The Muse
Newsletter of the Slater Memorial Museum Fall 2010
The Slater Museum and Connecticut Artists: Unbreakable Bonds The Norwich Art School and the Slater Memorial Museum are intimately linked. Had it not been for the Museum, the art school may never have come into existence. Indeed, it was the resource of the collection of plaster cast copies of the Ancient World’s great sculpture that inspired the Trustees of the Norwich Free Academy to establish a professional training institution for artists in 1890. In its earliest years, the Norwich
Robert Porter Keep
Art School held numerous classes in the late afternoons and evenings to serve “adult” students who, as it is today, had to work at “day jobs.” The Slater Memorial building housed the art school. Spaces currently deployed as offices and object storage were studios then. The Mezzanine was also used as a drawing studio and a large skylight in the roof on the north side of the building allowed the desired consistent light into the garret painting studio. By 1906, when Ozias and Hannah Dodge cultivated donor Charles A. Converse to build the Converse Art Building, the Art School had its own structure to house classes and studios. After the dedication of the Slater’s Cast Collection in 1888, NFA established the Norwich Art School to “widen the opportunities to profit by” the new facility. Third NFA Head of School, Robert Porter Keep remarked at the opening of the Art School that “The Art School is designed to promote the general advantage of the community. It offers thorough training to residents of Norwich and others and seeks to promote the application of Art to Industry, and with this latter view, the departments of Design and Modelling in clay have been established and a class in Draughting has been organized.” The Art (Continued on page 3)
A Message from the Director Crash! Bang! Whirr! Squeak! … Scrape, scrape, scrape! That is what I hear daily from about 6:30 a.m. to about 3:00 p.m. just outside the thin (though double pane) glass of my office window and coming directly from the (now uncarpeted) floor overhead. Sometimes … it comes from workers right IN my office! It sounds truly miserable, but this a great example of keeping one’s “eyes on the prize.” The interior invasion into museum galleries of the construction for the Slater’s new accessibility project was not originally anticipated to be so great. However, changes mandated by state and local officials made this necessary, so most galleries are either entirely or partially de-installed. The good news is that this affords museum staff the opportunity to refresh long-standing exhibitions and continue the work of re-interpreting the Slater’s great holdings. I hope you, as I, can envision the happy re-opening with artwork and casts re-installed and glowing! New York City on Your Own! In conjunction with NFA’s Glad and Sorry Committee, the Slater Museum is pleased to offer roundtrip bus service to New York. The city is delightful in the fall! Start your holiday shopping early, catch a show or visit a museum; the day is yours! Saturday, November 6, 2010 Only $35 per person! 7:00 a.m. - NFA departure. Drop off in New York at Central Park, Battery Park, Times Square and Canal Street (drivers will try to accomodated additional requests). 8:00 p.m. - New York departure from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Arrive at NFA by 10:00 or 10:30. Please make checks payable to NFA and send to Slater Museum. The Muse is published up to four times yearly for the members of The Friends of the Slater Memorial Museum. The museum is located at 108 Crescent Street, Norwich, CT 06360. It is part of The Norwich Free Academy, 305 Broadway, Norwich, CT 06360. Museum main telephone number: (860) 887-2506. Visit us on the web at www.slatermuseum.org. Museum Director – Vivian F. Zoë Newsletter editor – Geoff Serra Contributing authors: Vivian Zoë, Leigh Smead and Patricia Flahive Photographers: Leigh Smead, Vivian Zoë The president of the Friends of the Slater Memorial Museum: Patricia Flahive The Norwich Free Academy Board of Trustees: Steven L. Bokoff ’72, Chair Jeremy D. Booty ‘74 Richard DesRoches * Abby I. Dolliver ‘71 Lee-Ann Gomes ‘82, Treasurer Thomas M. Griffin ‘70, Secretary Thomas Hammond ‘75 Theodore N. Phillips ’74 Robert A. Staley ’68 Dr. Mark E. Tramontozzi ’76 David A. Whitehead ’78, Vice Chair *Museum collections committee The Norwich Free Academy does not discriminate in its educational programs, services or employment on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, color, handicapping condition, age, marital status or sexual orientation. This is in accordance with Title VI, Title VII, Title IX and other civil rights or discrimination issues; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991.
