Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream is an American still-life painter. His artworks depict fruits and desserts in a high lifelike way due to the master combination of intense colors and dramatic lighting.
Background
Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream was born on May 8, 1838 in Sugar Grove village, near Lancaster, Ohio, United States of a family which came here from Pennsylvania at the end of eighteenth century. He was the youngest of three sons of Jonas Alexander Ream, a country lawyer, and Hannah Phillips Ream.
Ream’s paternal grandfather, Sampson, was reputed as a brilliant inventor and hunter who once had captured a live panther.
In his turn, the father of Cadurcis was fascinated by history and classical learning which was reflected in the choice of his sons’ names – all of them were named after famous historical figures. So, the elder Cadurcis’s brother, Morston Constantine, who also became a notable still-life painter, was named in honor of the first Christian emperor of Rome.
A child, Cadurcis Ream lost his only sister, Victoria, in 1843 and his mother who died when the boy was nine.
Ream’s father remarried the following year, so, Cadurcis had a stepmother, Mary Ely who gave birth to three more children, all girls.
Education
Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream received his knowledge in reading and writing at the public schools of Lancaster. Young Cadurcis revealed his first interest for drawing at the age of ten.
Such sources as the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography pretend that Ream was self-taught the painting technics, at least as to his first professional works created in the late 1850s.
The artist ameliorated his artistic experience during all his life studying in London, Paris, Munich and New York.
Career
Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream started his career from representing some of his early works at R. B. Douglas’ store in Cleveland where the artist came from Lancaster about the end of 1850s.
Probably at the age of twenty-eight, Cadurcis moved to New York and sold some of fruit and flower still lives, including Hat with Plums, Flowers and Delaware Grapes, at the auction by Henry H. Leeds & Miner.
From about 1870s, Ream began his collaboration with the chromolithograph firm of Louis Prang and Company of Boston which had a great success due to the reproductions series of multiple painter’s works under the title of Dessert. One of the classical examples of Dessert series was A Regal Dessert.
In New York, Cadurcis Ream along with his elder brother, Morston Constantine, opened a studio in the Union Square district. While in the capital of the United States, Cadurcis took part at the exhibitions organzed by the Brooklyn Art Association and also sent his artworks to London Crystal Palace exposition of 1851.
In 1878, the artist settled down in Chicago where he established a studio with Judge Freer and spent the most part of his successful career and received a worldwide recognition. During the stint at the city, the artist regularly exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the National Academy of the Design, the Brooklyn Art Association, Lydian Art Gallery Club (1878), and the Royal Academy of London. In particular, Ream demonstrated his works at the annual Interstate Industrial Expositions as well as in the First Annual Chicago Art Club in 1883 and in the Calumet Club in 1885.
Reams’ artworks were met kindly there. Such triumph was somehow a result of his well-weighed self-marketing. So, the artist employed several specialists to boost his name and organized the occasional auctions of his paintings in different Wabash Avenue galleries (from the late 1870s to about 1902), at O’Brien Art Galleries (1883), Flersheim’s Chicago gallery, the rooms of auctioneer Barker and Severn, and W. Scott Thurber Art Galleries.
Living in Chicago, Ream often travelled to Europe since the early 1880s. His main destination was Munich, which art school caused a change in his style. The compositions became softer with a strong attention on light effects. One of the classical examples of such changes was his Just Gathered (about 1895, Art Institute of Chicago). During the European trip, the artist also presented his works in Berlin, Munich, at the exhibitions of the Royal Academy in London (1892, 1898) and in Paris.
In the mid-1890s, Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream’s career reached its high point marked by the collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago which accepted his painting for the first time in 1894 for the Art Institute’s Annual Exhibition of American painting. A year later, the artist also participated at the Young Fortnightly Competition there and then he had three personal exhibitions at the Institute the first one of which was organized on December 12, 1895.
Besides still-lifes, Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream also worked in other genres of painting. So, he created and exhibited several well-done landscapes, portraits and figure paintings which received positive reviews from critics, including The Old Apple Woman of Munich, Stuck and a portrait of famous orator Charles Sumner.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream painted less because of the multiple health problems. Among his last exhibitions were an exhibition at the Railway Exchange in 1905, at the Lincoln Center in 1906, Marshall Field & Company Galleries in 1908, and a personal show at the Art Institute in 1909.
Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream was a pushful artist who used various methods to make himself and his art famous, including specially trained promoters and auctions.
Quotes from others about the person
"The King of the Fruit Painters ... men and women love fruit and Mr. Ream paints it as they know it, in perfection." Giselle d’Unger, an art critic
"“Mr. Ream belongs to the ranks of the elder painters reverencing drawing and harmony, painting the beauty of fruit with honesty and an appreciation of color and charm to the eye which has not been surpassed by any artist of his day…His personality is a rare one, his presence lending distinction to art receptions, and he is pointed out as a gentleman of the old school, who loves art for its own sake.” Lena M. McCauley, an art critic
Connections
Cadurcis Plantagenet Ream married Maria Gatzemeyer on 27 May, 1882. She came from Hanover, but had Franco-German roots. A year later, the couple had their only child whose name was Cadurcis Plantagenet, Jr.
Cadurcis Jr. followed somehow father's artistic steps and became a teacher of music at a conservatory in Hanover. During World War I, he moved to Kansas, United States.