir's mission in modern American art. Weir painted portraits, none better — painted with a full brush, rich and mellow in tone, with fine distinction. The National Academy of Design owns his portrait of Al- bert Ryder, a splendid canvas. Not only is it an excellent character study of Weir's friend, sincere and living, it // Ryder, the dreamer, the poet, the artist. Sound in tech- nique, powerful in quiet color, without affectation, without mannerism, this canvas is a masterpiece. [ +9 ] JUL/A^ ALD8N WEI^ To explain what makes this work so great, what there is in Weir's picture that holds a lover of fine painting spellbound, is difficult. To analyze a picture by Vermeer, by Metsu, by any of the Dutch wizards of painting, is an easier task. Those masters' workmanship is unassailable, perfect, no such painting, as mere painting, has since been done. Their knowledge covered everything that could be learned, every object, in or out of doors, was enveloped in its atmosphere, values were superbly understood, which means that the local color contained in shadow and light was justly observed and rendered, a science many schools have not understood, or have ignored, their painting suffering for this omission. Add to this knowledge — the A B C of Dutch painting — fine color, fine expression of light, chia- roscuro, tonal beauty, and you have a picture of quality. Weir's painting is also learned, and not unlike Dutch painting in its fine atmospheric quality, its just observation of values, its exquisite harmony. He is an excellent draughts- man, spaces well, colors well, and knows better than any one how to eliminate all superfluities for the ultimate en- semble. To him strong contrast is not needed in his trans- [ 50 ] AN APP^ECIA T/O^i lation, so, although all facts are based on nature, painted out of doors and thoroughly studied, studied with the keen- est of observation, those facts are put on the canvas in a gamut according to the will of the painter. Lights are sub- dued, shadows kept in hand, never very dark, still full of local color — the picture always a whole, simple impression. Don't draw too much, is Weir's motto; don't color too much, the color must be felt, not seen — so the drawing. A Weir landscape or figure composition is simplicity itself, but painted with consummate knowledge, with a "fat," solid technique, power and delicacy combined, the plainest of method, still full of mystery — not the mystery of Ryder, nor the poetry, maybe, of Twachtman, but of a mysterious quality entirely its own, a subtle individuality of an exceed- ingly fine temperament. This Weir quality is his highest achievement, is felt in all his work, in portrait, figure, landscape, or still life. Who, in American art, or in any art, has painted roses like Weir? The first painting by Weir I ever saw was a small picture of tea-roses, a few inches square, quite sketchy, an under- standing of how blossoms should be painted, a revelation. [ 5* ] JULIAN^ ALDSN WEIT^ Before this revelation I, as a student, had tried to under- stand the mastery of Dutch art, also of Chardin's art,— here was something finer, more exquisite, nature seen through a nobler temperament. And so forever since, every new picture has brought a new delight. On the walls of exhibitions a picture by Weir would dominate by its choice charm, its fine impression, would carry across the gallery, would be just as delightful after intimate study, would gain on acquaintance — to the stu- dent a great lesson, to the lover of fine painting a joy. The list of Weir's paintings, drawings, and etchings is a long one, and from the charming little head of a French peasant girl until his last landscape, a list of work well seen and splendidly rendered. " The Hunter's Moon," the two "Nocturnes" painted from his Park Avenue studio, "Pan and the Wolf," "The Gentlewoman," "Little Lizzie Lynch," "The Fishing Party," "The Donkey Ride," to name a few of his great pictures, are pictures which, once seen, will stay forever in one's mind, pictures to live with for all time, when so many, many paintings are utterly forgotten. [ 5* ] wsn^ By Royal Cortissoz THE important thing about Weir was his singular- ity, his occupancy of a place apart. For years it has been interesting to observe the manner in which this was recognized. His name was literally one to conjure with, and it figured, therefore, with a peculiar salience in con- versation. In exhibition catalogues, biographical diction- aries, and other works of reference he was recorded as J. Alden Weir. His closest intimates called him Julian. To frequenters of the world of art at large, and amongst his admiring coevals and juniors, he was known simply as Weir. The brevity of the designation implied not famil- iarity but respect. His status was that of an artist who by superior gifts is naturally detached from the rank and file of his profession — the status of a La Farge or a Whistler, an Inness or a Sargent. But in Weir's case the significance of the tribute paid him by his contemporaries requires a rather special interpretation. That fine status of his, fixed long ago, was based on none of the traits which ordinarily exalt a painter. He was not a puissant colorist and designer C S3 ] JULIA ^ ALD8N WEIT^ like La Farge. His originality never asserted itself as Whistler's did. Sargent's self-confident virtuosity was a thing of which he knew nothing. Weir had disciples, but he would have laughed at the idea of posing as a chef d 9 eco/e. In the whole range of his work — and he was a pro- lific artist, having into the bargain a marked versatility — it is doubtful if there could be found a single picture of the sort that is commonly called "great." On the other hand, he produced many pictures that were purely beau- tiful. It was through them that he won his high repute, through them and the personality behind them. Where he was concerned, admiration for the artist was always accompanied by affection for the man. It is incon- ceivable that he ever could have had any enemies. The jealousies which sometimes follow upon such success as his must have died of their own meanness in the atmosphere of his presence. He was generous in his appreciation of others, helpful to the younger men who turned to him for counsel, and a staunch friend. He had an endearing laugh, the kind of chuckle that belongs only to a sweet nature. Perhaps, too, there was something in the sheer beauty of [ 5+ ] AN APPT{ECIA T/O^ his physiognomy which helped to make him winning. The phrase is rarely applicable to a man, but one has only to look at the bronze bust of him by Olin Warner in the Metropolitan Museum to see that it is apposite. In his prime, when that bust was modelled, Weir had the radiant aspect which legend associates with the young Athenian athletes of antiquity. His profile was like that which is sometimes encountered on a Greek coin — only there was nothing austere about it. He was one of the sunniest, most human of creatures, a jolly figure in the old days of the Tile Club, an ardent fisherman, altogether a type of warm and friendly ways, an ingenuous lover of nature and of his fellow men. If he was a fastidious chooser of comrades, it was also characteristic of him to give his heart with both hands when he gave it at all. But what is it that meant such a loss to American art when he died? It is the thing that so early in his career led to his being called just "Weir" — his ardor for beauty, his lofty standard, his energy in the quest for whatever was fine in art, and the impression he unconsciously con- veyed that this quest was somehow, with him, a matter of C 55 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEIT^ divine election. The stamp of