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From its inception, the Art School’s faculty has comprised professional artists whose expertise and knowledge of art have enriched their classroom teaching. For well over a century, artists throughout Connecticut have been affiliated with both the art school and the museum and the museum is fortunate to have in its collection works by early and former directors and faculty of the art school. With its re-opening, the museum will feature a new permanent exhibition of work by 20th century Connecticut artists. A number of those to be represented in this will be former directors or faculty of the Norwich Art School. The first “Directress” of the Norwich Art School was Irene Weir (1862-1944), niece of both painters J. Alden Weir and John F. Weir. She studied with J.H. Twachtman and her uncles as well as with her grandfather, Robert Walter Weir.
A drawing class in the Slater Museum’s Cast Gallery c. 1900
School was supported by William A. Slater and other benefactors. Slater clearly saw the deep connection between his greatest gift to the Academy and the Art School, where the principal method of pedagogy was “Drawing from the Antique”, the term used for the process of using the casts as subject matter for “life drawing.” This method was, and still is today, used extensively in University settings like that of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and Yale and Harvard Colleges. Indeed, the Slater’s collection is used by NFA art students as well as those from area colleges and universities including Lyme Academy of Fine Art.
Robert Walter Weir (June 18, 1803 - May 1, 1889) was best known as an educator and historical painter. Considered an artist of the Hudson River School, he was elected to the National Academy of Design 1829. Weir served as an instructor at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York and among his better known works are The Embarkation of the Pilgrims (in the rotunda of the United States Capitol at Washington, D.C.); Landing of Hendrik Hudson; Evening of the Crucifixion; Columbus before the Council of Salamanca; Our Lord on the Mount of Olives; Virgil and Dante crossing the Styx. The Entrance To A Wood (1836), watercolor and graphite on paper, is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In addition, several memoires of the art school, written by former faculty mention the ever-present (and still taught today) textile design; something William Slater would have found important to his family’s businesses in textile manufacture. A prospectus of the Norwich Art School from 1895 – 1896 suggests how the school was intended to implement its curriculum in that “… the studios of the school are in the Memorial building, five rooms being occupied by the various departments. The studios of the day classes, on the upper floors, communicate directly with the Museum, the varied collections of which are accessible daily and are constantly studied and used by the students.”
Robert Walter Weir
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John Ferguson Weir (1841-1926) was a painter and sculptor, became a Member of the National Academy of Design in 1866, and was the first director of the School of Fine Arts at Yale University (1869-1913). Julian Alden Weir (18521919), studied under his father and at the École des Beaux Arts and under Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris. He became a distinguished portrait, figure and landscape painter and was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists 1877. J. Alden Weir was a member of the Cos Cob Art Colony near Greenwich, Connecticut and one of “The Ten,” a loosely-allied group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art organizations, who banded together in 1898 to exhibit their works as a stylistically-unified group. Julian Weir became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1886.
1942 at the age of 80. The Slater Museum owns one work by Irene Weir, a watercolor entitled Coast of Maine. The initial faculty included Alice Van Vechten Brown, who taught “Antique” and life drawing, Henry Watson Kent, Curator of the Slater Memorial Museum who taught art history, Edith Woodman, who taught modeling and design, and Isaiah W. Olcott who taught drafting. In 1891 Irene Weir left her directorship position to spend more time painting. Norwich Art School Director from 1891 until 1897, Alice Van Vechten Brown studied painting at the Art Students’ League in New York from 1881 to 1885 under William Merritt Chase and Abbott Thayer. The daughter of a Darmouth College faculty member who became president of Hamilton College, Miss Brown was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. Originally planning to be a studio artist, a family health issue changed her focus to art history and art education. She was assistant director of the Norwich Art School in 1891 under Miss Weir and was remembered in a history (1938?) of the Art School attributed to Charlotte Fuller Eastman as working to cultivate fraternity among the earliest students. Miss Brown used the Cast Collection to teach not only drawing but seeing: the ability to train the eye to observe shape, form, light and shadow.
Miss Weir assumed the role of director of the Norwich Art School in 1890 before she had completed her own training. She remained in the position only one year, but may have continued to teach here. According to an un-attributed obituary, she received her bachelor of fine arts degree from Yale University in 1906 and from 1923 to 1927 was a student at the École des Beaux Arts Americaine at Fountainbleau. Also early in her career, she wrote The Greek Painters' Art, (1905) which in addition to interpreting the original figures from which many of the casts in the Slater's collection were taken, is a "Grand Tour" style travelogue memoir typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Irene Weir established the School of Design and Liberal Arts in New York City in 1917. Her position as director of this school appears to have overlapped her studies in Paris. She also served as director of the Fine Arts Department of the School of Ethical Culture in New York. Miss Weir resided for many years at the Women’s University Club in New York City where her painting, Garden of Hesperides hung. She painted a portrait of Madame Marie Curie for New York’s Memorial Hospital and for the new chapel of the West Side Prison, she painted a mural entitled Mother and Babe with Jesus in
Coast of Maine, by Irene Weir (1862-1944), watercolor, n.d.
