Willard Leroy Metcalf Listed American Artist Antique Impressionist Landscape Oil

Description: Willard Leroy Metcalf (c1858-1925) Major Listed American Artist- Antique Original Impressionist Landscape Oil on Canvas. Artist signed bottom right corner. Gold Gilded Wood Frame. Slight Craquelure--EXCELLENT CONDITION! MEASURES: Framed- 22 3/4" x 19" - Unframed- 15 1/2" x 12". PLEASE MAKE OFFERS!!!!-------------------------------------BIOGRAPHY----------------------------- Willard Leroy Metcalf - (c1858-1925)---- Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Willard Metcalf was a well-known East Coast Impressionist painter, teacher, and illustrator who also did painting in the Southwest. He was heralded in 1925 as the "poet laureate of the New England hills."He attended Lowell and Newton public schools, apprenticed to a wood engraver, and studied landscape painting with George Loring Brown. He attended the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and life classes at Lowell Institute. He did much work in the Southwest, and as early as 1881, was in Santa Fe. His illustrations of the Zuni Indians for Frank Cushing's ethnological studies appeared in "Century Magazine" in 1882 and 1883, and other Pueblo illustrations were in "Harper's Magazine."Sales from his illustration work financed Metcalf's travels in Europe from 1883 to 1889. He studied in Paris at the Julian Academy and was exposed primarily to traditional styles of painting until he visited Giverny, the home of Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Metcalf was perhaps the first American to arrive there. However, his word did not show much reflection of this new style until he went to Maine in 1903. From then, his painting, many of them seasonal landscapes, became more vibrant and atmospheric. His interest in Impressionism led him to become one of the founders of The Ten, a group of Boston and New York painters pioneering and promoting that style.He settled in New York City and worked as a magazine and book illustrator and teacher at Cooper Union and the Art Students League, but continued to visit the New England landscape and became one of the leading members of the Old Lyme Art Colony in Old Lyme, Connecticut.Willard Metcalf was the only child born to a blue collar, New England family that frequently moved throughout Maine and Massachusetts, finally settling in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts in 1871.By 1874, Metcalf began to produce his first paintings and attended night classes at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. In 1877, he won a scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In February 1882, Metcalf organized an auction of his art works in order to raise money for European travel. The money earned from the auction, along with funds he had saved from illustration assignments, enabled the young artist to set sail for Paris in September 1883. He remained abroad for more than five years, studying at the Academie Julian and traveling extensively throughout Europe and North Africa.After returning to the United States in 1888, Metcalf finally settled in New York in 1890, earning an income as a portraitist, illustrator, and teacher. Although Metcalf's life in the late 1890s was marked by "fitful person relationships and [artistic] unproductiveness" (Ulrich Hiesinger, Impressionism in America, p. 24), he counted among his friends such artists as J. Henry Twachtman, Robert Reid, and Edward Simmons. In 1898, Metcalf was one of the founding members of The Ten, a group of artists who rebelled against the tight strictures of the National Academy of Design.Metcalf managed eventually to get his problems under control, and enjoyed a long, successful career, despite the occasional re-emergence of bouts of financial troubles, romantic conflicts, and heavy drinking. One indication of his reputation during his lifetime was the sale of Benediction for thirteen-thousand dollars, then the highest price ever paid for a painting by a living American artist.In 1925, a year after the failure of his second marriage, Metcalf suffered a fatal heart attack.Biography from The Columbus Museum of Art, GeorgiaWillard Leroy Metcalf was born July 1, 1858, in Lowell Massachusetts, the son of Greenleaf Willard Metcalf, a violinist with the Boston Orchestra, and Margaret Jan Gallop, a loom tender.(1) In 1863, the Metcalf family moved to Maine, and eight years later, they moved to Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, where Metcalf attended school. His parents believed in supernatural phenomena, and having been told in a séance that their son would become a famous painter, they encouraged him in that direction. By 1874, Metcalf had produced his first paintings, and he attended night classes at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. From 1875 to 1877, he studied under noted landscapist George Loring Brown in Boston and apprenticed with him as a wood engraver. He also studied with Munich-trained Ignaz Gaugengigl at the Lowell Institute. Metcalf won a scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and studied there from 1877 to 1878. He earned a living by painting illustrations for several magazines.From 1881 to 1883, he traveled in Arizona and New Mexico with the journalist Sylvester Baker and Frank Cushing of the Smithsonian Institution to document the Zuni Indians for Harper's and Century magazines. After this trip, Metcalf returned to Boston and exhibited seventy-five paintings with Chase Gallery. The money earned from the exhibition, along with funds he had saved during his employment as an illustrator, allowed him to travel abroad in 1883. Metcalf studied with Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefèbvre at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1886, he traveled with Theodore Robinson to meet Monet in Giverny. However, he was affected only marginally by Impressionism at this time, and he continued to paint in a more academic style. He won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1888.Metcalf returned to the U.S. in late 1888 to share a studio in New York with impressionist painter Robert Reid. Over the next ten years, he taught at various schools, such as Cooper Union, the Art Students League, and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1897, he wrote the statement of secession for The Ten American Painters, who had broken away from the National Academy of Design to exhibit on their own.(2) Although the artists in this group were inspired primarily by Impressionism, Metcalf's paintings at this time did not adhere to that aesthetic.In 1903, he married Marguerite Beaufort Haile, an aspiring actress from New Orleans who was his model.(3) Their life together was characterized by excessive drinking and socializing. In 1904, Metcalf moved to Clark's Cove, Maine. There he stopped drinking, and he began to concentrate on painting the northeastern landscape. He changed his painting style, lightening his palette and adopting the broken brushstrokes characteristic of Impressionism. Metcalf called this period his "Renaissance."In 1904, he returned to New York with twenty-one landscapes, unlike anything he had painted before. Though he maintained a studio in New York City until his death, Metcalf spent much of his time traveling and painting in New England. In 1909, he joined the art colony in Cornish, New Hampshire.(4) He painted at Old Lyme, where he was a prominent member of that artist colony, in the Berkshires, at Chester and Springfield, Vermont, and in Maine, at Casco Bay and the Damariscotta peninsula.Metcalf won a gold medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibition in 1907. He married Henriette Alice McCrea in 1911, and the couple had two children. The artist enjoyed a lengthy, flourishing career, despite the occasional bouts of financial troubles and alcoholism, which ultimately led Henriette to leave him in 1921. Metcalf suffered a heart attack and died on March 9, 1925, in New York.Unlike the other members of The Ten, Metcalf never painted with a completely impressionist technique, but used stylistic elements of both Tonalism and Impressionism. He particularly enjoyed painting seasonal landscapes, and he was well known for his winter scenes.(5) He felt that landscape could be employed in the solution of painting problems, such as exploring white as a color through painting a snow scene.(6)

Price: 18750 USD

Location: Laurel, Maryland

End Time: 2024-11-15T11:53:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD