Loan Exhibition C Jr H Paintings by Charles W. Hawthorne, N. A. The Macbeth Gallery 450 Fifth Ave. New York at Fortieth Street Loan Exhibition Paintings by Charles W. Hawthorne, N.A. February 19 1 7 There is NO CHARGE for this Catalogue But if it is worth anything to you , we give you opportunity to express it in the form of a contribution to THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS 'Box on Table) The Macbeth Gallery 450 Fifth Ave. New York at Fortieth Street THE MACBETH GALLERY Adoration Courtesy of City Art Museum, St. Louis CHARLES W . HAWTHORNE TITLES OF THE PICTURES I Venetian Girl Lent by Worcester Art Museum 2 The Lovers 3 Boy with Shad Lent by Ralph King, Esq. 4 Adoration Lent by City Art Museum, St. Louis 5 School Girls Lent by Ralph King, Esq. 6 Mother and Child Lent by Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts 7 Youth Lent by Mrs. C. K. Fox 8 End of Day Lent by W. S. Pardee, Esq. 9 The Widow IO The Mother Lent by Boston Museum of Fine Arts 11 Blue Girl Lent by W. S. Pardee, Esq. 12 Fisherman and Daughter Lent by W. S. Pardee, Esq. 13 Daffodils Lent by Duncan Phillips, Esq. 14 Refining Oil Lent by Detroit Museum of Art 15 Sewing Girl Lent by Joel W. Burdick, Esq. THE MACBETH GALLERY Youth Courtesy of Mrs. Charles K. Fox CHARLES W. HAWTHORNE CHARLES W. HAWTHORNE By Duncan Phillips B ECAUSE young Charles W. Hawthorne had been a favorite pupil of William M. Chase, had studied Hals with him in Holland, and painted brass and fish with him at Shinnecock, with a zest for the same “bravura” of brushwork, it seemed safe to assume, as a well-known critic actually did in 1905, that this young Hawthorne would turn out to be another objective virtuoso of the flowing brush. This critic applauded the virility of his vigorous youth arid the becoming brutality thereof. Hawthorne was already on Cape Cod and was painting fisher-folk and their catches, in their own brine-soaked atmosphere. The critic was sure that Hawthorne was an able painter, but also sure that he was “incapable of analytical reflection,” “with scarcely a hint of sensitive compassion” for his subjects. He was simply a clever brushman with a “savage, angular style.” He was only able to paint what he could see and he saw all too plainly. Well—perhaps it was for the best that he recognized his limitations. And how refreshing it was to find an American so free from foreign influence! How strange it all sounds to-day, this estimate of Haw¬ thorne as he seemed to a critic eleven years ago. Now¬ adays we grant him an original note of poetry, a sympa¬ thetic insight into character, a keen comprehension of and compassion for the humble fisher-folk he has painted THE MACBETH GALLERY The Widow CHARLES W . HAWTHORNE so often. But we say that he shows too much Italian mannerism and that he is too much inclined to become sentimental over his subjects. We say that his flesh tones are too waxy, that his flat modeling often seems like an affectation of archaic simplicity, and that his heads often seem detached or at least detachable from his bodies. At Provincetown, however, where Haw¬ thorne teaches the principles of pictorial art and the practice of painting out-of-doors to a colony of students, he is considered both a great teacher and a great painter. His pupils know that he can still paint for painting’s sake with the skill of a Vollon, a Chase, or a Henri. The truth of the matter is that he has been to Italy and his work is haunted by its beauties. It was Italy which pacified his violent clash of jarring colors and gave his tones in¬ stead an emotional subtlety of relationship. It was Italy which modified his aggressive brush stroke and made his surfaces sensuous with a lustrous mellow paste. Most of all it was Italy which gave him the sentiment for his chosen subjects which he had lacked before. Hawthorne came to a period in his development when brutality was no longer congenial to him. He went to Italy in 1907 at the age of 36 to get out of the habit of being a brutal and brilliant painter. A wistfulness had crept into his work so noticeably that Charles H. Caffin in his “Story of American Painting,’’ although still brack¬ eting him with Henri, Glackens and Luks, had the in¬ tuition to observe, “this painter has not yet found him¬ self. That he will do so is probable for he is now in Italy where men discover that brushwork does not constitute the whole of painting.” In the presence of the great paintings THE MACBETH GALLERY Mother and Child Courtesy of Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts CHARLES W. HAWTHORNE of Giorgione and Titian, Hawthorne discovered within himself hitherto unrecognized capacities for aesthetic enjoyment. He delighted in subtly constructed relations of technical elements and came to think of painting in terms of music. He realized that never again would he force his lights and shadows and crisply model his forms to make them “stand out.” How much more beautiful was the decorative convention of comparative flatness of modelling and of varied combinations of colors arranged within the same scale of tone. The surfaces of old Italian pictures enthralled him. If the Venetians under¬ painted in tempera, was it not worth his while to experi¬ ment with that method? It is to Hawthorne’s credit that in spite of the spell which Italy cast over him and the metamorphosis it made in his work, yet he main¬ tained his individuality. His own work, although in¬ spired by Italy, is not reminiscent of any Italian painter. His surfaces have a look of mellow glaze under granu¬ lation which curiously resembles the patina of Oriental pottery. Emphatically he denies Oriental