something like genius was upon him. He lived, I repeat, in a place apart, his proceed- ings seeming always to have a certain lofty sanction. He recognized by instinct the perfect work of art. There are some delightful stories of his European experiences, which were those of a modest artist placed by collectors who were his friends in a position to rub Aladdin's lamp when he peered into a likely corner. He it was who bought for Erwin Davis the " Jean d'Arc," by Bastien-Lepage, which Mr. Davis gave to the Metropolitan, and, if I am not mistaken, it was to him that the same collector was indebted for one or both of the two Manets which he gave to the Museum, the "Boy with Sword" and the " Woman with Parrot." It all happened thirty years ago and more — the Davis gifts were made in 1889 — but there stays in the mind a delec- table anecdote of Weir suddenly invading Manet's studio, of his pouncing upon the pictures, and of the Frenchman's grateful astonishment. Possibly it is apocryphal. That does not matter. The tale is thoroughly in keeping with Weir's faculty for wise, disinterested transactions. There is another story of his buying at Agnew's the [ 56 ] AN APP%ECIA TION^ magnificent " Portrait of a Man," by Rembrandt (the por- trait of a young sitter, in high hat and large flat collar), which is in the Marquand collection at the Metropolitan. Weir was going abroad, and, so the story runs, Mr. Mar- quand asked him to keep his eyes open for anything that struck him as superlatively good. He saw the Rembrandt in London and, though it cost $25,000, he bought it on the spot, cabling the good news over. While he was waiting for a reply, the dealers surprised him by offering to buy the picture back at an advance of $10,000. Weir smiled his enchanting smile and brought the Rembrandt home. Doubtless there are other incidents of a similar nature which might be chronicled. There must have been numerous amateurs who were only too glad to lean upon his taste. For his taste was impeccable. It made him a tower of strength for his fellow craftsmen. When the Society of American Artists came into being, in the late 7o's, Weir was one of the founders as a matter of course. Equally was it a matter of course that he should have served for a year or two, not so very long ago, as President of the National Academy of Design; that he should have been a member of the [ 57 ] JULIAN^ ALDSN WEFB^ Federal Commission of Fine Arts; that, in a word, he should always have played his part in matters of artistic organization. Was he not generous as well as wise, an artist who labored not only for himself but for the good of his period ? His liberality of feeling extended, too, well beyond the boundaries of that artistic domain in which he was most at home. He contributed to the celebrated " Armory Show," which the Association of American Painters and Sculptors organized in 19 13. All the catalogues of the ex- hibitions made by the Society of Independent Artists are not at hand, but in the one for 19 19, at all events, he is recorded as a member. In my memories of the last twenty- five or thirty years, he has some association with every progressive episode I can recall. Weir labored with a will for others. The labor that he did for himself was, in a sense, the hardest of all. That is to say, his painting was not by any means the fruit of swift, facile craftsmanship, and to reckon him amongst the pampered children of the gods would be to miss the true secret of his genius. All that he accomplished was the outcome of a peculiarly strenuous devotion. He did not [ 58 ] AN APP'RECIA TION^ inherit his artistic fortunes. He conquered them. An old letter to me contains a passage eloquent of his point of view. " It may be indiscreet," he says, "to admit that I have never drawn or painted a canvas but that it has fallen discourag- ingly short of what I tried for." There is nothing indis- creet, and I have no compunction, in citing so noble an admission. It points to the very heart of Weir's character as an artist, the positively sacred zeal with which he sought after perfection, the loftiness and inflexibility of his stand- ard. It is odd to reflect that when he went as a young man to Paris, he received his training under the guidance of Gerome. But he foregathered in the atelier of that bleak disciplinarian with such men as Bastien-Lepage, Helleu, and Dagnan-Bouveret. Like them he had the power to de- viate from the formulae of his master. He did so at the time, but not so far as to make himself unacceptable to the Salon. In the "Idle Hours," which was presented by "several gentlemen" to the Metropolitan in 1888, the year in which it was painted, we perceive clearly enough that for a con- siderable period after his return from Paris Weir was still under the rather repressive influence of that city's modern C 59 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEIT^ tradition, still content with its famous gray light. Nor is it a remarkable picture. But it is a good one, and the distinc- tion, as I have already noted, is always cropping out in the annals of Weir. No painter perpetually strikes twelve. Even the greatest masters have their moments which are less feli- citous than others. Weir was not always on the heights. Wherever he was, he captured that elusive element which criticism recognizes as "quality." Weir's Parisian habit, in which "quality" was obscured beneath the mechanics of picture-making, lasted into the 9o's. But all the time he had been mulling over the im- pressionistic hypothesis, experimenting with problems of light. Then he took the plunge. Instead of the rich, some- times u fat" tone which had distinguished his paintings, especially his lovely pictures of flowers and still life, there appeared in his landscapes an air which was not of the studio, but which seemed to blow straight from out of doors. I can well remember his excitement over the change he was making. It was as though he had come into pos- session of a new heaven and a new earth. I can remember also that his touch in this phase at first lacked certainty. [ 60 ] AN APP%ECIA T/OJ^ The earliest of the distinctly impressionistic landscapes that he showed recur to me as forming a curiously uneven ex- hibition. They had vitality, yet they did not quite arrive. The general effect was a little thin. Their forms were not authoritatively defined. The color was without that pre- cious quality to which I have alluded. Yet quality was to prove precisely the secret of his ultimate triumph. Would that triumph have come sooner if he had more rigidly narrowed the scope of his endeavor, making land- scape his sole motive? He was an experimentalist if ever there was one, and the remark applies to the matter of sub- ject as well as to that of method. In painting the figure he moved within clearly marked limitations. There was in him no inspiration for the big, dramatic composition, nor had he any marked predilection for the purely decorative mo- tive. There was no mistaking his relation to the group of artists who had their initiation into mural painting at Chicago, at the time of the World's Fair in 1892. They were all afire over the new opportunity, and Weir was as eager as any in the band. Still his dome was not one of the successes amongst the porticoes of the Liberal Arts Build- [ 61 ] JULIA^ALDBN WEIT^ ing. It was plain that mural painting was not for him. But this is not to say that the figure was outside his range. On the contrary, when he accepted his natural role, he painted the figure not only with adequacy, showing that he had not wasted his time in the atelier of Gerome, but with a personal touch positively magical. It was the touch of a portrait painter