Old Jail Art Center

Lucien Abrams AN IMPRESSIONIST FROM TEXAS

Lucien Abrams AN IMPRESSIONIST FROM TEXAS

An exhibition organized by The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Cover (DETAIL) Untitled [City Waterfront], n.d. & Frontispiece Oil on canvas, 18.25 x 21.25 inches Private Collection

Lucien Abrams AN IMPRESSIONIST FROM TEXAS

Michael R. Grauer, Guest Curator

THE OLD JAIL ART CENTER • ALBANY, TEXAS June 1 – September 1, 2013

PANHANDLE-PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM • CANYON, TEXAS September 14, 2013 – February 14, 2014

FLORENCE GRISWOLD MUSEUM • OLD LYME, CONNECTICUT March 21 – June 1, 2014

Acknowledgments The catalogue and exhibition have been generously sponsored by:

Cynthia and Bill Gayden Jimmy Musselman Sally Blanton Porter Exhibition Fund of The Old Jail Art Center Russ and Liz Fleischer

We also wish to thank the trustees and staff of our partner museums in this project:

Florence Griswold Museum Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

THE OLD JAIL ART CENTER 201 S. 2nd • Albany, Texas 76430 theoldjailartcenter.org • 325.762.2269

PANHANDLE-PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM 2503 4th Avenue • Canyon, Texas 79015 panhandleplains.org • 806.651.2244

FLORENCE GRISWOLD MUSEUM 96 Lyme Street • Old Lyme, Connecticut 06371 flogris.org • 860.434.5542

Contents Introduction

by Margaret Blagg

6

Lucien Abrams: An Impressionist from Texas

by Michael R. Grauer

9

Color Plates

19

Exhibition Checklist

34

Lenders to the Exhibition and Credits

40

Introduction

by Margaret Blagg ,

I N T E R I M D I R E C TO R , T H E O L D J A I L A RT C E N T E R

THE OLD JAIL ART CENTER, SITUATED IN RURAL WEST TEXAS, may seem an unlikely museum to organize an exhibition of the work of such an urbane artist as Lucien Abrams, who was at home in Connecticut, Dallas, San Antonio, New York City, Paris, and North Africa. He, however, would have appreciated the collection of the Old Jail, which comprises Asian and Pre-Columbian art and artifacts as well as European and American art. His own art sits easily with the museum’s Fantin-Latour still life, Renoir nude, Caillebotte landscape, and Boudin harbor scene—works by artists whom he no doubt admired, most of whom were still alive and painting when he arrived in France in 1894.

This is not the first group of Abrams’s work to be shown at the museum. In 2001, we mounted a small exhibition of the charming Christmas cards he and members of the second generation of American Impressionists in Connecticut’s Old Lyme Colony made and exchanged annually. That glimpse into his work and career piqued my interest when I was director and I subsequently proposed the idea of an Abrams show to the Exhibitions Committee, knowing that it would take a fairly long lead time to research and present.

Years later, the exhibition finally made it onto the schedule, with the welcome addition of Michael Grauer as guest curator. Grauer, who had just completed curating Texas Impressionism, was eager to learn more about Abrams, most of whose work remains in private hands. He requested that the exhibition travel to the museum where he is curator—the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas—after it closed in Albany. We enthusiastically agreed and he began his research.

It is impossible to look at Abrams’s work without delving into the Old Lyme Colony. From 1900 through the 1930s, Old Lyme was the site of an active art colony, attracting scores of artists each summer, some of whom, like Abrams, eventually settled in the area. In the earliest years, American Impressionists such as Childe Hassam and Willard Metcalf made Old Lyme their summer retreat, attracted to the quaint New England town and its varied coastal landscape. Situated on the Connecticut River where it empties into Long Island Sound, the Old Lyme area offers beach and bluff, marsh, meadow, and forest—a wealth of subjects for outdoor sketching and painting.

6

Florence Griswold (1850-1937), who turned her family home in Old Lyme into an inn, was the guiding light of the art colony. She encouraged “her boys,” as she called her artist friends, by exhibiting and selling their work in her hallway gallery and generously extending credit to them when they needed it. Miss Florence, who understood public taste and had a practiced and critical eye, was invaluable to the local and seasonal artists of Old Lyme. Her obituary in The New York Times stated, “the memory of this gracious and generous spirit survives; and not in the Griswold House alone, but as part of no inconsiderable chapter in the history of our native art.” Her home is now the Florence Griswold Museum, a thriving repository and legacy of Old Lyme Colony work. Grauer contacted the museum in the course of his research and began discussions with Jeff Andersen about taking the Abrams exhibition following its run in Texas.

