James Carroll Beckwith was a landscape, portrait and genre artist whose style ranged from academic to impressionist.
Background
James Beckwith was the son of Charles and Martha (Owen) Beckwith, who had moved from the eastern states to Hannibal, Missouri, where James Carroll was born on September 23, 1852. His father later became a prominent wholesale grocer in Chicago, and James's boyhood was spent in that city.
Education
James's tendencies toward art manifested themselves early and were encouraged by his mother who possessed much personal taste and charm. He began his studies at the Chicago Academy of Design in 1868 under Walter Shirlaw, but these were cut short by the great Chicago fire of 1871. This event altered the family fortunes. His father, who up to this time had frowned upon an artistic career, now gave his consent, and Beckwith went to New York. Entering the classes of the National Academy of Design under Prof. L. E. Wilmarth, he worked there for two years. In October 1873 he sailed for Paris. Here he entered the National School of Fine Arts, studying in its various classes and especially in the Cours Yvon.
Career
At this time in the Paris art world also appeared the painter Carolus Duran (whose real name was Charles Durand), who opened a studio where a chosen group of the younger men sought his instruction. Among them were John Singer Sargent and Beckwith, who became fast friends. Taking a studio at 73 rue Notre Dame des Champs, they lived and worked together during the four succeeding years. Carolus Duran associated them with himself in the decoration of a ceiling at the Luxembourg Palace, of which the subject was "The Glory of Marie de Medicis, " introducing their portraits, with his own, in the work. Beckwith exhibited at the Salon of 1877 the "Head of an Old Man, " and to the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 sent "The Falconer, " afterward exhibited in America.
Returning to Chicago in 1878, he set up his easel in that city, so as to be near his family, and began to paint portraits. After the intense art life of Paris, Chicago had a most depressing effect on the enthusiastic young painter and as he wrote in 1882, "I determined to come on to New York, sink or swim, survive or perish, rather than rot in the miserable mediocrity of a Western Studio. " He came to New York in 1879, and, his uncle Mr. Sherwood having erected the Sherwood Studios at the corner of Sixth Ave. and West Fifty-seventh St. , he took a studio and worked there during the thirty succeeding years. At this time, a number of the younger artists had returned from foreign schools, and, meeting with a rather cool welcome from the conservative elements of the old Academy of Design, formed the Society of American Artists, a rallying point for the advanced elements. Beckwith was one of its most active members.
A corresponding means of education, the Art Students' League of New York, was organized, the most efficient of the younger men becoming instructors. Beckwith at first had charge of the antique classes and later of the life classes. The effect of his teaching was evidenced in the success of many who worked there under his instruction during the last two decades of the century. It gave nothing to be unlearned, whether students proceeded to European art centers or remained to develop their art in this country. At the same time Beckwith became one of New York's most efficient and popular portrait painters. At the National Academy Exhibition of 1879, he had shown a portrait of Mrs. R. H. McCurdy which was much remarked, as were succeeding contributions to the Academy and to the Society of American Artists' Exhibitions.
Several summers were spent in Europe studying and making some remarkable copies of Velasquez, Van Dyck, Rubens, and the Venetians. Among prominent New Yorkers whom he painted was LeGrand B. Canon, who had been useful in financial crises of the Government during the Civil War (1861 - 1865). This portrait is now at the Century Association and a replica is at the Union League Club. A series of the captains of Company K, 7th Regiment, included the portrait of Capt. Joseph Lentilhon, in service uniform, with drawn sword passed under his folded left arm. That of John Murray Mitchell in crimson tunic and white gauntlet was painted for the New York Fencing Club, of which Beckwith was president for sometime. Another is that of William Walton, the artist and writer, exhibited in New York, Paris, and other cities and now at the Century Association. Other sitters were Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Thomas P. Janvier, Paul du Chaillu the African explorer, and William M. Chase the painter. Another of Luisita Leland, exhibited at Knoedler's in 1909, is of the utmost brilliance in light, color, and refined design.
At the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, Beckwith decorated one of the domes of the Liberal Arts Building, typifying Electricity as a sprightly genius at the apex, throwing forked flashes to female figures in the pendentives, representing the Dynamo, the Arc Light, the Telegraph, and the Telephone. The wrecker's axe destroyed the originals with other similar works after the Exhibition, though the preparatory studies may remain.
At the village of Onteora in the Catskills, where Beckwith had a summer home and studio, he painted "The Blacksmith, " purchased for the National Gallery in Washington. In all that could advance the interests of art and artists in New York and throughout the country, Beckwith's activity was unbounded. He was among the earliest promoters of the Art Guild of New York and president of the Free Art League, as a result of whose efforts examples of original works from abroad now come and go without restraint for the better education of artists and public. In the Artist's Fund Society of New York, he worked for the benefit of needy artists and their families, leaving a generous bequest for this purpose. He was an active member of the Century Association of New York, and of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was elected a National Academician in 1894, and was a member of the American Water Color Society and of a number of other art clubs throughout the country.
In 1910, James and his wife went to Europe, visiting France, Belgium, and Italy, and bringing back a series of fresh figure and landscape subjects. Historic monuments and the Châteaux fountains and statues, especially of Versailles, were portrayed with a freshness which vividly recalled their ancient splendors. By taste, education, and practise Beckwith believed in precise design and had no sympathy with careless, bizarre, or slovenly work that invoked originality as its excuse.
As a member of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the National Academy of Design, he sought to increase their educational usefulness. After 1911 he lived and had his studio at the Hotel Schuyler, 59 West Forty-fifth St. , New York. He exhibited in the Royal Academy at London in 1892, at the Chicago World's Fair, and at other American and European Expositions.
Beckwith worked unceasingly, though his health was never robust. Less than three months before he died, he published a letter, "Right Art Training, " in the New York Times (1917), deploring the extravagancies encouraged in various schools. He died from a sudden heart attack in New York, October 24, 1917, and his funeral at St. Thomas's Church was attended by the leaders in New York's art, literary, and social life, with which he had so actively associated for nearly forty years.
Achievements
Views
Quotations:
"Do not imagine that there is any short road to mastery of this most difficult profession, but look at the methods and example of our ally France, from whom the American people are just beginning to realize how much they can learn. "
Membership
James Beckwith was a member of the Art Guild of New York; the Free Art League; the Artist's Fund Society of New York; the Century Association of New York; the National Institute of Arts and Letters; the American Water Color Society; the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art; the National Academy of Design.
Personality
Slight in figure, James Beckwith was quick and elegant in his movements. His features were finely modeled, with a broad brow and ample coronal development. Deep-set gray eyes looked out with penetrating kindliness. A small mustache and a touch of pointed beard aided a certain resemblance to De Champaigne's portrait of Richelieu, while Van Dyck's portrait of Van der Gheest, sometimes called Gevartius, in the National Gallery at London, looks strangely like him. His diction was precise, clear, and musically resonant; with the distinction of manner characteristic of a seventeenth-century cavalier, he was more genially occupied with the activities and life of his own day.
Quotes from others about the person
As Samuel Isham remarked, "Beckwith has kept the quality of his master's handling better than almost any other of his pupils. It does not change his personality; it does not make him a copyist, but it enables him to say what he has to say easily and rather sumptuously with heavy impasto, rich shadows and broad strong handling. "
Connections
James Beckwith was married on June 1, 1887, to Bertha Hall, daughter of a prominent New York merchant, and her full-length portrait was shown in the Paris Exposition of 1900.