doubled with the poet. Sometimes, as in "The Pink Bodice," he seemed to be echoing an early tradition, as though half-forgotten contacts with the art of Sir Joshua had come back to stir his emotions; but more often he would be the unique interpreter, the new and original artist enveloping a type of feminine grace in an air that was all his own, very simple, very refined, very beautiful. He had stopped "picture-making" and gone on to just the painting of impressions, records of types seen — and enriched by imagination and taste. There was always something lyrical about Weir's work at its best. The epical, the monumental, was not in his province. Hence his only momentary absorption in mural decoration. Hence his abstention, after a few ventures, from the beguilements of stained glass. With still life he [ 62 ] AN APP%ECIA TfO^ was as much at home as with the figure that enmeshed him in no great problems of design, and with flowers he was superb, an authentic member of that small group which embraces Fantin-Latour in France, Maria Oakey Dewing in America, and only a few others. I am tempted here, with the thought of Weir's multifarious excursions in my mind, to glance briefly at his prints. One of them, the "Arcturus," is an amazing tour de force, a proof that he could have made himself a masterly Academician if he had believed it worth while. But though this and several portraits remind us that he could draw form with power, if he chose, the bulk of his too few prints belong in an- other world. In them his nervous, skillful line is put at the service of landscape, and there it takes on its greatest effectiveness. When Weir turned to landscape, he added to the ade- quacy, the charm, of his finest figure paintings a merit which he drew in part from his subject. It is obvious in his etchings and even more so in his canvases. Give him a straggling stone wall or rail fence enclosing a Connecti- cut pasture, a farmer at his plow, the bridge over a New [ 63 ] JULIA^ALDSN WEIT^ England stream, the roofs of a factory town, and, above all, trees, plenty of racy North American trees, with the very spirit of our country-side in their sturdy trunks and shimmering leafage, and he could translate it all into in- comparable beauty. The light of the Impressionists became the light of Weir, silvery and exquisite. Earth and sky took on an investiture of artistic freshness which only he could give them — and moved us with the urgency of poignant truth. When he painted one of those landscapes of his, he gave it the delicate visionary loveliness of a dream, yet he left the picture the unmistakable portrait of a place. He was always tackling new themes; his life, as has been indi- cated, was one long endeavor, but in the landscape paint- ings of his later period his genius seems to have come home, to have passed with a kind of effortless felicity into true artistic form. They are the final legacy of Weir, rounding out, bringing to a climax, all the characteristics at which I have glanced. They explain why he never lost his hold upon the imaginations of his admirers. Those who watched him knew from the beginning that he was in pursuit of a glorious ideal and they saw him realize it. [ 6 4 ] AN APP^ECIA T/O^i Thinking of his achievement, and of his influence, the future historian of American art will linger most, I believe, upon an essentially spiritual factor in him. Weir had tech- nical ability. He had a style. But it was his point of view that won the day. Long ago Walter Pater contended that Platonism was not a system of philosophy but a habit of mind. So was Weir's passion for beauty. He did not bring it within the confines of a dogma nor put it into words at all, but simply flung the fruits of it upon canvas. He accustomed us not to a certain kind of picture, measurable in words, but to a habit of mind, a fine, enkindling impulse. [ 65 ] REMINISCENCES OF WEIT^ TSy Childe Hassam IF artists (broadly speaking) are seers, we might, as a people, pay some attention to the remark made some years ago by Rodin, the famous French sculptor. " There is," he said, " a renaissance in Art now going on in Amer- ica, but the American people are completely unaware of it." If this is so — and some very astute and capable men believe that it is, for they are collecting works by American artists — then the name of Julian Alden Weir will hold a high place in the art history of the time. I came to New York from Paris in the autumn of 1889, but it was 1890 before I knew anybody in the town very well. I was from Boston and just too young, by a few years, to have known Weir in Paris. I even missed his footprints there, but I know he left some. However, we soon became very well acquainted in the New York of the 90's. "The Ten American Painters " was started during the winter of 1897-98. 1 proposed the idea to Weir one evening in his house on 12th Street. I remember thinking the whole thing over on my walk down town from 57th Street, where [ 67 ] JULIAJ^ALDSN WEIT^ I had my apartment and studio in the old Rembrandt. I re- member that I walked down Seventh Avenue and through Longacre (now Times) Square, then down Broadway. At that time it was really a very quiet and residential walk. There was not much movement on the streets until you came to 42 d Street. It might have been called quite gay as you reached 23 d. There were no automobiles, and Times Square looked nothing like the Midway and Machine Shop it now resembles. However, enough of this New York street scene of only twenty years ago! " The Ten" was my idea entirely. Weir fell for it like — well, like an artist ! Twachtman was the first painter to whom we talked. Thayer was asked and the three Boston men, Tarbell, Benson, and De Camp, but Thayer did not come in. Then the other men, Metcalfe, Dewing, Simmons, and Reid, whom we met often at "The Players' Club," made up "The Ten." The plan was to have an Exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Galleries, then at 36th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was one of the large, old New York mansions with a gallery that had a top-light — a real picture gallery of moderate size. There were to be no officers, and the meet- [ 68 ] AN APP^ECIA T/O^ ings to arrange for the Exhibitions were at first held at The Players' Club. Some of the earliest Exhibitions — two or three, if not more — were hung by dividing the wall space into ten centres, one wall cut by a door not being so good. Weir was always enthusiastic about this method of hang- ing. He was always well represented in every Exhibition which "The Ten" held, and never missed one — which was a much better record than some of us made. In fact, Weir and Twachtman maybe said to have contributed most to its artistic success. At least I thought so at the time, and I think so more than ever now. I saw a great deal of Weir in town and country. The first dinner I went to in a New York painter's home was at Weir's charming 12th Street house with its fine old furni- ture and pewter. His old pewter was a note in his dining- room. I remember a Thanksgiving dinner in the 12 th Street house, with Weir and a turkey at one end of the old oak table (which was without a white cloth, most unusual this in New York at the time), and then there was Twachtman and another turkey at the other end. And there was old pewter on the table. It is handsome anywhere — old oak and pewter [ 6 9 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEIT^ and fine blue and white porcelain. Few were on to it then. Weir's house and family were handsome and distinguished, and he himself had one of the handsomest heads I have ever seen anywhere on man or woman. We can still look at Olin Warner's bust. As for