Martha Walter was a well-known Philadelphia-born Impressionist who specialized in light hearted, colorful beach scenes especially of Gloucester, Coney Island, Atlantic City and the French Coast. She went to Girls High School, and from 1895 to 1898, studied at the Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art, now The University of the Arts College of Art and Design). Her recogniations at the school included the following: 1895/96: Received Certificate A in Industrial Drawing. Received honorable mention for the Henry Perry Leland Prize given by Mrs. John Harrison for work in Pen and Ink; $20 second prize for best set of drawings in the Course of Industrial Drawing. 1896/97: Received John T. Morris Prize of $10.00 for drawing of Details of the Human Figure; Jacob H. Weil Prize of an outfit of Oleo Water-Colors for best sketch in water-colors from Life. 1897/98: Honorable mention for the Mrs. George K. Crozer Prize offered for the best work in drawing; Caroline Axford Magee Prize of $20.00 for group of designs introducing decorative use of the human figure. At the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts, she studied with William Merritt Chase, and at his insistence, she entered competitions for various student awards. She won the Tappan prize in 1902, and was one of four artists to win the first two-year Cresson traveling scholarship in 1908, which afforded her the opportunity to go to France, Holland, Italy and Spain. She attended the Grande Chaumiere in Paris where she had the advantage of the critical counsel of both Rene Menard and Lucien Simon, but eventually she felt their strictly classical approach too restrictive to her progress, so she enrolled in the Academie Julian. Once again she grew weary of the boundaries of tradition and so established her own studio in the Rue de Bagneaux with several other young American women artists. It was at this point that she developed her infatuation and skill for plain-air subjects. Walter’s early work, 1900-1908, shows the very strong influence of William Merritt Chase. Her use of rich saturated colors, combined with her adept application of black paint was very successful. Black was a pigment extraordinarily difficult to master, and often omitted in the general course of American Impressionism. The quietude of Martha Walter’s Paris period lasted until about 1912 when she began to vivify her palette and concentrate on light and shadow. Upon her return to America, around the beginning of World War I, she favored the use of bright and intense colors as highlights in her beach scenes of Bass Rock, Gloucester and Atlantic City. Her works had more spontaneity, as she concentrated on hues rather than subjects. In this sense she was once again in league with the French Impressionists who were frequently more concerned with the color recorded than with the form drawn. The subtle dissolution of forms tended to accentuate the predominant central theme in her works. Her figures did not suffer; they merely became more elusive. Walter’s influence throughout her career was chiefly derived from the work and teachings of William Merritt Chase. She journeyed to the very places where Chase had painted – Shinnecock, Carmel, Paris, Holland, etc. Martha Walter had a studio in New York, taught at Chase’s New York School of Art and had a studio in Gloucester, and even taught in Brittany. She was continually traveling back and forth to Paris. While she was in France, Eugene Boudin proved to be another strong source of inspiration for her. Many of Walter’s beach scenes exhibit varying tones of gray, which are reminiscent of the atmospheric quality achieved in Boudin’s work. Many of Walter’s canvases are obviously distinct reflections of French Impressionism. Through it all though, she developed a style of painting, which was a uniquely Martha Walter, with bold dashing brush strokes in conjunction with total color control, and well organized composition. Her style reflected the sensitivity of her European predecessors, but maintained a vigor, which was definitely American. Cecelia Beaux offered favorable criticism of Walter’s work by saying that the beach scenes seemed as if they were blown onto the canvas. Walter visited Chattanooga, Tennessee, many times from 1903 to 1910, where she painted commissioned portraits and landscapes during the summer. Her ability to contrast her light and vibrant palette to the harsh reality of life in the mountains of Tennessee as expressed by the children that she saw and portrayed make the poignancy of the moment even more heart wrenching. Some of the children that she portrayed were so under-privileged that they didn’t even know the meaning of the word mountain. In 1922, Martha Walter was given an exhibition of her paintings at the Galleries George Petit in Paris. The French government purchased a painting entitled The Checquered Cape from this exhibition, for the Musee de Luxembourg. This picture was a study for a larger painting of the same name. In the 1930s, Martha Walter was represented by Milch Galleries in New York, and it was then that she began to travel to North Africa to paint her chromatic impressions of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. The Harsh African sun lent the cafe scenes, camel markets, and souk transactions an intense but different color sense than her American and French subjects. The broad flat planes of the local architecture, combined with the flowing Arabian robes worn by the inhabitants, gave her renderings of sharply defined areas of color a new dynamic quality. From Africa, Walter traveled to the Dalmatian coast where she settled for a long enough time to paint dozens of bustling market scenes. Although well advanced in years, Martha Walter continued to paint until a few years before her death in 1976. She has been represented in the Museum collections of Musee de Luxembourg, Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, Milwaukee Art Center, Toledo Museum and the Woodmere Art Center, Philadelphia. Sources: Paul Sternberg, Art by American Women Additional information supplied by Sara J. MacDonald, Public Services Librarian The University of the Arts, whose source are the PMSIA commencement programs and annual reports.