influence. Discussing the genesis of his texture with him recently, he suddenly exclaimed: “I never thought of it before, but now that you mention it, I believe that it was not Italian pictures which inspired that particular surface but Italy itself—the familiar look of it as I lived there day after day, the texture of the trees, of the soil, of the walls, and—oh, I don’t know—just Italy!” But Italy did not merely alter the surfaces of Haw¬ thorne’s pictures and the direction of his technical ap¬ proach. What it really did to him was to stir into con¬ scious life, under that swashbuckling strength of his, THE MACBETH GALLERY School Girls Courtesy of Ralph King. Esq. CHARLES W . HAWTHORNE depths of tenderness and poetic insight, hitherto unsus¬ pected. Thereafter his approach to his subjects was not undertaken so much as a technical exploit nor even as an intellectual adventure, but as an emotional experi¬ ence. Giorgione was the first great painter to make a record of that look in the eye which manifests a soul which, for the moment, at least, is self-withdrawn. Yet it was Titian’s Young Englishman of the Pitti Palace who particularly fascinated the American painter; that stalwart man of action observed in a mood of such ab¬ sorbing reverie that his large eyes stare at us without seeing us, while his whole body seems rigid with the con¬ centration of his thoughts. In consequence of this por¬ trait’s strong influence on Hawthorne, it must be ac¬ knowledged that his Cape Cod fishermen and their families have formed the habit of stolidly, stupidly staring at us without seeing us, ever since. It was orig¬ inal with him, although inspired by Giorgionesque por¬ trait heads, to make us realize that even the fishermen of Provincetown have their happy day-dreams and their sharp, relentless tragedies. The unspoken thought interested the poet in him. He sought for various ways to express the silences which suddenly separate us from one another, at those moments when, in the midst of company, we are alone. Hawthorne’s Cape Cod models have thus been given universal significance as symbols for us all. Big moments are suggested by the faces of these people, old and young. Imagi¬ nation is stimulated through the painter’s sugges¬ tions of some of the great forces eternally at work in human hearts. THE MACBETH GALLERY Fisherman and Daughter Courtesy of W. S. Pardee, Esq. CHARLES W . HAWTHORNE All ages have been given sympathetic interpretation in the paintings of Hawthorne, but one type prevails and reappears. Being himself a big, simple man, his models are usually simple people, more or less symbolical in suggestion, roughly generalized rather than individually characterized. In Hawthorne’s picture entitled “Youth” a boy and a girl, playmates yesterday, walk hand in hand, their faces pale and serious, out of the world of play, into the world of labor and danger and wonder. It is youth which appeals most keenly to this artist; the freshness and wistfulness of maidenhood have won from Hawthorne many a graceful tribute. None is more charming than the lovely composition in tones of pearl and turquoise and pale gold entitled “Daffodils.” But the masterpiece of the artist is the tragedy called “The Widow,” in which solemn twilight tones of color sound like muffled funeral bells. A great lone star is shining, steadfast, eternal. A flag flies at half-mast over the square sails of the huddled boats in the harbor. Dry¬ eyed, desolate, yet passionless in her grief, a young dark mother clasps her baby close. Soon she will understand what has happened to her. Night is falling—but never again can her man come home. I could dwell critically upon the mannered technique of Hawthorne and find faults with the excessively flat modelling, the heavily opaque and oft-times discordant color of the less successful pictures of later years. I could say that as a rule there is too much of a sameness of texture all over these panels; that he cannot or will not vary his style to suit his subject. And yet so power¬ ful is the drawing and the painting of the best pictures THE MACBETH GALLERY Venetian Girl Courtesy of Worcester Art Museum of this la contraste in “The itan Mus feet the ( thorne’s man, am may be rank, it he has only to 1 one, and for its o] expressic living. This ared and nes, and, letropol- I so per- 1 . Haw- a young lopments ultimate aaintings ributable spirit are t merely le special fe worth shed A LIFE STUDY IN OIL BY C. W. HAWTHORNE. THE MACBETH GALLERY Venetian Girl Courtesy of Worcester Art Museum CHARLES W HAWTHORNE of this last and best period, so sensitively prepared and contrasted are the resonant and reverberant tones, and, in “The Widow” and “The Trousseau” of the Metropol¬ itan Museum, so inspired is the conception and so per¬ fect the execution, that fault-finders are silenced. Haw¬ thorne’s story is yet, we hope, half told. He is a young man, and of the adventurous breed. New' developments may be confidently expected. Whatever his ultimate rank, it is certain that in at least two of his paintings he has achieved that greatness which is attributable only to those works of art in which form and spirit are one, and in which good painting does not exist merely for its own sake, but seems to be inspired for the special expression of those sentiments which make life worth living. This article is part of an essay which is to be published in The International Studio for March Our cordial thanks are extended to the museums and to the pri¬ vate owners whose cooperation in generously lending their pictures has made this exhibition possible William Macbeth ‘Douglas C' (McJlCurtrie JA (jzv York