his manner, it went with his looks. He was a rare creation. Never shall we know a finer one ! How much Weir did for his time and generation in the way of advice about buying works of art should not be forgotten. I was on the point of writing expert advice, but this word has been so much abused. Anybody is an ex- pert who sells or writes about art, or even auctions it off to the highest bidder. Of course some of these are experts as to the current value of the works, but we know how such values change. Weir and his great friend, C. E. S. Wood, told me that Cottier could tell a work of art a mile away. It is my great regret that I was not to meet Cottier. He went off the stage of New York Art as I came on. But I can most sincerely say the same thing of Weir and Wood. For these two men liked so many different things and such divergent ones — and they did not make a single mistake (enough time has gone by to make us sure of this) by pick- [ 70 ] AN APP%ECIA TION^ ing out things which would not stand the test of time. Weir bought the "Boy with Sword" and "Woman with Parrot," by Manet, Bastien-Lepage's "Jean d'Arc," Rem- brandt's "Man with a Black Hat" — all now at the Met- ropolitan Museum. C. E. S. Wood bought Albert Ryder's masterpiece, "Jonah and the Whale," as soon as it was fin- ished, and it was a pretty delicate operation to get a good grip on a Ryder when it was finished and to hold on to it hard! The "Jonah" is a wonderfully beautiful picture, and is now in the collection of John Gellatly of New York. It hung for years in Wood's house in Portland, Oregon, and was shown in the Ryder Memorial Exhibition at the Met- ropolitan Museum a year or two ago. Gellatly, I believe, has been quoted as saying, " I wonder how the Museum ever allowed me to get hold of it." The story goes, too, about Weir's being in Durand- Ruel's Paris gallery one day when Stanford White came in. "McKim 's doing a Library for Boston — who 's the man to make a big mural painting? " asked White. " Why Puvis, of course ! " exclaimed Weir. They went from there to the Place Pigalle, found Puvis de Chavannes, and we know the [ 71 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEIT^ rest. He painted for Boston one of the most beautiful mural decorations in the world. There must be a great many more things like this we owe to Weir. But we owe most to him for giving us his own very beautiful and very personal works in painting and etching, made throughout a life devoted to his art. Whistler de- clared that he knew Weir well when he was a cadet at West Point and a student of drawing under Weir's father. "Don't you remember, Weir — you used to carry notes for me to the Professor of Chemistry ? " Silicon was not a gas, and that is why Whistler went out of West Point before Weir could possibly have been old enough really to have known him there. Again a matter of those few years / Whistler liked Weir, and of course swore that he had met him at West Point. 1 1 They met as artists in Paris, in a room of the Louvre, where Weir was making a copy. He had his back turned to the passers-by, but became conscious of one man walking up and down, up and down past his easel, looking at his work. Finally he was heard to murmur, "Not bad — not bad at all!" With his delightful smile Weir turned and bowed his thanks. The man said, " I 'm Whistler." They chatted a few moments, found much to talk about, and arranged to dine together. Whistler was to call for Weir and take him somewhere to dinner. He was late. He usually was late. But Jimmy finally appeared, and urged him to come to his rooms and take pot-luck. Instead, Weir found a most Bohemian dinner party — but the guests still waiting for their host, who had not appeared. It was a sumptuous feast with many novel features. D. P. [ 72 ] AN APP%ECIA TZOy^ From West Point Weir went to Paris, where he did not stay too long; then back to New York, where he produced the works known to all art lovers for their rare quality of color, whether low or, as later in life, high in key and always personal in arrangement. He painted Interiors with figures, many portraits of his family — still life — land- scapes — animals. I recall two exceptionally fine water colors, dogs by the fireside. Weir made many fine water colors. I always cite Weir's portrait of a young woman standing by a mirror, entitled "The Green Bodice" (at the Metropolitan Museum) when I am asked, for instance, who has painted a notable portrait. It is a portrait of a profes- sional model, and some of the notable portraits of the world are of unknown people like models. I should say that the distinguished aspects of all these canvases are, a certain fine quality of tone — an almost unfailing feeling for quality of paint, and a very delicate and rare quality of color on the subtle gray, or muted scale. In arrangements Weir's pictures have dignity and a naive tendency of line. They are the work of a very sincere and distinguished artist. [ 73 ] THE TILS CLUB By J. B. Millet THE Tile Club is now only a memory, and not a familiar one for the present generation of art lovers, but in the 80 's and years following it was an inspiration to the group of artists whose names are still in our minds, and whose works are a silent appeal to our best thoughts. The Tile Club seems to have been called together by a sort of mental telepathy, as if each member, busy in his own studio, was searching unconsciously for that sympathetic, appreciative companionship for which those who express themselves in the language of art feel the need. At first, when the club meetings were mostly conversational, criti- cism of one another's work, and more or less of the world in general, was the chief amusement. One night a mem- ber brought in some undecorated, unbaked tiles and some specimens of finished productions, made in a pottery re- cently started near Boston. Many of these tiles were most excellent in color. The accidental effects due to the flow of glaze in baking were charming. Here was a new me- dium of expression. Why not have a try at it? Why not C 75 ] JULIA^ALDSN WE1\ paint on tiles, and see how they came out in the baking ? No one took the matter seriously at first. It was pure fun. Some of the results, however, suggested serious effort to secure the like effect in oils ! Fortunately, portions of their conversation were recorded later by two keen observers with good memories, Earl Shinn and F. Hopkinson Smith. "I believe I am getting the pearly shadows on flesh to-day, and it is a tile that is teaching me," said the figure artist. "Those difficult gray shadows on the temples, under a girl's hair. Oil painting never quite resembles flesh, you know; it is brutal and dirty in its essence. Water color is flimsy at the best, and cannot give the modelled quality of a living sitter. Now I am thinking that the solution lies in faience — solidity of oil, diaphanous look of water color; in fact, a grand union of all those qualities of ivory, vel- vet, changeable moth's wing, and rose petal which bother us so awfully when we wrestle with a girl's mouth in flesh painting." When congenial souls are brought together, almost any correlative interest will hold them in touch while com- panionship grows. Tile painting served in this case, and [ 76 ] AN APP%ECIA TIO!N^ before long the club included a goodly number of the lead- ing artists then living in New York. Their youthful spirits, their jovial and affectionate fellowship, is made clear to us now by the names they gave each other, understood only by themselves. At first the membership included only a few painters. Then one or two sculptors were added, and three or four musicians were invited. It would be impossible, of course, for