A specialist in marine and landscape views, Henry Pember Smith was born in Waterford, Connecticut in 1854. Little is known about his early training or his career before 1877, when he set up a studio in New York City. It is generally assumed that he was self- taught. From 1877 on, Smith exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design, although he never became a member. Smith also exhibited at the American Watercolor Society and the Artists’ Fund.

His landscapes are his best known works, particularly those of New England, Spain, Italy, England, New York State, and France. These also indicate his love of travel and some of his best known works are Venetian scenes. Working primarily in oils and watercolors, and using a tighter technique than the emerging impressionists of his time, Smith was a true realist.

Around 1901, Smith moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey to seek relief from ill health and rheumatism. He died there in October, 1907.

Public Collections:
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, Springfield, MA
Museum of Art at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
Museum of Fine Arts-Springfield, Springfield, MA
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Robert Hull Fleming Museum University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
The Mattatuck Museum of the Mattatuck Historical Society, Waterbury, CT
The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Publications:
Who Was Who in American Art, Falk
American Paintings before 1945 in the Wadsworth Athenaeum (2 Vols.), Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser
Connecticut Masters: Fine Arts and Antiques Collections of Hartford Steam, Ed: Hartford Boiler Coll.
Venice/The Artist’s Vision Guide to British and American Painters, Julian Halsby
American Paintings and Sculpture Sterling & Francine Clark Institute, Martha C. Conrads
The Annual Exhibition Record of the Art Institute of Chicago, Peter Hastings Falk (Editor)
Annual Exhibition Record, 1876-1913, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1988, Peter Hastings Falk (Editor)
300 Years of American Art (two volumes), 1986, Michael David Zellman
Exhibition Record 1861-1900, National Academy of Design (Two Volumes), Maria Naylor

De Scott Evans was a painter of portraits and still-lifes and was primarily known in his era for his vertical images on canvas of women in interiors. However, his trompe l’oeil still lifes of luscious fruit brought him more attention after he died. Interestingly, it appears that he did not take his still-life work seriously as few of the pieces have a formal signature nor a date, and many have pseudonyms.

Though he was born in 1847 in Wayne County, Indiana as David Scott Evans, he changed his name after a trip in the 1870s to France. Whether he suffered from an identity crisis, wished to paint under a pseudonym, or was trying to avoid creditors, Evans may have used signatures as varied as Scott David, Stanley S. David and simply David on his pictures.

There is further uncertainty about his youthful art training, but it is known that he studied at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and later with Alfred Beaugureau in Cincinnati. In the early to mid-1870s, he taught art, as well as music, in Logansport, Indiana at Smithson College, and at Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio.

Evans moved to Cleveland in 1874. Around 1877, he went to Paris and studied under Adolphe William Bouguereau. When he came back to Cleveland, he became known for his portraits of stylish women. In our day, Evans is known for his trompe l’oeil still-lifes of apples and pears suspended by strings in front of the meticulously detailed grain of wooden boards. In keeping with what may be the eccentricity of his use of multiple names, Evans included in his still-lifes painted labels, again with variations on his name. In Cleveland, he established the first art club, and taught at the Cleveland Academy of Fine Arts, where he later became co-director, holding that position from 1883 until he moved to New York.

Evans life ended particularly tragically. He and his family were drowned in 1898 in the Atlantic Ocean when his ship, the S.S. Burgoyne, sank after a collision with another ship. A patron from Cleveland had commissioned Evans to decorate his music room in Paris.

De Scott Evans work is in the collections of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.

Source: Michael David Zellman, “300 Years of American Art”

Robert Frederick Blum was an active and successful artist, versatile in a number of media and highly regarded as a pastelist. His vibrant and atmospheric work, which incorporated many of impressionism’s techniques, helped pave the way in America for acceptance of impressionism.