Thus is Abrams’s work now being shown in two states he called home. Visitors to our three museums will discover a “native son” of sorts, claiming him for Texas or Connecticut at will. The work of this Texas/American Impressionist will no longer be unknown.

I am particularly grateful to the family of Lucien Abrams for sharing precious work with us for the exhibition. Michael Grauer, working on time borrowed undoubtedly from his sleep bank, was an invaluable partner who tracked down countless research leads to reconstruct and present a talent almost lost to the public. Jeff Andersen and his Florence Griswold Museum staff completed the circle with unfailing support.

Cynthia and Bill Gayden and Sally Blanton Porter underwrote the catalogue, ensuring documentation for this groundbreaking exhibition. Other generous sponsors include Jimmy Musselman and Russ and Liz Fleischer. Patrick Kelly, OJAC Curator of Exhibitions, shepherded the project on our end, with the assistance of Registrar Amy Kelly, and designed and installed the exhibition in Albany. The Old Jail Board of Trustees is proud to have supported a project that highlights a name too long dimmed on the art history rolls.

7

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

Lucien Abrams Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

TEXAS RO OTS

8

LUCIEN ABRAMS

An Impressionist from Texas b y M i c h a e l R . G ra u e r,

A S S O C I AT E D I R E C TO R F O R C U R ATO R I A L A F FA I R S C U R ATO R O F A RT , PA N H A N D L E - P L A I N S H I STO R I C A L M U S E U M

PERHAPS THE ONLY TEXAS ARTIST TO BE CLEARLY IDENTIFIED WITH AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM DURING ITS ZENITH WAS LUCIEN ABRAMS (1870-1941). A landscape, figure, and still life painter as well as a trained architect, Abrams became a member of the art colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1914. This is significant for Abrams because by this time “the artistic identification of Old Lyme [had] turned to Impressionism,” and Old Lyme became the “American Giverny.”1 Born at Lawrence, Kansas, Abrams moved to Texas with his family in 1874, first to Marshall, Texas, then to Dallas by 1883. Lucien’s father, William Henry Abrams (18431926), a Civil War veteran and land commissioner for the Kansas Pacific Railway, took a position in Marshall with the Texas and Pacific Railway from 1873 to 1875. W. H. Abrams later worked for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway in extending their lines from Fort Worth to El Paso and from Marshall to New Orleans. As land agent for the Texas & Pacific Land Trust, he sold some four million acres of Texas lands in West and East Texas, given by the State of Texas for railroad rights of way. He later leased thousands of acres for oil and gas development in the Permian Basin and in East Texas.

His Abrams No. 1 oil well established the West Columbia oil field in Brazoria County, Texas. A prominent Dallas citizen, W. H. helped found the Dallas Club and supported other civic organizations in Dallas.

Lucien’s mother, Ella Murray Harris Abrams (1845-1918), a Virginian, was the daughter of William A. Harris, U.S. Minister to Argentina and a U.S. Congressman. She and William had two other sons, Clarence (1873-1902) and Harold (1885-1938).2 Ella Abrams maintained grand homes, first in Lawrence, Kansas and later at 2628 Maple Avenue in Dallas. The Dallas home where Lucien grew up had ornately carved woodwork and was furnished with fine furniture and carpets, decorative arts, fine art reproductions, and original paintings. Ella Abrams helped organize and was first president of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Club in 1901 and helped found the Dallas Art Association in 1903. Coincidentally, the first work of art purchased by the fledgling Dallas Art Association was Childe Hassam’s September Moonrise (1900).3 Hassam (1859-1935) was a major figure in American Impressionism and especially at Old Lyme, where he and Abrams later knew each other.

9

TEXAS RO OTS

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

After completing studies at Dallas schools, Lucien Abrams attended Beloit College

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

1 Example of Abrams’s ornate furnishings Studio – Paris, 1910 Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

(Wisconsin), where his father had matriculated, then transferred to and graduated from Princeton University in 1892 with a degree in architecture. Intent on becoming a painter, Abrams then studied at the Art Students League (ASL) in New York from October 1892 to May 1894. His instructors at the ASL included J. H. Twachtman, William Merritt Chase, Frank Vincent DuMond, Kenyon Cox, J. Carroll Beckwith, and probably, J. Alden Weir.4 Twachtman, Chase, DuMond, and Weir are today considered core American Impressionists. Abrams took four classes under DuMond, including two sketch classes and two “antique” classes. He also studied painting under Chase and Weir.