artists of such prominence to meet in this way without creating unusual interest, consequently delicately hinted re- quests for membership were frequent, but the club managed to keep its number down and to confine its choice to kindred spirits in the allied professions of art, architecture, and music. The membership was limited to thirty-one. Vacancies could occur only from deaths, resignations, or residence abroad. There were no officers, no dues, no constitution, and no by-laws. One custom was rigidly adhered to — elec- tion of members by unanimous vote. The only surviving members of this remarkable group are Dielman, Maynard, Vedder, and Shugio. A complete list of founders and mem- bers with their club pseudonyms follows: [ 77 ] JULIA^ALDSN WEIT^ Founders Walter Paris The Gaul Painter E. Wimbridge The Grasshopper Architect Winslow Homer The Obtuse Bard Painter William R. O'Donovan I'he Worm Sculptor Members Edwin Abbey The Chestnut Painter Charles Stanley Rhinehart Sinus Illustrator William M. Laffan Polyphemus Journalist R. Swain Gifford I'he Griffin Painter F. Hopkinson Smith The Owl Author, Artist Frederick Dielman Terrapin Painter Arthur Quartley The Marine Painter George W. Maynard Bird o' Freedom Painter Arthur B. Frost The Icicle Illustrator Stanford White The Bearer or Builder Architect Alfred Parsons The Englishman Artist Napoleon Sarony The Hawk Artist J. Alden Weir Cadmium Painter George H. Boughton The Puritan Painter Elihu Vedder The Pagan Painter Earl Shinn The Bone Literature (nom de plume Edward Strahan) Augustus Saint-Gaudens The Saint Sculptor William A. Paton The Haggis Author-Journalist Frank D. Millet The Bulgar Painter William M. Chase Briareus Painter Charles W. Truslow The Boarder Lawyer William Gedney Bunce The Bishop Painter Heromichi Shugio V arnish Art Director [ 78 ] AN APP%ECIA TIOO^ fionorary Musical Members William C. Baird tfhe Barytone Gustav Kobbe tfhe Husk Journalist Antonio Knauth 'The Horsehair Music Dr. Lewenburg Catgut The Tile Club abode was not easy to find without in- structions. One might easily pass the "main entrance" even in a slow walk, for it was a narrow, sunken doorway between two houses on West ioth Street. It opened into a narrow, dark tunnel, which ended in a small courtyard in the rear. Here, most unexpectedly, the visitor came upon a small two-story wooden house, which, as it did not quite fill the yard, had for an approach a few square feet of gravel and grass. Like many of the houses on the street, this one had decorative wrought-iron railings for the three well- worn board steps up to the door. The latter recalled the doorways in Salem or Kennebunk. A narrow entry gave the front door room to swing open, in doing which it partly obscured the entrance to the living-room on the right, for the club occupied the whole lower floor and basement. The upper floor was a studio. The club room was low studded, rather square, with two wide windows in front, [ 79 ] JULIAN^ ALD8N WEI\ a large fireplace, and a long table in the middle of the room around which all present gathered. In the rear were the kitchen and pantry. This hidden unique courtyard was a feature in the old studio quarter of the town. Church spires and a clock tower were so close as almost to seem to be falling upon it. The birth of the club came at the time when decora- tive experimentation, such as the tying of bows on backs of chairs, painting on teacups, making monotypes aided by a clothes-wringer for a press, was the chief joy and occupation of amateurs, especially, perhaps, the young ladies. The real artist never despises a medium, no matter how low its origin, and while the members of the club assumed in the presence of their pupils an air of contempt for tile painting, they were secretly surprised at the revela- tion of beautiful soft tones which tiles offered for apprecia- tion. There was no professional rivalry, on the contrary there was a frankness in discussing one another's work. Some- times there was what seemed to be a determination to per- suade a member to abandon a method or a choice of sub- [ 8° J AN APP%ECIA T/O^ jects for which every one except himself knew he was not fitted. Elihu Vedder, who lived in Rome, was berated by his fellow members because he stayed over there so long instead of coming to New York and getting the benefit of criticism. The World's Fair at Chicago had not then given interior decoration its start. Collectors of paintings were few and prices low, so that to many artists life was a real struggle. Book and magazine illustration were sources of income to be well looked after. It was at this time that the Ruhdiydt of Omar Khayyam illustrated by Vedder appeared. It was a magnificent volume and instantly pop- ularized the poet. E. A. Abbey's double full pages in Har- per 7 Weekly and his illustrations to Shakespeare's Come- dies were then waited for by all book- lovers. The publica- tions of those days as well as the Christmas cards contained the best work many of these members knew how to do. Witness also the etchings of the period and the lithographic calendars. The school of wood engraving which the Cen- tury Magazine developed was just at its highest point, and declined rapidly with the introduction of halftone engrav- ing. The club had its summer excursions to Montauk [ 81 ] JULIA^ALDSN WEI^ Point or Tom's River, where members spent the days in sketching, roughing the work of the absent ones, and lying in the sand trying to forget their pupils ! They were equally at home in all parts of the world. A listener on the sands at Montauk could have heard refer- ences in familiar tones to Venice, Vienna, Paris, Tokyo, Algiers, Plevna, or Athens. He would have been puzzled to locate the real homes of the speakers, so completely their reminiscences blended. Du Maurier, Burne-Jones, Alma Tadema, were all intimates, and through Abbey, Sargent, Boughton, Parsons, or Millet, who lived in England, were kept in touch with the club's life. Such a band of enthusiasts, whose serious work was the better and more enduring because of their joyous tempera- ments, has never been gathered together in this country since that day. It was a product of the times, when diver- sions were fewer, when there was more time to think and more leisure to express. It is easy to imagine what one of these evenings would be like. The tales of sketching adventures in foreign lands ; Millet's stories of the Russo-Turkish war, where he was [ 82 ] AN APP^EC/AT/O^ correspondent for the London News and G raphic; Abbey's account of London society, of du Maurier longing to write books, of Alma Tadema's wonderful house in St. John's Wood and the still more marvellous price paid him for his painting, "Reading from Homer." Many years later, one who was a faithful attendant described an evening somewhat as follows: "'Cadmium' [Weir], in evening dress, was cooking a large steak over the hot coals of the open fireplace, while Griffin [R. S.Gifford] maintained his reputation as a chef by brewing an oyster stew and making a welsh rarebit at the same time, in two chafing dishes. Into this company, stamp- ing off the snow and slapping a homespun cap against his knees, came the < Chestnut,' E. A. Abbey, just from England, still feeling the roll of the £ Servia,' then an ocean queen. A joyous shout followed by a hand to hand dance around the table greets him, and then silence while he delivers the mes- sages from Tadema, Sargent, Parsons, and Rhinehart." To Abbey we owe the origin of the word "Chestnut," given by the club to one of his interminable stories, and afterwards accepted by the outside world as a name for [ 8 3 ] JULIA 3^ ALD8N WEI\ an old story. The records of the Tile Club describe