William Merritt Chase

Portrait of Alice Gerson

c. 1883

An influential critic, writer and teacher, Philip Leslie Hale was an American Impressionist with an experimental, avant-garde approach to painting. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of author Edward Everett Hale and the younger brother of artist Ellen Day Hale, Philip was raised in a lively intellectual atmosphere. He probably received his first artistic training from his paternal aunt Susan Hale, after which he entered the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School under Edmund Tarbell, an American Impressionist painter who greatly influenced Hale’s style. A year later in 1884, the young artist moved to New York City, where he enrolled at the Art Students League and studied under Kenyon Cox and J. Alden Weir. There, his fellow students included Theodore Butler and William Howard “Peggy” Hart. In 1887, Hale traveled to Paris with Theodore Butler and Susan Hale, where he furthered his artistic training at Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian. During this first year, he studied with Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Gustave Boulanger and Henri Lucien Doucet...

Like his mentor the great American Impressionist William Merritt Chase, Charles Webster Hawthorne was equally admired in his own day as both a talented painter and a highly influential instructor. Hawthorne first studied with Chase at his Shinnecock Summer School of Art, which was specifically dedicated to open-air landscape painting. Not only did Hawthorne quickly absorb all the principles of Chase’s instruction, but he also became determined to found his own school based on the same model. In 1899 Hawthorne discovered the small fishing village of Provincetown on the furthermost tip of Cape Cod, and after purchasing a large house on Miller Hill, he opened the Cape Cod School of Art, which proved to be an immediate success. While Hawthorne’s own approach as a teacher owed much to Chase, he developed a distinctly unique painting style and teaching method that defies easy categorization. He was greatly impressed with the work of Franz Hals, which he was exposed to during his trip to Holland in the summer of 1898. Hawthorne was particularly struck by Hals’ Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almhouse, and from this work he absorbed a deep appreciation for the power of human expression and an economy of technique. Hawthorne applied these lessons to his own realistic portraits of Provincetown fishermen and their families; these works have a somber, almost melancholy quality to them, and they reveal a sense of the vulnerability of the human condition. Stylistically, Hawthorne maintained a life-long commitment to the importance of color. “Beauty in art,” he said, “is the delicious notes of color one against the other.” Of equal importance to him was capturing the effects of light. He told his students: “Everything in painting is a matter of silhouettes. Hold light against shadow, not light against light.” He developed a particular technique of layering glazes and texturing the surface of his paintings, which heightens the relationship between the colors and creates a light effect that seems to emanate from within the painting. These stylistic techniques in combination with his straightforward compositions of one or more figures shown at close range create the hallmarks of Hawthorne’s best paintings. Hawthorne and his wife Ethel’s 1905-1907 trip to Italy did not result in a drastic impact on his artistic style. Nonetheless, it proved to be a transformative and enlightening voyage. The extensive trip was financed by collectors who paid in advance for a painting to be produced abroad. On the trip, Hawthorne explored the work of old masters and was struck particularly by the paintings of Titian, which to Hawthorne, demonstrated the master’s true adoration for the act of painting itself through his handling of paint and color. Where Titian’s paintings...

Excerpted from The Painter's Journey: The Art of William S. Robinson, The Cooley Gallery Born in East Gloucester, Massachusetts, William S. Robinson became a talented and successful...

Elsa, 1915 Charcoal on paper, 14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm) Signed and dated lower left: Daniel Garber / 1915 Provenance The artist; Estate of the artist, 1958; Tanis Garber Page,...

JAMES CARROLL BECKWITH (1852-1917) Nita Oil on panel 10 1/16 x 7 5/8 inches Signed lower right Inscribed, “Background of/Nita Sewell/1897,” verso James Carroll Beckwith enjoyed enor...

Label verso: "Portrait of a Lady / Oil / MUC / Beatrice Whitney Van Ness / unsigned / size 30h x 25w ". From the estate of the artist. Beatrice Whit...

James Allen St. John (American, 1872-1957) Portrait of a lady, Early 20th Century 7 3/4 x 5 1/4 in. Framed dimensions: 17 1/2 x 15 x 3in. James Allen Saint John was born in Chicago,...

Very finely painted late 19th or early 20th century portrait painting. Oil on canvas. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a giltwood molding. Excellent conditio...