19 Works, July 1st. is Willard Metcalf's day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #178

Willard Leroy Metcalf (American, 1858 - 1925)

Sunset at Grez

Oil on canvas

34 × 43 5/8 in. (86.2 × 110.6 cm)

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Willard Leroy Metcalf (July 1, 1858 – March 9, 1925) was an American artist born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Metcalf's parents, themselves artistically inclined, early recognized their son's talents and encouraged his proper training. He served first as an apprentice to a wood engraver and later as a student of George Loring Brown (1814-1889), a portrait and landscape painter of considerable reputation at the time. Metcalf also took evening life drawing classes at the Lowell Institute and was the first student to receive a scholarship to the Museum of Fine Arts school, which he attended from 1877 to 1878.

Willard Leroy Metcalf (American, 1858 - 1925)

Zuni Planting Scene, 1882

Gouache on paper

13 5/8 x 15 1/2 in. (34.6 x 39.4 cm)

Museum acquisition, 1965

The careful draughtsmanship that Metcalf learned as a student in Boston served him well when he was commissioned to illustrate series of stories about the Zuni Indians (See above). The fruits of his sojourns in New Mexico and Arizona appeared in Harper's Magazine and Century Magazine in 1882 and 1883. For the next twenty years the artist would continue to earn a portion of his living as an illustrator of books and magazines.

Willard Leroy Metcalf

Dory and Lobster Traps, c. 1881

Oil on canvas

14 by 18 in

Private collection

A dory is a small, shallow-draft boat, about 5 to 7 metres or 16 to 23 feet long. It is usually a lightweight boat with high sides, a flat bottom and sharp bows. They are easy to build because of their simple lines. For centuries, dories have been used as traditional fishing boats, both in coastal waters and in the open sea. More on dories 

Willard Metcalf  (1858–1925)

On the Suffolk Coast, c. 1885

Oil on canvas

26.9 × 45.7 cm (10.6 × 18 in)

Private collection

Suffolk Coastal was a local government district in Suffolk, England. Its council was based in Melton, having moved from neighbouring Woodbridge in 2017. Other towns include Felixstowe, Framlingham, Leiston, Aldeburgh, and Saxmundham.

Along the coast and moving inland are pretty villages, historical hamlets, seaside and market towns. 

From 1883 until 1889 Metcalf lived in France where he studied at the Academie Julian. He traveled through Brittany and Normandy beginning in 1884, sketching and painting near the villages of Pont-Aven and Grez-su-Loing, and within a few years frequenting Giverny.

Willard Metcalf (1858–1925)

The Ballet Dancers or The Dressing Room, c. 1885

Oil on canvas

61 cm × 51 cm

Private collection

Metcalf must have visited the Paris Opera Ballet, which was famously frequented by Edgar Degas and other artists, and there painted the gently voyeuristic The Ballet Dancers or The Dressing Room (1885) (See above).

Just a couple of years later, he painted an early masterpiece, The Ten Cent Breakfast (1887) (See below), which demonstrates his skill not only with a figurative composition, but in tackling the showpieces of glassware, metal and other reflective surfaces. This presumably shows a group of his friends in France, one reading Le Petit Journal, as they drink coffee and smoke over breakfast in their lodgings in Giverny during the winter.

Willard Leroy Metcalf

The Ten Cent Breakfast, c. 1887

Oil on canvas

14.75 x 21.5 in.

Denver Art Museum

He spent periods in summers from 1886 onwards in Giverny, by then the home of Claude Monet, and fast becoming an artists’ colony too. Metcalf had also painted at Grez-sur-Loing, and his landscapes from there are reputedly in Barbizon style.

Willard LeRoy Metcalf (American, 1858–1925)

Street Scene, Tunis, c. 1887

Oil on canvas

35.6 x 24.8 cm (14 x 9 3/4 in.)

Worcester Art Museum

Willard Metcalf (1858–1925)

Street Scene, Tangiers, 1887

Oil on canvas

81.9 x 54.6 cm

Private collection

Willard Metcalf (1858–1925)

Pottery Shop at Tunis, c. 1887

Oil on canvas

12 x 155/8 in. (30.5 x 39.7 cm)

Private Collection

Unlike many of his American classmates at the Academie Julian, Metcalf had yet to submit a painting to the Paris Salon and was still looking for a subject that he felt would win the approval of the jurors. 

Following what had become an established academic tradition of Orientalist views,

Metcalf traveled to Algeria and Tunisia (See above), during the winter of 1887, sketching in both Biskra and Tunis. Upon his return to Paris, Metcalf spent the next year developing his sketches into a large painting, the now lost, eight-foot-wide Marché de Kousse-Kousse`a Tunis, or, as Metcalf called it, "My 'Arab Market.' 

In May, 1887, he wrote his friend, Will Taylor, in Boston, "I'm going in for the Salon myself this trip." Metcalf was rewarded for his efforts the following spring when his painting was not only accepted into the Salon, but was exhibited in a choice location "on the line" and was awarded an Honorable Mention. 

Willard LeRoy Metcalf (American, 1858-1925)

Respite in the Boudoir/ Portrait of a Woman in Black and White, c. 1885

Oil on canvas

15 x 15 in (38.1 x 38.1 cm)

Private collection

Willard Leroy Metcalf

Midsummer Twilight, c. 1890

Oil on canvas

81.6 x 90.2 cm (32 1/8 x 35 1/2 in.)