it as follows : "Now the Chestnut story is one of those interminable pointless humbug narrations which the French call a < scie.' Eternally getting to the point, and never arriving there; exciting vast interest and calculation in regard to the chest- nuts on a certain tree; promising a rich and racy solution in the very next sentence; straying off into episodes that baffled the ear and disappointed the hope. This tale could be prolonged by him, when he was at his best, for a good part of an hour, without ever releasing the attention or sat- isfying expectation. As time wore on, the more solemn and practical of the guests would look at each other gravely; the more astute sons of Belial, perceiving the joke, would steal out and fulminate and explode in corridors. At a given moment the tableful would perceive the crux, and burst into horse-laughs, with the acknowledgment that they had been vended at an inconsiderable price; and there would be one delicious, venerable Englishman, who, when all were roaring, would confess that he was always slow at catching the point of American humor, and would ask his neighbor [ 8+ ] AN APP%ECIA T/O^ to oblige him by telling what it was all about. This repre- hensible hoax, let off as a test upon successive parties of those whom Britain numbered among her brightest, was by little and little quoted in social circles as a symbol. English literary men, who had heard it and been taken in by it, began to use the title in their writings as a type of an endless or unsatisfactory yarn. And the word, 'Chest- nut,' crossing the sea, returned again to the land of its birth, and became the accepted definition of what is tedious, old, and interminable." Incidents told at each other's expense were a stimulation to invention or at least to exaggeration of personal char- acteristics. The morning after a late session, Vedder wrote Millet as follows: "Dear Frank, I return the five dollars I borrowed of you last night just to show you that I was not quite so much 'how came you so' as you thought I was. V." To which Millet replied: "I return the five dollars which you did not borrow of me just to show you that you were just about what I thought you were. F. D. M." [ 8 5 ] J JULIA^ ALDSN WEI^ Vedder and Saint-Gaudens were in Yamanaka's Japanese store admiring and examining various bronzes and porce- lains. Picking an unusually beautiful piece, Vedder called to Saint-Gaudens, saying, "Just look at that! And we send missionaries out there." Among the oft repeated stories in the club was one which described an old colored woman standing in the kitchen door, calling to her daughter out-doors — " You May- Jane, come in offen de wet grass," which in time became a sort of password. Hopkinson Smith, on returning from one of his trips to Holland the year before he wrote Well- Worn Roads in Holland, Spain, and Italy, told the club, "Yes, I saw Chase. It was in Antwerp. I was wandering around trying to find a good thing to sketch. I came to a narrow sort of lane which led up to a courtyard near a house that looked as if Rubens might have lived in it. There in the full sunlight, back to me, with a cap on his head, a five- foot canvas in front of him, stood Chase laying in his back- ground with mighty sweeps of his brush. I called out, "You May-Jane," and Chase, without losing a sweep or turning [ 8 6 ] AN APP%ECIA T/OJAC his head, and with an extra brush in his mouth, shouted back, "Come in offen de wet grass!" So I knew he was all right and I left him with no more words. Haven't seen or heard of him since." Into this group came a young enthusiast, fresh from the ateliers of Paris, a painter for whom all the others pre- dicted a glorious future, one whose remarkable personal beauty was the envy of all — J. Alden Weir. Every one's affection seemed to go out to him. All his life he was a most lovable, sincere, and sympathetic companion ; and in those early days these qualities were like an aura of which he was not in the least conscious. An evening at the Tile Club did not start right until Weir appeared, and on more than one occasion it ended something like this: "Finally the Bird o' Freedom [Maynard] says — 'Twelve o'clock, Tilers, I have a model coming at nine.' "f 1 * I- a. Moonlight 10 x 16 Colonel C. E. S. Wood bummer-Land 20^ x 15 Dr. Roderick Terry 1 he Lawn $*A x 12^ A Bit of Blue 7X5 A TV If 1 l~x A Misty Day 13^ x9 (jray October 9x12 XT l 1 • . Neighboring Cottage 12 x 16 Alexander M. Hudnut 1 he Miniature 24^ x20 Dutch Gray beard Jug VA x6 A Belt of Wood 15x26 Ideal Head 21x17 The Christmas Tree 36x24 Mrs. J. Alden Weir In the Studio Mrs. J. Alden Weir In the Living-Room 25x30 |\ ft T Alt TXT Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Violet 20^4 x l624 Samuel S. White, 3d Interior of a Room Colonel H. C. Weir Still Life Silver Chalice with roses. Dated 1882 12x9 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Roses in two small Venetian vases, with silverchalice in the back] ground. Dated 1882 14X 10 Charles L. Baldwin Flowers: A white bowl filled with dan- delions. Dated 1882 15^x23^ Smith College Roses. Dated 1883 23x15 r 128 1 LIST OF TAINTI^GS TITLE SIZE Roses. Dated 1884 8x10 The Delft Plate : A Delft plate with five peaches in it on left. Pewter tankard with a spray of honeysuckle in it on right. Dated 1888 24x13^ Pheasants. Dated 1889 18x30 Roses: A mass of pink and white Mar- shal Niel roses in a bowl White roses in a white china bowl, silver chalice at the right. Bas-relief of St. John the Baptist in the background White roses in a white china bowl in the centre, other roses in a slender white vase on the right. Bas-relief by Donatello in the background 35 x 25 Gray Japanese jar filled with flowers and a silver chalice 21x13 Silver cup, Japanese bronze and red taper Rose and Kettle lY^^S^i Flowers: Tall jar and a small vase, both filled with tulips and other flowers on the right, and a bowl full of flowers placed on two books on the left. Tall Chinese blue and white vase, brass lantern, pewter plate, and some flowers on a table. In the background is the wheel of a spinning-wheel 29^ X48 Grapes, Knife, and Glass 9 X x 3 Pewter Pitcher 20x14 Roses : A cluster of pale yellow and pink roses on a table 8 x 10 Fruit: A branch of apples hangs on the wall, other apples and a tomato are grouped on a table below it. The table is covered with a white cloth 21x17 OWNER Mrs. Stanford White Smith College Childe Hassam S}4 xio Emil Carlsen 33^ x2i Charles T. Palmer Phillips Memorial Gallery Mrs. George Page Ely The Feragil Galleries Yale School of Fine Arts Phillips Memorial Gallery Charles T. Palmer [ I2 9 ] JULIA^ ALD8N WEIT^ TITLE SIZE Flowers : Flowers in a pewter mug and a china shoe Flowers: Roses in a silver bowl on a mahogany table Soup tureen, grape fruit, celery, toma- toes, oranges, and laurel on a table covered with a white cloth. A pewter plate and a blue and white Chinese plate stand against the wall in the back- ground 24^x36 Fruit in a glass compote on a white cloth 18x14 OWNER 21x15^ Mrs. John A. Rutherfurd Miss C. M. Weir Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett Alden Twachtman The Late 80'/ or Early 90V A Misty Day, Autumn 22x32^ Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Setting Sun 19^ X27 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Landscape 15^ x26^ H. C. Henry A Cloudy Day 12^ x l6 A Neighboring Farm 22 x 27 The Road to the Farm 22^ x 16 Charles L. Baldwin The Red Barn 30x25 Colonel- C. E. S. Wood Rocks in the Sun \oy 2 x 1 5 Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Stone Wall i6x 12 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Scudding Clouds in June Evening Indian Summer John E. Cowdin A Frosty Morning Autumn Summer-Land The Edge of the Wood The Barnyard November In the Woods [ no ] LIST OF TAINTINJJS TITLE SIZE OWNER The Pasture Lot The Young Student A Drizzly Day The Pond Across the Fields The Hillside In the Field Afternoon on the Hillside After the Snowstorm The Black Alders 189O- 1899 Lady Reading. Dated 1890 I I 7*2 x 1 6 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Portrait of a Lady with a Venetian Vase. Dated 1 8 90 36x28 Mrs. J. Alden Weir The White Cravat. Dated 1890 34x25 Mrs. George Page Ely The Open Book. Dated 189 1 31x29 Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett Early Moonrise. Dated 1891 34x24^ Mrs. J. Alden Weir Midday. Dated 1891 34x24 C. A. Du Bois Portrait of a Small Girl. 1891 18x14 H. A. Hammond Smith In the Days of Pinafores. 