Cincinnati in which Blum was born in 1857 was an artistic center, but he received his major inspiration when, like many other American artists of the time, he visited the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 in Philadelphia. There  he was very impressed with works by artists of the Romano-Spanish School. He became such an important disciple of the well respected Giovanni Boldini and Mariano Fortuny that he became known as “Blumtuny.”

In 1880, he encountered another profound influence when he joined fellow Cincinnatian Frank Duveneck in Venice. Duveneck’s group was then associated with James McNeill Whistler. Whistler’s pictorial technique, if not his rejection of narrative interest in painting, can be seen reflected in much of Blum’s work, and Whistler was a strong influence on Blum’s interest in etching and pastel.

Indeed, in New York City in the 1880s, Blum became president of the Society of Painters in Pastel. Through this society, and with his colleague and friend William Merritt Chase, Blum exerted a perceptible sway over the development of American taste.

Blum’s paintings combine energetic and fluid brushwork with great attention to atmosphere and light. His subject matter was often drawn from his travels, first in Europe and later in Japan, where he was one of the first American artists to paint and travel.

He was successful not only as a painter but also as an illustrator and muralist. A series of his
illustrations, created during his trip to Japan, was published in Scribner’s Magazine, and he demonstrated his skill as a muralist in the wall panels he created for the old Mendelssohn Glee Club Hall in New York City, which were preserved in the Brooklyn Museum.

MEMBERSHIPS:
Associate, National Academy of Design, 1892
National Academy of Design, 1893
Society of American Artist
American Water Color Society
Society of Mural Painters
Society of Painters in Pastel

EXHIBITED:
Paris Exposition, 1889 (medals), 1900 (medal)
Pan American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901 (gold medal)

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Brooklyn Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Beth Ames Swartz has had over 70 one-person art exhibitions including a solo show at The Jewish Museum in New York as well as three major traveling museum exhibitions. She received the Governor’s Individual Artist Award in 2001 in Arizona, and a retrospective of her work was mounted in 2002 at The Phoenix Art Museum, with a monograph about her work co-published by The Phoenix Art Museum and Hudson Hills Press. Swartz was honored in New York in 2003 by the Veteran Feminists of America for her outstanding contribution to the Arts nationally.

Swartz explores systems of knowledge by translating philosophical concepts into aesthetic visual experiences.

“Beth Ames Swartz paints from the soul and speaks to its joyous embodiment. The work is of a vision beyond seeing and moves with unheard sound.The lucid brilliance of eyes-closed night journeys are chronicled with the power of close-to-the-eyes intimacy. Her radiant images breathe life into the form of our own remembrances.”
– James Turrell

Wilfrid-Gabriel de Glehn was born in Sydenham, England, a suburb of London, in 1870. His father was a coffee importer but his mother, being French, allowed Wilfrid the opportunity of staying with relatives frequently in France, thus becoming thoroughly bilingual. He entered Brighton College before matriculating at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. He completed his formal art education at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Shortly afterwards, in 1895, he was introduced to John Singer Sargent by Edwin Austin Abbey. At this time, Sargent was working on the Boston Public Library murals and was looking for someone to assist him with the Frieze of the Prophets. De Glehn helped only during the earlier stages of the murals but his friendship with Sargent was to last a lifetime. At this time, de Glehn had embarked on his own career in England but it was not until he went to the United States in 1903 to assist in the installation of the Boston Library panels that he met his wife-to-be, Jane Emmet. Ms. Emmet came from a distinguished family of painters and in 1896 she had travelled to Europe to study with the American sculptor and painter, Frederick MacMonnies in Paris. Sargent had been concerned that de Glehn would want to stay in America after his announcement of marriage to Emmet was made public but this concern proved to be unfounded and Jane was quickly accepted into Sargent’s close-knit social group. Marriage brought ten prolific years for de Glehn. During this period, 1904-1914, the de Glehn’s travelled extensively with Sargent throughout Venice, Florence, Switzerland and Spain. But World War I brought about an abrupt change to their “Joie de vivre”, and the de Glehn’s became actively involved in the Allied War efforts. In 1923, de Glehn was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy and in 1932 he was made a full Academician. During this time, he also maintained a successful practice as a portrait painter in London and travelled to United States every other autumn to fulfill commissions. De Glehn was very involved with the British Impressionist movement throughout his career.