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JANICE SACHSE: REGIONALISM AND ARTISTIC INNOVATION BY GLAUCO ADORNO
Janice Sachse was a regional painter who felt deeply connected to the landscapes and people of Louisiana. Inspired by her surroundings, she recorded scenes from her home state with expressionist brushstrokes and a distinctly modern sensibility. Her portraits of loved ones and views of the marshlands afforded her opportunities for always dynamic experimentations with artistic techniques, a quest which she kept pursuing throughout her artistic life. Janice’s career as an artist started in the 1930s, but it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that her work gained national recognition. Her subjects combined regional themes with a modernist approach to figurative compositions, still lifes, and landscapes. A native of New Orleans, she was born Janice Rubenstein in 1908. Her father, Isaac H. Rubenstein, was a well-traveled man and raised her in a cultured environment that was appreciative of art. He served in the United States Army under Theodore Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War and had lived in London and Paris before settling in Louisiana.1 Also in 1908, Rubenstein purchased a commercial establishment in Baton Rouge. After a year acquiring merchandise in New York City with his family, Rubenstein was able to transform the business—called Rosenfield’s—in a major department store in South Louisiana. Janice was still a small child when the family permanently relocated to the state’s capital. Janice’s uncle, who lived next door, subscribed to the French periodical L’Illustration, which often included photographic reproductions of acclaimed European artworks. These reproductions were Janice’s first contact with the great painters of the world. The aspiring artist was deeply touched when she realized that she could appreciate celebrated Impressionist masterworks even without being able to read French.2 Her bold personality was already evident in her early years. In the early 1920s, Janice was expelled from University High School in Baton Rouge for drawing a caricature of the director on the blackboard.3 When her parents enrolled her in another school, they allowed her to take private art lessons. She learned basic drawing and painting techniques, and was introduced to drawing from casts and, occasionally, from live models.4 Janice’s formal artistic education, however, started at LSU. In 1921, Janice’s father participated in the effort to find a new home for the expanding Louisiana State University.5 In order to secure the land where the current campus would be built,
Isaac H. Rubenstein—along with other businessmen in Baton Rouge—purchased part of the estate. They held the property collectively until the state government could gather the funds to acquire the land. In the fall of 1925, Janice enrolled as a freshman in the LSU College of Arts & Sciences, just three years after the new campus was inaugurated.6 Here, she developed a close working relationship with New York-born muralist Conrad Albrizio, who taught painting at LSU at the time.7 An accomplished artist, Albrizio was a key figure in Janice’s artistic education.8 As Janice later recalled, while he did not hesitate to sometimes harshly criticize her work, it was he who taught her “everything she knows.”9 Starting in the fall semester of 1926, Janice attended the Newcomb College School of Art in New Orleans.10 Through the new educational setting she came in contact with the New Orleans Arts and Crafts Club, a group of artists and intellectuals who strove to introduce European ideas about modern art to the South.11 Founded in 1922, the purpose of the club was to “stimulate the interest in the arts, encouraging local artists and craftsmen and providing technical instruction for students.”12 The club rapidly gained popularity, attracting painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians to the French Quarter—where they met—helping to transform a neighborhood in decline into a cultural center.13 During the second half of the 1920s, when Janice frequented the club, the group had established its headquarters at 520 Royal Street, where it provided studio space and exhibition galleries to its members. Members also ran the club’s art school, which offered lessons in drawing, painting, sculpture, and crafts.14 During the 1930s, following the years of the Great Depression, the enterprise was financially supported by art enthusiast Sarah Henderson, who owned the school’s building and who served as president of the club’s board.15 The New Orleans Arts and Crafts Club’s efforts culminated with the visit of Gertrude Stein, who, in 1935, delivered a lecture in the club’s headquarters.16 An American expatriate writer in Paris, Stein was famous for promoting the careers of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Ernest Hemingway, among others. The New Orleans Arts and Crafts Club enabled Janice to meet several likeminded Louisiana modernist artists, such as Alberta Kinsey, Caroline Durieux, Paul Ninas, and the Woodward Brothers.17 The ability to exchange ideas was crucial during the formative years of the young artist’s career. Membership in this circle allowed Janice to shape her identity as a modern artist of the South. In 1927, Janice came back to the LSU art program, and during that term, at only 19 years of age, she married Baton Rouge attorney Victor Sachse.18 The couple had two sons: Victor Sachse Jr., born in 1930, and Harry Sachse, who was born in 1934. She continued to produce artwork, all the while attending to her duties as a young mother with two small children. A home studio enabled her to wake up early to paint while others were still asleep, pause for breakfast, and then return to the easel when her husband left for the office.19 Given this routine, it is not surprising that domestic themes occupy an important place in Janice’s art.