1893 34x27 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Dorothy. 1893 33* 2 4 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Thread Mills. 1893 ziy 2 x26 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Willimantic Thread Mills. 1893 24K x33^ Brooklyn Museum Baby Cora. 1894 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Autumn Stroll. 1894 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Sunlight. Dated 1894 27x34 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Child and Nurse. 1894 38x30}/ Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Farm in Winter. Dated 1894 Charles V. Wheeler Loading Ice. 1894 19^ X24 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Cutting Ice. 1894 Henry Ladd Corbett Snow Scene. 1894 8x12 Miss Cara Haynes The Coming Snowstorm. 1894 [ *3i ] JULIA^ALDSN WEIT^ TITLE A Fog in Winter. 1 894 Melting Snow. 1894 Woods in Snow. 1894 Hillside in Snow. 1894 Portrait of Captain Zalinski. 1895 Reflections in the Mirror. Dated 1896 Melting Snow. Dated 1897 The Factory Village. Dated 1897 Willimantic. 1897 Early Fall. Dated 1898 The Black Hat. Dated 1898 The Gray Bodice. Dated 1898 Portrait of Erskine Wood. Dated 1899 The Donkey Ride. 1899 In the Sun. Dated 1899 On the Porch A Basket of Laurel Visiting the Rabbit Hutch Land of Nod October Sunshine Noonday Rest Misty Morning Spring The Farm — Spring Apple Blossoms Apricot in Blossom Portrait of General Quincy Gillmore Portrait of Childe Hassam Autumn Rain Branchville in Early Autumn Wild Lilies Maple Inn Plowing for Buckwheat SIZE 20x24 21 x 25 27^ xI5 24 x 20 30x40 12 x 16 17x21 30 % xi8 24x20 49 X40 26x 16 33^ *2 4 25 x 20 OWNER 20x24 23x29 50x40 30x25 16x24 30x25 33x24 [ *3 2 ] R. C. and N. M. Vose Mrs. J. A. Rutherfurd Rhode Island School ofDesign Cincinnati Art Museum Mrs. J. Alden Weir Feragil Gallery Colonel C. E. S. Wood Miss Dorothy Weir Art Institute of Chicago Colonel C. E. S. Wood Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Colonel C. E. S. Wood Philadelphia Art Museum R. C. and N. M. Vose Mrs. George Page Ely West Point Military Academy National Academy of Design R. C. and N. M. Vose Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Carnegie Institute LIST OF TAINTINJ3S TITLE Summer Summer Pastime Summer in Connecticut The Red Bridge The Green Bodice An Alsatian Girl The Green Dress The Feather Boa The Two Sisters The Truants The Sand Pit Miss Pierson Girl in Pink Sketch for a Portrait of Mrs. Robert Weir Purple Iris Girl in White Paul Remy Figure Piece A Summer Day SIZE OWNER 20x24 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 24 x 20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 20 x 24 F. S. Shaw 2 4^6 x 33/4 Metropolitan Museum 33^x24^ Metropolitan Museum 24x18 Phillips Memorial Gallery Gilbert S. McClintock 18x12 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 49 V\ x 39 X A Mrs. Marshall Field 29x38 R. C. and N. M. Vose 16 x 12 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 24x20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 24x20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 20x24 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 27 x 16 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 30x25 H. A. Hammond Smith 24x20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir I9OO- I9O9 Girl with Black Hat. Dated 1 900 The Yellow Turban. Dated 1900 Portrait of Col. C. E. S. Wood. 1901 Portrait of a Lady. Dated 1902 The Barn. 1904 The Haunt of the Woodcock. 1905 Hunting the Raccoon. 1905 The Shadow of my Studio. 1905 Upland Pasture. 1905 29^ x24^£ Portland Art Association 24x20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 35 x 28 Colonel C. E. S. Wood 50x40 Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett 20x24 Phillips Memorial Gallery Edmund C. Tarbell 39^x49^ National Gallery [ "33 ] JULIA^ALDSN WEIT^ TTTT V 111 IT, CT71? UVVNiK A Gentlewoman. 1900 30x24^ National Gallery n 1 1 [• 1 r\ •11* r 1 f~X O Sketch for the Building of the Dam. 1900 22 x 19 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 1 he Building or the Dam. 1900 30x40 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 1 he Rose rink Bodice. 1909 30x25 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 1 he Hunters Moon. 1909 51 X40 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Portrait of Mrs. rrank Dale La Lanne. 1909 Miss Frances La Lanne Portrait of Maxwell Wood 24 X 20 colonel c iL. b. wood Portrait of Mrs. David T. Honeyman 35>< 2 7 colonel c iL. 0. wood rortraii 01 ivirs. vv oou 32x25 coionei c o. w ood Pickerel Pool 2 5M x2i/ 2 ivirs. J. Alden weir M^other and Daughter 7 2 *3°>2 l\/Ti-o TT f^o _i ; ~ ivirs. w uiiam n,. carnn Portrait r»f 1VT rc ToVin A R iithprfnrrl 1 U1L141L Ul IVlIa. JUI1I1 n. JXULJ1CI 1 Ul u 49 x 30/2 A/Trc TfiVm A 1? ntVi^rfiirrl J.VX1S. JUIlll i\ . IV UlllCI 1 Ul U rortrait or ivirs. vv eir 30x25 ivirs. j . /viaen vv eir rortrait or ivirs. n,iy 26x21 Mrs. George Page Ely Portrait of Miss Dorothy Weir 20^2 x 23 Miss Dorothy W^eir Portrait of Mrs. Carlin 24 X 20 ivirs. wniiam r,. carlin rnnip 21x17 ivirs. j. Aiuen weir visiting i\eignDors 2 5 x 35 I'hi 1 1 1 nc ^/l m nvii I-»ill/^rj7 rinmpb ivicmoi iai vjaiicry Portrait of a Boy 24 X 20 ivirs. j. Alden weir A Bowl of Roses 20 x 24 A/T rc T A AATa'tr ivirs. j . Aiuen weir i ne uiq i^aurei r>usn X IVTrc T Alrl*»n Wpir ivirs. j. /\iuen vv eir Overhanging Trees x-J. X -iU A/1 rc T Alrl^n AAT^i r ivir». j . /\iucii vv eir Chestnut Trees in Blossom 14X 17^ Miss Dorothy Weir The Red Drapery 30 x 1 8 ivirs. j. Aiaen weir Head of a Young Girl 24 x 20 \ A »*n T A 1 .1 ^1 • 1 AAT at f ivirs. j. Alden weir Genevieve 30x25 Mrs. J. Alden Weir June 2 4x33 Paul Schulze The High Pasture MH x34X Phillips Memorial Gallery Driving the Cows to Pasture 34x25 Burton Mansfield The Orchid 24x20 Frank L. Babbott The Green Coat 30x 18 Mrs. J. Alden Weir [ *3+ ] LIST OF TAINTIJ^CS TITLE The Fur Pelisse A Pleasant Letter Portrait of Albert P. Ryder White Hair Ribbons Portrait of an Old Man with a Beard Lantern Light The Return of the Fishing Party Danbury Hills Early Morning Autumn Black Birch Rock The Hill Road Moving Clouds Peacock Feathers Figure in Sunlight A Connecticut Grainfield A Reverie The Bindery Going to School Moonlight A Group of Elms In the Doorway The Valley The Blue Gown Autumn in the Woods A Corner of the Field Rhododendrons The Road to Nod The Pasture by the Pond Summertime Pelham's Lane October Day SIZE OWNER 26x2i>£ Mrs. J. Alden Weir 24x20 The Feragil Galleries 24x20 National Academy of Design 24x20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 30x25 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 28x23 Miss Dorothy Weir 28x32 General Edmund Hayes Denver Art Club Mrs. Albright 36x29 Corcoran Gallery of Art 23x27 Charles L. Baldwin 24x20 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 25x30 The Macbeth Gallery 69^ X40 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 29x36 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Charles V. Wheeler 20 x 24 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 24x20 George Barr McCutcheon 24x20 A. A. Healy 33^x24 Mrs. J. Alden Weir 20x24 R. C. and N. M. Vose Henry Smith [ '35 ] JULIAS^ ALD8N TITLE Barns at Windham Pink Peonies in a Blue Jug White Peonies Pink Peonies The Old Apple Tree The Lace Cape Memories Buttercups SIZE 24x34 23x27 24x29 20x24 20x24 OWNER Mrs. George Page Ely Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. John A. Rutherfurd Mrs. Denis O'Sullivan Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir 1910-1919 Lady in Black. Dated 1910 23x18 The Pet Bird. 1910 29x22 The Flower Girl — facing right. 