Some of his ASL instructors had connections to rural Connecticut. In 1902, DuMond (1865-1951) began directing the Lyme Summer School of Art. Whereas the school moved from Old Lyme, Connecticut, to Woodstock, New York in 1906, DuMond purchased a home at Old Lyme that same year. Weir began painting in the Connecticut countryside in 1888 and painted Impressionist landscapes for 40 summers on his Branchville and Windham, Connecticut, farms. Twachtman (18531902) acquired his own Connecticut farm in 1889, and the surrounding area became his Impressionist muse. Chase (1849-1916) spent summers at Shinnecock on Long Island from 1891 to 1902. He directed the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art, a school devoted to plein air painting.

ACADÉMI ES

10

Following in the footsteps of his instructors at the Art Students League, Lucien Abrams in 1894 traveled to France to study. Due to its nearly insurmountably rigorous entrance requirements, the official École des Beaux-Arts rarely accepted non-French students. Private ateliers in Paris offered courses of study preparatory to applying to the École, taught by academic juste milieu instructors at the École who steered a middle course between more avant-garde art movements and styles acceptable to the École and the public.

Beginning in August 1894, Abrams studied at the Académie Julian, one of the most successful—and most popular, especially with Americans—of Paris’s petits ateliers, run by Rodolphe Julian (1839-1907).5 Julian’s spaces scattered in several arrondissements around Paris were crowded with international students jostling for room to draw and paint from the human figure and to receive criticisms from instructors who appeared periodically. Arguments were common; fisticuffs were not rare; teasing was constant.

Abrams studied at the Académie Julian with Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902).

Laurens, a disciple of the French academic tradition, painted murals and was one of France’s last great history painters. BenjaminConstant, a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts, began his career as an Orientaliste who depicted exotic scenes and figures from the Near and Middle East, but who turned to mural painting and portraits while Abrams studied with him.

Abrams also studied at the Académie Colarossi, founded by the Italian sculptor

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

2

Image labeled by Abrams My studio windows, Belgium, 1904 Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

Filippo Colarossi, where he received criticisms from Louis-Joseph-Raphael Collin (1850-1916). Another academic painter and muralist, Collin began to incorporate Impressionist techniques into his work by the 1890s. Collin also mentored at the Académie Colarossi the first group of Japanese painters to study in Paris, just before Abrams arrived there. Japanese painting, in turn, influenced Collin’s own work.

Abrams studied briefly at J.M.W. Whistler’s short-lived Académie Carmen in Paris.

Founded in October 1898 and run by its namesake, Whistler’s model Carmen Rossi, the Académie Carmen offered separate classes for men and women. Inez Addams was the massiere (student supervisor), with Whistler (1834-1903) contributing occasionally. The Académie Carmen closed in April 1901.6 Living in Europe from 1894 to 1914, Abrams returned to the United States for a few months at a time each year from 1899 to 1903. For example, in 1900 he lived in Fort

11

ACADÉMI ES

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

Worth, Texas, for six months. Abrams spent 1907 painting at Mystic, Connecticut; New York City; Monhegan Island, Maine; and Rockport, Massachusetts. His painting Untitled [Beach with Three Women] was likely done on Monhegan and echoes the paintings of such other Monhegan painters as Winslow Homer and Frederick Waugh.

Maintaining a studio in Paris, he painted in several parts of Europe and in North Africa for months at a time. He painted in Italy for several months in 1896; Belgium and The Netherlands in 1900 and 1902; Spain in 1901 (where he studied Velásquez); in France, at Brittany, Pouldu, Normandy, and Pont Aven in 1902, 1905, and 1912; and Algeria for four months in 1905. From 1908 on, Abrams painted mostly in France’s Provence region, primarily near Cassis, Martigues, and Marseille. During

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

3

Unidentified individuals Cassis – Southern France Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

his extensive travels throughout Europe until about 1914, he

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

studied the Old Masters

4 Abrams with pet dog Marseille, 1907 Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

and developed a keen sense of connoisseurship. For inst ance, Abrams copied paintings in the Opera della Metropolitana in Siena (1896), the Louvre (1897), and the Alhambra in Granada, Spain (1901).

TICKET

5 Abrams’s 1897 Louvre Museum permission receipt to copy a Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco painting.

Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

NORTH AFR ICA AN D EU ROPE

12

North Africa was a magnet for European artists during the nineteenth century, especially for French artists. Having embraced a French lifestyle and study and painting habits, Abrams’s time in Algeria is consistent with this French focus on the “Orient,” as it was then called. In fact, a group of French painters known today as Les Orientalistes were drawn to the exoticism of North Africa and made it their primary source of inspiration. Perhaps one-time Orientaliste Benjamin-Constant encouraged young Abrams to travel to Algeria in 1905 to paint, resulting in such works as Bou Saada, Algeria and Kabyle Woman (plate 1), both consistent with the Orientaliste focus on North African women. However, with its sun-drenched light, plunging perspectives, and shallow compositional space, his Untitled [Stucco Street Corner] (plate 2) speaks directly to the lessons he learned from the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

While Abrams was in Europe, the art world—especially in France—was at fever pitch as one movement succeeded the next in rapid succession in the development of Modernism. Just eight years before Abrams arrived in Paris, the last French Impressionist exhibition was held in 1886.

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac (1863-1935) exhibited in the last Impressionist exhibition and spawned a movement called Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism, adherents to which held a final exhibition in 1893, the year before Abrams appeared. These fin-de-siecle currents were

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

6 Abrams’s photograph from Algeria labeled as Here they sell…clothes Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

still fresh for the newly arrived art student in Paris.

Paul Serusier (1864-1927), Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Maurice Denis (18701943), and Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) banded together as Les Nabis (prophets in Hebrew) from 1888 to 1899, to throw off the shackles of academic painting. Serusier’s 1888 Le Talisman, painted under the supervision of Paul Gauguin (who also named the group), became the touchstone for Les Nabis. After 1899, Bonnard’s and Vuillard’s paintings evolved into an Intimiste style in which they depicted figures in small domestic interiors, abandoning linear perspective and modeling in favor of rich surface

13

NORTH AFR ICA AN D EU ROPE

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

textures while eliminating the distinction between figure and background.

By the early 1880s, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) had re-settled in Provence hoping to lend structure to Impressionist paintings. His work ultimately gave rise to Cubism.

In his still lifes of the late 1870s, he had abandoned Albertian linear perspective, allowing each object to exist individually in the painted space. Cézanne’s landscape paintings of Provence and his series of figure paintings begun in the early 1890s were featured in a solo exhibition in Paris in 1895. Posthumous exhibitions in Paris in 1907 solidified him as a master of Post-Impressionism while Lucien Abrams was there.

In 1891, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was recognized as the leader of the Symbolist movement, although the antecedents for Symbolism had begun in the 1870s. Gauguin’s use of flat areas of color and symbolic color—begun after his move to Pont Aven in 1886—greatly affected a large number of avant-garde painters in France. He painted briefly at Arles with Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) in 1888. Van Gogh’s mature style of intense active brushwork using saturated complementary colors eventually gave rise to the Fauves movement, led by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Andre Derain (1880-1954), which held sway from about 1904 to 1908.

In this French art maelstrom, Abrams lived and worked for 20 years.

From 1902 to 1914, he exhibited annually in Paris at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Independants, and his work showed the influences of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Fauvism.7 Yet years later Abrams would note, “My art was developed, not in the schools, but by independent study before nature, not trying to copy, but to interpret, to find order in chaos, and put it in plastic form.”

Nevertheless, Abrams noticeably absorbed the lessons learned from 7

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

the various French masters whose work he saw and experienced. Moreover, he

Posed photograph of Abrams in France (possibly studio). Labeled 1910.

Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

carried these lessons with him to the United States and to Texas especially. The influence of the French Impressionists, Les Intimistes, and even Whistler, shows unmistakably in Lucien Abrams’s paintings, such as Dejeuner en Provence (plate 3).

The female figure posed in an outdoor, yet still close setting, was a favorite Impressionist device, used particularly by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). An admirer of Renoir, Abrams pays homage to him through the use of a small female model in a casual patio setting in Dejeuner en Provence. Combined with short brushstrokes, a highkeyed palette and a diagonal composition coalesce into an Impressionist painting.

On the other hand, this painting carries the Intimist message as well. Although an outdoor scene, Dejeuner is quite familiar and homey. Moreover, allowing the figure to

CO NTEMPO RAR I ES

14

dissolve into the rich surface textures, while still providing the anchors of the chair and the hat, is consistent with Intimist paintings by Vuillard and Bonnard.

