Willard Metcalf was an American artist, who represented Impressionism movement. He was mostly known for his New England landscapes. Also, he was a member of "The Ten" group.
Background
Willard Metcalf was born on July 1, 1858, in Lowell, Massachusetts, United States. He was a son of Greenleaf Willard and Margaret Jane (Gallop) Metcalf. His family moved to a farm in Maine in 1863, but eventually returned to Massachusetts, purchasing a home in Cambridgeport in 1872.
Education
Metcalf's parents, themselves artistically inclined, early recognized their son's talents and encouraged his proper training. Initially, Willard was an apprentice to a wood engraver. Later, he was a student of George Loring Brown, a portrait and landscape painter of considerable reputation at the time.
Moreover, Metcalf 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 (present-day School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts), which he attended from 1877 to 1878.
During the period from 1883 till 1889, Metcalf lived in France, where he studied at the Académie Julian under the tutelage of Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre.
Willard began his career as an illustrator. 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. 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.
Since 1884, the artist traveled through Brittany and Normandy, sketching and painting near the villages of Pont-Aven and Grez-sur-Loing. Also, it was at that time, that Willard visited Giverny with several American colleagues, including Theodore Robinson. In winter of 1887, Metcalf took a trip to North Africa, during which he discovered the subject, that inspired him to paint "Marche de Kousse-Kousse a Tunis". This work received an honorable mention at the Paris Salon the following year.
Upon returning to the United States, Metcalf lived briefly in Boston and then settled down in New York City. In addition to painting and illustrating, he held a post of a teacher and taught for a short time at the Art Students League of New York and for ten years at the Cooper Union.
In 1895, the artist visited Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he created new paintings, but ceased to work as an illustrator. At the time, Metcalf led a lavish social life, that included heavy drinking. Also, it was approximately at that time, that the artist began to move away from his more academic style.
In 1899, Metcalf joined his friends Robert Reid and Edward Simmons in painting murals for a New York courthouse. In this genre, he was no more successful, than he had been as an illustrator and portraitist. Metcalf's model for the murals was Marguerite Beaufort Hailé, a stage performer twenty years his junior, whom the artist would marry in 1903.
In 1902, Willard, in order to make sketches for a mural, commissioned by a tobacco company, traveled to Havana, Cuba. The same year, the artist also created a series of well-known landscapes, including "The Boat Landing" and "Battery Park-Spring". These works were characterized by a new freshness of execution and lightness of palette.
In 1904, disenchanted with his personal and professional life, Metcalf 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. Although not as poetic or ethereal as his friend Twachtman's representations of the brooks, fields and woods, Metcalf's paintings effectively captured the beauty and serenity of his surroundings during every season and under varied climatic conditions. Despite his use of the divided brushstrokes and bright palette of the impressionists, his images continued to emphasize three-dimensional form and fidelity to the natural subject.
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. Also, Metcalf frequently visited the Cornish Art Colony, centered in the villages of Plainfield and Cornish, New Hampshire, between 1909 and 1921. While at the colony, he painted around 35 landscapes, including "Blow-Me-Down" (1911), "The Village-September Morning" (1911), "The White Veil" (1909) and the lovely, masterful "Cornish Hills" (1911). Moreover, the pieces he produced in the Cornish area brought an unusual time of social, critical and commercial success in his life, so often filled with personal tumult.
During the last years of his life, the artist traveled extensively in search of painting sites. He visited many countries, including France and Norway. During the last five years of his life, his productivity was decreased due to a period of heavy drinking. In 1925, Willard died during a large exhibition of his work, held by Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
In 1903, Willard married Marguerite Beaufort Hailé, a stage performer. In 1907, his marriage to Marguerite dissolved, when she eloped with one of Metcalf's male students. In 1911, the artist married Henriette Alice McCrea-Metcalf, a translator. Their marriage produced two children. In 1920, the couple divorced.
May Night: Willard Metcalf at Old Lyme
This catalogue includes essays by Dr. Bruce W. Chambers, the Director of the Willard L. Metcalf Catalogue Raisonne Project and by the Museum's former Curator, Amy Ellis.