19 10 The Flower Girl — facing left. 191 1 39^2 X29 Girl in Profile. 1912 33^x24 Nassau — Bahamas. 1914 32x36 Ships at Nassau. 1914 30x25 Nassau from the Garden. 19 14 25x30 The Lighthouse — Nassau. 19 14 25x30 House and Garden — Nassau. 1914 25x30 The Japanese Bridge — Nassau. 19 14 25x30 The Beach — Nassau. 1914 25x30 The Porch — Nassau. 1914 25x30 The Wharves — Nassau. 1914 25x30 The Palm Leaf Fan. 1914 34x28 Portrait of Miss de L. 19 14 3°x25 The Hunter. 19 14-15 30x25 The Old Sentinel on the Farm. 191 5 A Follower of Grolier. 1916 39x3 x A Harmony in Yellow and Pink. 191 6 A Bit of New England. 191 6 24x20 Midsummer. 1916 24x20 Frank L. Babbott Mrs. F. S. Smithers W. S. Stimmel Mrs. J. Alden Weir Horatio S. Rubens Mrs. William E. Carlin Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Hon. Alexander Simpson, Jr. Corcoran Gallery of Art Paul Schulze John F. Braun Detroit Museum of Art John F. Braun Albert E. McVitty Herman Hollerith [ 136 ] LIST OF TAINTINJJS TITLE SIZE Improvising. 19 17 39x24 Queensboro' Bridge — Nocturne 29x39 The Plaza — Nocturne 29x39 The Lute Player 30x25 Portrait of the Artist's Daughter 40x30 Obweebetuck 24 x 34 In the Woods 231^ xi6^ A White Oak 25x30 Pan and the Wolf 45><34 Lizzie Lynch 29 x 24 The Path from the Studio 22 x 19^ Pussy-Willows The Lace-Maker 30x25 The Spreading Oak 39x50 Fall Pasture 30x25 Windham Village 25x30 The Fishing Party 28x23 Portrait of Colonel H. C. Weir The Peacock Feather — Peacock feather in girl's hat 30 x 25 The Peacock Feather — Peacock feather in girl's hand Snow in Windham 24x20 An American Girl 35x27 Hunter and Dogs 36x32 Path in the Woods 26x21^ Afternoon by the Pond 25x30 On the Shore 25x30 Ravine near Branchville 25x30 Three Trees 27x24 In the Summerhouse 34x24 The Border of the Farm 50x39^ A Study of Rocks [ *37 ] OWNER Mrs. J. Alden Weir Horatio S. Rubens Horatio S. Rubens Paul Schulze Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts George M. Oyster Mrs. John A. Rutherfurd Edwin C. Shaw Phillips Memorial Gallery Mrs. H. M. Adams Dr. Henry S. Patterson Mrs. James Wall Finn Paul Schulze Colonel C. E. S. Wood Thomas W. Dunbar City Art Museum, St. Louis Phillips Memorial Gallery Colonel H. C. Weir Charles L. Baldwin Mrs. J. Alden Weir Worcester Art Museum Mrs. J. Alden Weir Cincinnati Art Museum Charles L. Baldwin Horatio S. Rubens Charles L. Baldwin Charles L. Baldwin Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. Robert C. Vose JULTA^ALDSN WEIT^ TITLE SIZE OWNER The Japanese Screen 30x25 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Portrait of Mrs. Weir seated by the Window 37/^ x2 9 K4>-r> T All,, AV ' - Mrs. J. Alden Weir Sunset 30x25 IV /T T A 1 J "\TLT Mrs. J. Alden Weir In the Shadow 33# x2 4 J. INewman At the Turn of the Road 20 x 24 1\ A T A 1 J T17" * Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Back Lots 24x33 A A T A 1 J tit • Mrs. J. Alden Weir Fording the Stream 25x30 A Jf T A 1 J TIT * Mrs. J. Alden Weir Portrait of Mrs. Ely 72 X40 Mrs. George Page Ely Eleanor 30x25 AT T All XXT ' Mrs. J. Alden Weir Knitting for Soldiers 30x25 rhillips Memorial Gallery Woodland Rocks 28% X36X rnillips Memorial (jallery Near Norwich Dr. Robert Milligan The Letter 30x25 Horatio S. Rubens White Birches in the Woods 27x33^ Mrs. J. Alden Weir Apple Tree in Blossom 25x30 Mrs. J. Alden Weir A Morning on the Piazza 30x25 Mrs. J. Alden Weir Approaching Shower Burr H. Brown The Old Apple Orchard 20 X 24 Robert Hosea Dates Unknown Autumn Days 29x39 Moratio b. Kubens Still Life — Peonies 34x27 O l~ «1 O T? C TXT" J Colonel C. E. S. Wood Garden at Night 28x22 L/Olonel L,. r,. 0. wood Still Life — Peonies 28 x 20 H/f TT1 T 11 /"> 1 Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett Still Life — Peonies 36x24 Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett Woman with a Black Hat Mrs. Smith Landscape 25^ X2I^ Herbert Fleischhacker Landscape Edward S. Clark Landscape Edward S. Clark Landscape l6x 20 Alexander M. Hudnut [ 138 ] LIST OF TAINTI^GS TITLE Landscape The Brook A Connecticut Landscape Head of an Old Man Early Spring Portrait of a Young Girl A Rainy Day Head of a Young Girl Wood Interior Turn in the Road Head in Profile SIZE 17x26^ I0J A x l 5 T A IS*A x26^ 17x14 20x24 OWNER 25x30 20 x 24 10x7 Edwin C. Shaw Luxembourg Gallery National Academy of Design Charles T. Palmer Charles T. Palmer Mrs. J. Alden Weir Watercolors 1880- 1889 Holland. 1881 Canal in Holland. 1 88 1 After a Storm, Holland. 1881 Dordrecht, Holland. 1881 Sketch for Harvesting. 1883 Sketch for Sheep Shearing. 1883 On the Seine, near Paris. 1883 A Bit of Venice. 1883 Interior of Anne Hathaway's Cottage. 1883 Church where Shakespeare is Buried — Stratford-on-Avon. 1883 Part of the Old Walls at Chester. 1883 The River at Bristol. 1883 A Windy Day, Venice. 1883 On the Avon. 1883 Venetian Sails. 1883 iOx 14 [ J 39 ] Burton Mansfield 20x13^ Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir JULIA^ALDSN WEI\ TITLE A Scene in Venice. 1883 The Flower. Dated 1885 Two Dogs. Dated 1885 Woman Sewing. Dated 1885 Tired Out. Dated 1885 A Passing Sorrow. Dated 1887 Fireside Dreams. Dated 1887 Puritan Maid In the Library The Letter Preparing for Christmas Still Life— Rabbit Roses Still Life La Cigale. Dated 1894 SIZE 21x17 14x20 20x 14 ^o 1 ^ x 16^ 14x20 52x32 31 X 20^ 31 X20 OWNER Mrs. George Page Ely Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Players' Club Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. John A. Rutherfurd Mrs. J. Alden Weir The Feragil Galleries The Feragil Galleries J. W. Young J. W. Young 189O- I9OO 1913 New London Wharf I2xi6 Fishing Boats — River Thames, Conn. I2xi6 Across the River from Groton, Conn. I2xi6 Fishing Pool — River Itchen, England 9% Wolvesly Castle Near Abbots Worthy Road to Easton — Hampshire Mill on the Itchen Chilland Church Bewlo Twyford Bridge The Itchen — Hampshire Old Sentinels on the Itchen The Weirs — Winchester 9 3 A *33*A 9% 9}4 X13K 9% *i3^ 9 I A* I 3 I A [ HO ] Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Mrs. J. Alden Weir Charles V. Wheeler LIST OF TAINTI^GS TITLE Windy Weather Izaak Walton's Pool — Itchen River St. Catherine's Hill — Winchester The Meadows of St. Cross — Win- chester Church at Easton — Winchester River Gate on Itchen — Near Chilland On the Banks of the Itchen A Hidden Pool A Famous Chalk Stream — England Student's Walk — By the Itchen Avington Meadows Chilland Salisbury A Bend in the River Old Dock — Near New London, Conn. Itchen Abbas River Thames — New London, Conn. Hampshire Meadows SIZE 9% x sy 2 x 9A x gy 2 x 9~A x 9A x sy 2 x sy 2 x 9A x sy 2 x sy 2 x 8^x gy 2 x 9A x 9% x 9A x 9% x sy 2 x OWNER VA *a lA rA rA rA i# rA *A rA rA rA rA rA The Feragil Galleries Mrs. J. Alden Weir Dates On the Beach The Japanese Screen Landscape The Builders Landscape Buildings by the River Unknown 5x7 8^x12 F. K. M. Rehn J. G. Butler, Jr. G. W. Buek 7x10 Mrs. Lloyd Williams GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 3 3125 01035 0094