Finally, Lucien Abrams’s monogram in the lower left is a visual cypher to his time—albeit brief—under the tutelage of at least a Whistler protégée. Whistler’s own “intimist” paintings of female figures posed in rich domestic settings are referenced in Dejeuner. Furthermore, the brushstrokes and daubs of pure color on a two-dimensional surface that comprise Dejeuner harken back to Whistler’s “art for art’s sake” argument a half century earlier.

As a devoted still life painter, Abrams clearly emulated Cézanne in some of his own paintings such as Untitled [Still Life with Bananas] and especially Fruit and Feather Flowers (plate 4). Abrams also channeled Gauguin’s use of flat planes of unmodulated color—as well as Gauguin’s Symbolist leanings—in uncluttered paintings such as Still Life of Tulips; Irises (plate 5); and Roses. Moreover, some of Abrams’s landscapes reverberate with the influence of Cézanne’s paintings of Provence, as in Abrams’s Untitled [Trees in Autumn] and Untitled [French Landscape with Olive Trees] (plate 6).

Abrams’s many paintings of female models seated in chairs, usually of his own Madame Abrams and/or their daughter, invite comparisons to Cézanne’s myriad portraits of Madame Cézanne. While rich and powerful, Abrams’s Woman in Blue (plate 7) clearly echoes Cézanne, but stops short of Cézanne’s fracturing of planes, the very device that later gave rise to Cubism. Les Fauves also found purchase with many of Abrams’s female sitters. His Femme au Grande Chapeau reminds one of Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, for example. While we do see Abrams’s use of more expressive brushwork, we do not see him heading toward the arbitrary use of color as in Matisse’s Green Stripe. Lucien Abrams could only get so wild.

Maintaining his American and Texas roots, Abrams was surely aware of art movements in his native land. In 1897, a group of ten American artists broke away from the Society of American Artists in protest over the direction of the Society’s annual exhibitions, particularly the devaluation of Impressionist paintings. Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, Robert Reid, Willard Metcalf, Frank Weston Benson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Joseph DeCamp, and Edward Simmons comprised “The Ten.” When Twachtman died in 1902, William Merritt Chase joined “The Ten” in his place. The group exhibited together for twenty years. Lucien Abrams had studied at the Art Students League under five of “The Ten.” Contemporaneous with exhibitions of “The Ten,” another group called “The Eight” helped establish the so-called “Ash Can School” of painting in the United States.

Responding to their rejection by the jury for the National Academy of Design annual

15

CONTEMPORAR I ES

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

in 1907, eight American painters held their own exhibition at MacBeth Galleries in New York in 1908. Led by Robert Henri (1865-1929), this group sought to break away from academic restrictions. Using a largely German- and Dutch-influenced palette of browns and greys and bravura brushwork, these artists also took their cues from Dutch genre paintings of the 17th century, focusing on the seamier sides of American life hitherto considered unacceptable subjects for “official” American art. Only occasionally did Lucien Abrams depart from his Impressionist palette, but he certainly used the expressive brushwork of the Ash Can School painters from time to time. The social realism practiced by “The Eight,” however, did not interest Abrams.

Exhibiting in the American annuals, Abrams could not have avoided knowing of the exhibitions and efforts of “The Ten” and “The Eight.” He exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago annual in 1899; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annuals of 1903 and 1911; and the National Academy of Design annual in 1908.

By establishing his home at Old Lyme in 1914, he was at the epicenter of American Impressionism before the movement began to fade in the United States by about 1920. He exhibited with the Lyme Art Association annually from 1916 through 1938.8 Ironically, while the French Impressionists clearly influenced Abrams while he was still in France [see Au Parc Borely (plate 8), Untitled [City Waterfront] (frontispiece) or Femme au Grande Chapeau, for example], he seems to have fully embraced the Impressionist strategies he witnessed first-hand in France only after he settled at the “American Giverny.” In particular with his numerous seated female figure paintings, using his wife or daughter as models, he echoes especially the works of Mary Cassatt in his Girl Sewing (plate 9) and particularly Berthe Morisot in paintings such as Untitled [Young Woman Reading in Bed] (plate 10). His “American Impressionist” leanings found affirmation and encouragement at Old Lyme. Abrams’s paintings such as In the Garden (plate 11) echo paintings by the other members of the Old Lyme colony, chiefly Childe Hassam.