National Gallery of Art

Willard Metcalf  (1858–1925)

Gloucester Harbour, c. 1895

Oil on canvas

66.4 × 74.3 cm (26.1 × 29.2 in)

Mead Art Museum

View of Smith Cove in East Gloucester, looking towards the inner harbor and downtown in distance.

Upon returning to the United States, Metcalf lived briefly in Boston, then settled in New York City. In addition to painting and illustrating, he taught for a short time at the Art Students League and for ten years at the Cooper Union. On the advice of Childe Hassam, Metcalf visited Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1895. One of the paintings Gloucester Harbor, was awarded the Webb Prize when it was included in a group of his works shown at the Society of American Artists the following year (See above). By this time, in addition to his experiences in France, Metcalf had had considerable exposure to the light-filled, loosely-brushed landscapes of Hassam, John Twachtman, and Julian Alden Weir, and was beginning to move away from his more academic style. These three artists along with Metcalf and six others withdrew from the Society of American Artists in 1897 in order to exhibit together as a group that became known as The Ten.

Willard Metcalf (1858–1925)

Summer at Hadlyme (c 1900)

Oil on canvas

I have no further description, at this time

In the summer of 1900 (or thereabouts), Metcalf visited the historic village of Hadlyme in Connecticut, where he painted this interior.

Willard Leroy Metcalf

On the River, circa 1888

Oil on canvas

21 x 25 ½ in. (53.3 x 64.8 cm.)

Private collection

In preparation for a mural commissioned by a tobacco company, Metcalf traveled to Havana, Cuba in 1902, to make painted studies. That year he also produced a series of notable landscapes, including The Boat Landing (See below) and Battery Park-Spring (See below). These works were characterized by a new freshness of execution and lightness of palette.

Willard Metcalf

Boat Landing

Oil on canvas

32 x 26

Private collection

Willard Metcalf

Battery Park, Spring, c. 1924

Oil on canvas

73.66 x 83.82 cm

Private Collection

The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, is a 25-acre public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City facing New York Harbor. It is bounded by Battery Place on the north, State Street on the east, New York Harbor to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. The park contains attractions such as an early 19th century fort named Castle Clinton; multiple monuments; and the SeaGlass Carousel. More on Battery Park

In 1904, disenchanted with his personal and professional life, Metcalf retreated from the city and went to stay with his parents in Clark's Cove, Maine, near Boothbay and the Damariscotta River. This highly productive visit brought about a turning point in the artist's career. He seemed to develop a greater sensitivity to the natural world around this time and began producing the lush New England landscapes for which he would become best known. Metcalf's paintings effectively captured the beauty and serenity of his surroundings during every season and under varied climatic conditions. 

Willard Metcalf (American, 1858-1925)

The Convalescent, 1904

Oil on canvas

The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Metcalf's model for the murals was Marguerite Beaufort Hailé, a stage performer twenty years his junior, whom the artist would marry in 1903. His marriage to Marguerite dissolved when she eloped from Old Lyme with one of Metcalf's male students.

Willard Metcalf  (1858–1925)

May Night, c. 1906

Oil on canvas

99.5 × 91.7 cm (39.1 × 36.1 in)

National Gallery of Art

The focus of this moonlit nocturne is the late-Georgian-style home of Miss Florence Griswold, the last surviving member of a prominent local shipbuilding family. Forced to take in boarders to survive financially, Miss Florence welcomed several landscape painters to her home, including Childe Hassam.

May Night shows an ethereally dressed figure that surely represents Miss Florence, for whom Metcalf painted the canvas, crossing the shadow-strewn lawn toward a seated companion. Set beneath a canopy of stars, lush trees frame the scene. More on this painting

In 1907 May Night won the Corcoran Gallery of Art's gold medal, was honored with the top purchase prize of $3,000, and became the first contemporary American painting to be bought by that institution. It remains one of Metcalf's best known works and is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art

By the end of 1904 Metcalf once more had a studio in New York City from which he travelled to several locations in the Northeast. A favorite working area for him was Old Lyme, Connecticut with its thriving artist's colony. Many of the painters gathered there at the boarding house of Miss Florence Griswold, depicted in Metcalf's May Night (1906, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), a painting which won him a gold medal when it was first exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery. Another prefered subject was the hills of Cornish, New Hampshire, first visited by the artist in 1909 and returned to several times in the next decade.

Willard LeRoy Metcalf (American, 1858–1925)

Bexhill-on-Sea , c. 1909

Oil on board

22.5 x 15 cm. (8.9 x 5.9 in.)

Private collection

Bexhill-on-Sea is a seaside town and civil parish situated in the county of East Sussex in South East England.

Metcalf continued to receive numerous awards as a mature artist, including a gold medal at the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915. Although he was plagued by poor health, excessive drink, and personal failure toward the end of his life, he produced some of his strongest works in these years. Metcalf died on 8 March 1925 in New York City. More on Willard Metcalf

The Florence Griswold House, where Metcalf visited and stayed in Old Lyme between 1905 and 1907, now houses the largest public collection of Metcalf's paintings and personal artifacts. A number of American museums have collected artworks by Metcalf, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the De Young Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College, the Library of Congress, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Terra Foundation for American Art, Colby College Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Historic Deerfield, Smith College Museum of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum. Works also appear in international collections, such as Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

His ashes were scattered in Cornish, New Hampshire, by his longtime friend Charles Platt.

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