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In 1897 Brown took a position at Wellesley College to re-organize the art department, with a particular focus on the art history courses. (Continued on page 6)
Cast Conservation Progress Early this year, the David T. Langrock Foundation awarded the Slater Museum a grant of $ 10,000 to make much-needed conservation work on the Slater’s copy of the Pergamon Frieze possible. Even before the NFA board’s decision to move ahead with the accessibility project, this was a priority project. Many years ago, but well after the casts were assembled, a display case was installed on the top of the Frieze’s cornice, running the entire length of it. The case was very well-built, of heavy, early pine and includes five large plate glass doors. The case was then loaded with hundreds of wonderful artifacts – many themselves quite heavy – such as silver, ivory, beaded bags and jewelry. Over the years, evidence that the cornice was beginning to separate from the Cast Gallery’s interior columns and lean forward began to emerge. Naturally, the concern is both for the safety of visitors and the protection and restoration of the New cracks are evident in the Frieze’s cornice piece itself. Couple all of this with the inevitable vibration from the construction to begin in April, and the issue becomes urgent! Thanks to the grant from the Langrock Foundation, Slater’s Cast Conservator, Robert Shure, working with NFA Facilities staff member Dave Girardin and Friends of Slater member ad volunteer Barry Wilson, the massive piece has been examined, inspected, braced and reinforced with turn buckles to stabilize the cornice. Mercifully, the cast has l been deemed safe, and it is planned that the display case will be re-installed when the construction work is complete. We are immensely grateful to the David T. Langrock Foundation for this and past grants to the Slater Museum and thank Bob, Dave and Barry.
Pergamon Frieze turnbuckle center (left), the team works to add supports to the Frieze (right).
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Construction Update Throughout the summer, there has been a whir of activity every day, six days each week in the cavern between the Slater, Converse, Norton and Alumni Gym buildings. Truly remarkable progress has created the distinct outline and concrete walls of the basement of the new building. Steel vertical and horizontal beams are in place. The side of Norton Gym to become an interior wall in the new Atrium has been veneered with manufactured stone and windows have been uncovered on the north side of the museum allowing light into exhibition spaces In addition to long-blocked light, some walls have been demolished and new walls have been introduced into the Gualtieri Gallery and on the North side of the Mezzanine. The latter will make it possible to install an expanded version of the very popular exhibition Crocker’s Norwich: The Long Nineteenth Century and to further the work begun on the Norwich Galleries. The former will allow two new exhibitions: African Art from the collections of Paul Zimmerman and Lewis and Betty Atherton; and Connections: 20th Century Connecticut Artists. As with any project of this magnitude, there have been delays. The complexity of keeping students safe and classes going on without disruption has been less of an issue than those related to materials delivery and discoveries of “repair” opportunities that cannot wait for later attention. All on campus have been remarkably positive about the anticipated result. View of the construction project from the Slater Museum offices
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In this effort, she successfully adapted and introduced methods she had developed in Norwich. According to The Story of Wellesley by Florence Converse, “all students are required to recognize and indicate the characteristic qualities and attributes of the great masters and the different schools of paintings by sketching from photographs of the pictures studied.” Enrollment soared and Wellesley became the first American college with an art history major. Her duties included serving as director of Wellesley’s Farnsworth Museum which she also overhauled. She purged objects not of museum quality and instituted a loan exhibition program. Brown established one of the
earliest museum studies courses (1911) in the Nation and the first course (1927) on “modern art.” According to the Wellesley College website, “Alice Van Vechten Brown, appointed in 1897 as museum director and head of the art department, modeled the museum after the populist South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London. In keeping with Wellesley's emphasis on learning and community service, Brown described the museum as ‘a place for classes and students, but also a place in which the public may linger and enjoy; a place to bring children, and in which 6
At Yale School of Art, Ozias Dodge had received an award for “Masterly Drawing” and a scholarship to continue his studies at the Art Students League in New York. While in New Haven, as in his years in high school, Ozias worked teaching summer classes to support himself and pay tuition. Influenced by the Realists and the Barbizon artists, Dodge’s work is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian Institute, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Library of Congress. Much of his artwork celebrates the natural and built environment as well as ordinary people who were essential to making life possible: fishermen, farmers and peddlers. His work often features farm workers, rivers, woods and fields unmarred by urban development. Despite the fact that Norwich had become an urban industrial metropolis by the time Dodge arrived in 1897, his markedly nostalgic and lingering rural vision extends an essentially earlier aesthetic. Dodge’s oil paintings Corn Huskers and Apple Gatherers, in the gallery in the northwest corner and on the north wall, respectively, are reminiscent of the work of Millet and Corot, painters whose work he would have studied in and around Paris.
