Will Hutchins Paintings

Born in 1878, Colchester, Connecticut, Will Hutchins was the only child of Charlotte Ann Hills and Rev. William T. Hutchins [1849-1917]. A Yale Divinity graduate and eloquent Congregational minister, he was respected as the foremost worldwide authority on the horticulture of the American sweet-pea.

Inheriting his father's earnest timbre, Hutchins earned his BA at Yale in 1901 and the BFA in 1909, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors and class awards for his high-minded essays on art and spirituality. With a natural appeal to the footlights, he became a lifelong thespian. Acting, directing, and producing stage events, his papers include reams of original plays scripts of moralizing, episodic comedies, tragedies, and even a "medieval comedy."

Following his quest for artistic excellence, Hutchins attended the Academie Julien in Paris studying under the legendary Jean Paul Laurens. Another key influence on his career was his time spent with Augustus Vincent Tack at the mural master's studio in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Hutchins became enamored with Tack's views on the mystical undercurrents connecting art, spirituality, and a Christian form of pantheism.

Hutchins fingerprints are traced to a letter published in The New York Times, [Dec. 11, 1913] when an 18th century forgery, the so-called 'Vernon Mona Lisa,' was being claimed as a Leonardo original. With full confidence, Hutchins writes how he and Tack were asked to "examine the painting with care." His brilliant discourse convincingly explained how the Louvre original and Vernon copy were "noticeably dissimilar" using connoisseurship methods of "subtlety" "workmanship" and "style."

Stepping out of the shadows of these Italian Renaissance mentor and models, a new appreciation for Hutchins as an independent artistic personality takes form. Observers, collectors, and kindred spirits will discover that Hutchins' artworks represent a seriously conceptualized body of works. Effortlessly, he improvises the freshness of a plein-air composition from a rocky point near Blue Hill, Maine, a perch nestled within a cypress-clad vineyard among Roman ruins on the 'camapagna', or cold winter light in Deerfield. As demonstrated in the refined paintings and impromptu studies in this exhibition, Hutchins emerges as a fully shaped artistic personality armed with an impressive arsenal of technical skills and talents.

Hutchins' vedute ~views of the Italian countryside~ flow from a long current of American pilgrims seeking Arcadia. In the footsteps of cosmopolitan, cultivated Americans along the 'Grand Tour' from Rome to the Italian lakes, zigzagging across the Apennines across Umbria, Tuscany, the Veneto and Lombardy, Hutchins knew precisely where to go and what to paint. Henry James chronicled this trail to perfection within collected essays of 1861-1900, The Italian Hours, where he describes "the picturesque subject…in Rome, Florence, Siena, there is too much."