In Texas, where Abrams’s work opened a conduit to Old Lyme and France, Impressionism held on until the early 1930s. Abrams exhibited—as a Texas artist—in the annual Texas-artist exhibitions in Fort Worth in 1913, 1914, 1916, and 1917; at the State Fair of Texas in 1908, 1909, and 1923; and at the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936 with Garden on the Ledge (plate 12). To these “Texas” exhibitions, Abrams sent primarily Impressionist paintings done in Europe and Old Lyme.

En lieu of true French Impressionist paintings, Texas artists relied on those submissions by Lucien Abrams to exhibitions exclusive to Texas artists, as well as his paintings and those of his fellows of the Old Lyme Colony to the State Fair of Texas

OLD LYME

16

exhibitions. Although filtered through Abrams and Old Lyme, these paintings brought the Impressionist gospel to Texas. Moreover, Abrams’s habit of painting en plein air while visiting Texas periodically encouraged Texas artists to see their state with fresh eyes. Journalists underscored this by reporting that Abrams was “one of many artists who are discovering the beauty of the [Texas] landscape, in the color of the sky and clear atmosphere which gives such an opalescent tint to Texas.” 9 Moreover, Abrams even used Impressionist schemes to create a series of paintings of the Alamo and other Spanish missions in San Antonio, symbols to all Texans [see Mission de la Concepcion, San Antonio, Texas (plate 13)].

In 1914, when Lucien Abrams returned to the United States, he brought along his fiancée, parisienne Charlotte Gina Onillon (18861961) (plate 14), a graduate of the Sorbonne. They married in 1915 and built a home at Old Lyme with a fine view of Long Island Sound. They had one daughter, Elinor F. Abrams. The Abramses divided their time between his family place in Dallas, a winter home in San Antonio, and the summer home in Old Lyme. Abrams also painted in the Deep South, including New Orleans; Pass Christian, Mississippi; and Charleston, South Carolina. Along with exhibiting regularly with the Lyme Art Association, Abrams had one-man shows at the State Fair of Texas (1914); Montross Gallery, New York (1928); Pabst Galleries in San Antonio, Texas (1930); the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1934); and at Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (1934). Posthumously, his work was featured in the 1978 exhibition “Three American Impressionists: From Paris to Old Lyme” at A. M. Adler Fine Art, Inc., New York. Abrams was a longtime member of the American Federation of Artists, the Lyme Art Association, and the Princeton Club of New York City.

Public collections of Abrams’s work include the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London,

ARCHIVAL PHOTO

8 Gina and Lucien Abrams in the arbor of their Old Lyme home.

Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

Connecticut; Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia; and the Dallas Museum of Art. As a collector, Abrams was particularly interested in the French Impressionists, acquiring an important collection of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His widow donated at least one Renoir painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Abrams’s daughter donated another to the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas and she and her daughter (Abrams’s granddaughter) helped place one more at the McNay.

17

OLD LYME

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

Lucien Abrams lived in Europe during one of the richest periods in art history. The French Impressionists had thrown the gates wide open and new movements ebbed and flowed around him in France. By the time he came to maturity as an artist, American Impressionism held a prominent place in American art. As William H. Gerdts writes, “The period from about 1885 to 1920 constitutes the years of [Impressionism’s] ascendancy [in the United States] and the achievements and innovations of the principal American masters of the movement.”10 By about 1920, “Impressionism, once a vital, modern force in American painting, had become both conventionalized and conservative in the light of newer developments in American art.”11 Intriguingly, Abrams wrote in 1925 that he “never cared much for pure realism or impressionism, but rather prefer[red] a more decorative interpretation of nature.”12 So where is Lucien Abrams’s place in art history? His exhibition record is impressive, yet his work is very little known largely due to the relatively small number of his paintings in public collections. The current exhibition, however, drawing almost exclusively from private collections, allows for a much broader and more qualitative examination of his place. Considering his schooling, residencies and travel in the artistically enriching environments of New York, Paris, North Africa, and Old Lyme, Lucien Abrams should be considered one of the few significant conduits for Impressionism and Post-Impressionism—and therefore Modernism—into Texas in the early part of the 1900s. Abrams can now surely take his place in the roll call of American artists. His work, influenced by so many significant late-19th and early-20th century currents in art, certainly deserves far greater appreciation and objective analyses than it has been heretofore afforded.

1

William H. Gerdts, The Golden Age of American Impressionism (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003): 27.