Wellesley College, early 20th century.
teachers may study; a model to every college student of what a museum may do for any town in the land.’" As research for her 1914 A Short History of Italian Painting (with William Rankin), she worked in Italy (1905-1907) with materials and techniques used by the masters, applying her pedagogical method to her own learning process. In her preface, she gives additional thanks to several other scholars, including Wellesley professors and museum professionals from Wellesley and the Worcester Art Museum. While Miss Weir’s book began in a chatty, informal manner followed by extensive history and appreciative description, Ms. Brown’s is a work of strict factual scholarship without aesthetic analysis. Alice Van Vechten Brown served 33 years as head of Wellesley’s Art Department.
It may have been as the result of fortune in marrying that Ozias came to Norwich. The family into which he married was old and well-respected. Robert Porter Keep, a friend of the bride’s
Brown was succeeded by Ozias Dodge, an honor graduate of Yale School of Fine Arts. He had been the Director of the Victoria School of Art in Nova Scotia and had studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and under Jean-Léon Gérôme. During his tenure at the Norwich Art School, he befriended Charles A. Converse, an Academy donor. Through Mr. Converse’s will, money was bequeathed to construct the Converse Art Gallery, which was officially dedicated in 1906. The new building was connected by an arched bridge to the Slater Memorial and housed an exhibition gallery above and spacious art classrooms below.
Study for Apple Gatherers, Ozias Dodge (1868-1925), oil on board, n.d.
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In 1910, Ozias left the Academy to pursue the refinement and promotion of his two-color etching process. According to his wife Hannah’s memoir, “he wanted to perfect a process for fine newspaper reproductions and … he dreamed of enriching the quality of the original prints which were then appearing in the art field.” To this end, Ozias created “Norwich Film” which could be turned into “a perfect negative.” Paper used in the process was made in Belgium. Ozias was making art prints himself at the time, so his work was truly that of an artist and a businessman. Both the U. S. Library of Congress and the New York Public Library acquired portfolios of his etchings, and he began to enjoy considerable respect and acclaim for the artistry and technology of his twocolor process. He was invited to James MacNeil Whistler’s Art Club in London and to France. In 1908, Ozias published Experiments in Producing Printing Surfaces.
Oziaz Dodge (center) overseeing his drawing class, early 20th century.
father and third superintendent of the Norwich Free Academy, was a guest at the wedding. Keep invited Ozias to Norwich to lecture about French painting. In his presentation, Dodge used stereopticon slides, an innovation which portended his later interest in marrying art and science. A catalogue from Ozias’ last year at the Academy (1910) shows him teaching from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. “daily,” with two overlapping classes. In addition, on Thursdays, he taught from 2:30 to 4:30 and on Tuesdays and Fridays from 7 to 9:00 p.m. He taught “Preparatory, Antique, Life and Illustration.” Ozias also began a series of evening lecture demonstrations about drawing for any and all who came. The day classes were intended for the traditional student, while evening classes were clearly directed toward students who worked during the day. There were no age restrictions. The school embraced a classical approach, yet aimed to lead to gainful employment.
The Academy trustees appointed George Albert Thompson (1868-1938) to succeed Dodge. Best known for Connecticut landscapes and coastal scenes including atmospheric nocturnes, George Thompson frequently painted around Bridgeport, Mystic, and New Haven. He was an art teacher at the Yale School of Fine Arts where he had studied. He was also a student of John LaFarge and studied in Paris. Thompson exhibited at the National Academy, the Pennsylvania Academy and the Corcoran Gallery biennials and was, with Charles Davis, one of the original members of the Mystic Art Association in 1913. He served as its president in 1931 when the gallery was built and continued to exhibit there until his death.
An exhibition arranged by Henry Watson Kent, first curator of the Slater Museum, included seven oil paintings by Ozias. An unattributed article, possibly from an 1899 issue of the Norwich Bulletin, said that Ozias “is essentially a ‘plein air’ man. He tries to see … with fresh eyes. … He appreciates high lights and glowing color, … and feels the charm of atmosphere. We can recognize the art of a nation….”
While in Mystic, Thompson became fully involved in the town’s art community. He taught adult art students as well as children in the local public schools. He taught many grade levels at Mystic Academy, where each child was asked to bring a box of eight Crayola Crayons and to work diligently at the basics of drawing. 8
Paris. This would mark the beginning of a personal tradition wherein Mrs. Eastman returned every summer, creating marvelous drawings as she sat in the many squares that comprise Paris neighborhoods. People going about their business, riding trolleys and shopping at street markets populate these small, intimate drawings. Mrs. Eastman’s work was displayed at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. and in exhibitions of the American Watercolor Club and the New York Watercolor Club. Of French Huguenot descent, she spent time in South Carolina and returned to Paris regularly. Mrs. Eastman often used her students as models. A number of alumni have returned to the Slater later in life, or their children arrive in their stead, bringing along a photograph and asking to see a painting they recall or about which they were told. Invariably, it is a remembered or imagined portrait painted by Mrs. Fuller of a student. Sadly, though there are many of these in the Slater’s collection few sitters, if any are identified.
Pendleton Shipyard, Mystic, George Albert Thompson, oil on canvas, 1925
According to the Mystic Art Association, Thompson was well known for his portraiture and landscape paintings. An un-attributed January 10, 1910, review of an exhibition of 28 paintings stated that “The general impression one gains in looking around the walls is of a vigorous and same art, modern in its tendencies but not entangled with any fads or movements of the extremists. … The important thing is that he knows how to paint. His composition is sound and his color has richness and depth.” The work of G. Albert Thompson was an important part of a MAA Retrospective Exhibition in 1996.
Mrs. Eastman built a studio in Norwich in Coit Lane, a structure still standing and occupied as a home (by NFA faculty). Interestingly, she took a summer leave of absence in 1917 to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, an institution with an extensive cast collection, intended for the exclusive use by its students. She was replaced in 1943 by Margaret L. Triplett about whom we will learn in the next issue.
Charlotte Fuller Eastman (1878-1965) studied at the Norwich Art School from 1897 to 1899 and then at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (18991901). She worked in Boston in book illustration, traveling in Europe and Great Britain for the publisher. Charlotte met her husband in Boston and from a young wife became a young widow as the result of an accident. Moving to Chicago to live with her late husband’s family, she studied at the Chicago Art Institute and continued her work in book design and illustration. While visiting family in Norwich, Charlotte Fuller Eastman was invited by Ozias Dodge to return to her native city and alma mater to teach as a substitute from 1909 to 1911. In 1912 Charlotte returned to become head of the school and in 1926, she took her first sabbatical, traveling to
Self Portrait, Charlotte Fuller Eastman, Oil on panel, n.d.
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The Slater On Display in New London! The Slater Museum’s Norwich Harbor will be featured in an exhibition at the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London. Entitled Members Collect: The Thrill of the Chase, the exhibition runs from October 16, 2010 to March 20, 2011. It will open with a reception on October 16 at 5:00 p.m. to which all Friends of Slater are invited. Unless one is an intimate friend, it is not often that the opportunity arises to view the prize possessions from very private collections. But that is exactly what the Lyman Allyn Art Museum is going to do with the upcoming exhibition Members Collect: The Thrill of the Chase. It will feature extraordinary works of art from the collections of Museum members who live in the Norwich Harbor , oil on canvas, c. 1860 by John region of New London, Connecticut east to Westerly, Rhode IsDenison Crocker land. Landscapes, portraiture, still life…abstract, expressionist, realistic…paintings, sculpture, multi-media. – captivating pieces from impassioned collectors. The Slater Museum had this prized painting conserved especially for the exhibition. The work was performed by Lance Mayer and Gay Myers over the summer and, in addition to enhancing its beauty, makes the painting more stable, ensuring its longevity. The Friends of Slater encourages attendance at this event of a sister organization, where at least a taste of the Slater is available during our hiatus.
SERVICE CHANGE REQUESTED