2 Harold J. Abrams committed suicide, Dallas Morning News, 9 May 1938.

3 Dallas artist Frank Reaugh (1860-1945) encouraged the purchase of this painting.

4 Stephanie Cassidy, Archivist, The Art Students League of New York to Michael R. Grauer, 2 April 2008.

5 The Académie Julian was also the only atelier to offer study to women artists.

6 Nigel Thorp, “Carmen Rossi,” in Jill Berk Jiminez ed, Dictionary of Artists’ Models (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001): 268-269.

7 The Salon d’Automne of 1907 featured a posthumous Cézanne exhibition.

8 My thanks to Hedy Korst, research assistant, Florence Griswold Museum, for researching Abrams’s exhibition record with the Lyme Art Association.

9 “Noted Artist Visiting Dallas,” Unknown Dallas newspaper, 3 April 1920, Lucien Abrams scrapbook.

10 William H. Gerdts, The Golden Age of American Impressionism (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003): 42.

11 Ibid.

12 Abrams to unknown correspondent, letter, 17 July 1925, Private Collection.

18

C O L O R P L AT E S

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 1 Kabyle Woman, c.1906 Oil on wood panel, 13.687 x 10.437 inches Private Collection

20

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 2 Untitled [Stucco Street Corner], n.d.

Oil on canvas, 15.125 x 19.875 inches Private Collection

21

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 3 Dejeuner en Provence, c.1910 Oil on canvas, 24.125 x 19.75 inches Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Chaney 22

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 4 Fruit and Feather Flowers, n.d.

Oil on canvas, 25.25 x 30.25 inches Private Collection

23

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 5 Irises, 1922 Oil on canvas, 30.125 x 25.125 inches Private Collection

24

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 6 Untitled [French Landscape with Olive Trees], 1909 Oil on canvas, 28.187 x 35.625 inches Private Collection

25

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 7

Woman in Blue, 1915 Oil on canvas, 30.187 x 24.125 inches Private Collection 26

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 8 Au Parc Borely, n.d.

Oil on canvas, 21.375 x 25.5 inches Private Collection

27

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 9 Girl Sewing, n.d.

Oil on panel, 18.5 x 15.5 inches Private Collection 28

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 10 Untitled [Young Woman Reading in Bed], n.d.

Oil on canvas panel, 15 x 18 inches Private Collection

29

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 11 In the Garden, n.d.

Oil on canvas, 36.125 x 29.125 inches Private Collection

30

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 12 Garden on the Ledge, n.d.

Oil on canvas, 36.125 x 29.125 inches Private Collection 31

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 13 Mission de la Concepcion, San Antonio, Texas, 1928 Oil on canvas board, 15 x 18.125 inches Private Collection

32

LUCIEN ABRAMS

Plate 14 Mrs. Abrams in Paris, c.1912 Oil on panel, 18 x 14 inches The Brousseau Family Collection LLC 33

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

Exhibition Checklist Au Parc Borely, n.d.

Oil on canvas 21.375 x 25.5 inches Private Collection Plate 8, Page 27

Dejeuner en Provence, c. 1910 Oil on canvas 24.125 x 19.75 inches Collection of the McNay Art Museum; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Chaney Plate 3, Page 22

Bathers, 1912 Oil on canvas panel 16 x 13 inches Private Collection

Femme Au Grande Chapeau, 1910 Oil on canvas 28.875 x 23.875 inches Private Collection

Bou Saada, Algeria, 1906 Oil on wood panel 18 x 14.75 inches Private Collection

Ferry at Marseille, n.d.

Watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches [sight] Private Collection

Canal Martigues, n.d.

Watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches [sight] Private Collection

Fruit and Feather Flowers, n.d.

Oil on canvas 25.25 x 30.25 inches Private Collection Plate 4, Page 23

34

Garden on the Ledge, n.d.

Oil on canvas 36.125 x 29.125 inches Private Collection Plate 12, Page 31

Irises, 1922 Oil on canvas 30.125 x 25.125 inches Private Collection Plate 5, Page 24

Girl Sewing, n.d.

Oil on panel 18.5 x 15.5 inches Private Collection Plate 9, Page 28

Jardin Normand, c. 1917 Oil on canvas 23.812 x 28.75 inches Private Collection

Gorge de Loup, Cagnes, n.d.

Oil on canvas 25 x 30.125 inches Scott Higginbotham, Dumas, Texas

Kabyle Woman, c. 1906 Oil on wood panel 13.687 x 10.437 inches Private Collection Plate 1, Page 20

In the Garden, n.d.

Oil on canvas 36.125 x 29.125 inches Private Collection Plate 11, Page 30

La Promenade, n.d.

Watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches [sight] Private Collection

35

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas – Exhibition Checklist

Lieutenant River near Old Lyme, n.d.

Oil on canvas 24.5 x 29.125 inches Private Collection

Mrs. Abrams in Paris, c. 1912 Oil on panel 18 x 14 inches The Brousseau Family Collection LLC Plate 14, Page 33

Mexican Fete at the Alamo, 1928 Oil on canvas board 14.875 x 18.125 inches Private Collection

On the Spanish Main, n.d.

Oil on canvas 20.25 x 24.25 inches Private Collection

Mission de la Concepcion, San Antonio, Texas, 1928 Oil on canvas board 15 x 18.125 inches Private Collection Plate 13, Page 32

Parc Borely, n.d.

Watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches [sight] Private Collection

Mothers Meeting at the Old Port, Marseille, n.d.

Watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches [sight] Private Collection

Promenade Marseille, n.d.

Watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches [sight] Private Collection

36

Still Life of Tulips, n.d.

Oil on canvas 26.125 x 22.125 inches Private Collection

Untitled [French Landscape], n.d.

Oil on board 10.5 x 13.75 inches Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; Anonymous Gift

Untitled [Beach with Three Women], n.d.

Oil on canvas 28.5 x 35.25 inches [sight] Private Collection

Untitled [French Landscape with Olive Trees], 1909 Oil on canvas 28.187 x 35.625 inches Private Collection Plate 6, Page 25

Untitled [City Waterfront], n.d.

Oil on canvas 18.25 x 21.25 inches Private Collection Frontispiece

Untitled [French Village], n.d.

Oil on board 7.25 x 9.5 inches Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; Anonymous Gift

Untitled [Day at the Beach], n.d.

Oil on board 6.5 x 8 inches Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; Anonymous Gift

Untitled [House with Green Shutters and Trees], n.d.

Oil on panel 12.75 x 16.125 inches Private Collection

37

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas – Exhibition Checklist

Untitled [Landscape with Trees, Pond and White House], n.d.

Oil on canvas 18 x 24.062 inches Private Collection

Untitled [Stucco Street Corner], n.d.

Oil on canvas 15.125 x 19.875 inches Private Collection Plate 2, Page 21

Untitled [Seated Lady in Hat], n.d.

Oil on canvas 24 x 18.25 inches Private Collection

Untitled [Trees in Autumn], n.d.

Oil on canvas 25 x 20 inches Private Collection

Untitled [Still Life with Bananas], n.d.

Oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; Gift of the Sone Family

Untitled [Trees on Hillside Near Water], n.d.

Oil on canvas 23.625 x 28.687 inches Private Collection

Untitled [Still Life with Roses], n.d.

Oil on canvas 24.187 x 18.125 inches Private Collection

Untitled [Woman in White], n.d.

Oil on canvas 18.125 x 14.937 inches Private Collection

38

Untitled [Young Woman Reading in Bed], n.d.

Oil on canvas panel 15 x 18 inches Private Collection Plate 10, Page 29

Untitled [Zinnias], 1932 Oil on canvas 24 x 20.125 inches Private Collection

Villa Rose Ciel, n.d.

Oil on panel 14.75 x 18 inches Private Collection

Woman in Blue, 1915 Oil on canvas 30.187 x 24.125 inches Private Collection Plate 7, Page 26

39

Lenders to the Exhibition We are grateful to the following lenders, whose generosity in sharing works from their collections has made the exhibition possible:

The Brousseau Family Collection LLC Scott Higginbotham, Dumas, Texas Collection of the McNay Art Museum Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas Private Collection

Credits This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Lucien Abrams: An Impressionist from Texas An exhibition organized by The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas www.theoldjailartcenter.org Exhibition Dates: The Old Jail Art Center, June 1 – September 1, 2013 Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, September 14, 2013 – February 14, 2014 Florence Griswold Museum, March 21 – June 1, 2014 Archival photographic images from Abrams’s personal photo album.

Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or information storage or retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher.

Designed and Published by: WinshipPhillips, Dallas, Texas www.winshipphillips.com Copyright©2013 ISBN: 978-0-9893719-0-2 First edition: 1000 copies

The Old Jail Art Center | 201 South Second | Albany, Texas 76430 | 325.762.2269