Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/williamglackensOOwats The Arts Monographs WILLIAM GLACKENS The Arts Monographs Georges Seurat by Walter Pach William Glackens by Forbes Watson Aikens by Bryson Burroughs Arthur B. Davies by Forbes Watson Toulouse-Lautrec by Alexander Brook The Arts Monojo^raphs WILLIAM GLACKENS BY FORBES WATSON ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK DUFFIELD AND COMPANY THE ARTS 1923 Copyright, 1923, by DUFFIELD AND COMPANY Printed in U. S. A. FOREWORD The object of The Arts Monographs is to present in workable, concise, but fnlly-illiistrated form, a series of small books on various artists and subjects of art which shall not be too expensive for gen- eral circulation and which, in text and illustration, shall stimulate the interest of the lay reader while at the same time serving the purposes of the more special student. Forbes Watson, Editor . ILLUSTRATIONS Drawing {Collection of Mr. Albert Gallatin). Ernest Lawson (Lithograph) {Collection of Mr. Albert Gallatin). Etching with Color {Collection of Mr. Albert Gallatin). Race Horses {Collection of Mr. Albert Gallatin) . At Mouquin’s. The Luxembourg Gardens. Portrait Group. The Race Track {The Barnes Foundation) . Bathers {The Barnes Foundation). Portrait {The Barnes Foundation)) . Girl Pinning on Hat {The Barnes Foundation) . The Raft {The Barnes Foundation). Nude. The Artist’s Daughter. Young Girl (The Barnes Foundation). Outdoor Restaurant. Walter Hampden. Flowers. WILLIAM GLACKENS WILLIAM GLACKENS By Forbes Watson ILLIAM GLACKENS was born in Philadelphia, March 13th, 1870, He was educated at the public schools and gradu- ated from the Central High School. In 1891 he joined the staff of the PJiiladelphia Record as an artist. In 1892 he went to the Philadelphia Press and later to the Ledger and then back again to tbe Press. Meanwhile intermittently he studied at the Pennsylvania Acad- emy of Fine Arts. Finally in 1895 and 1896 he made the usual American artist's pilgrimage to Paris where he rented a studio and worked but he did not go to any of the schools. In the winter of 1896 he returned to America. At that time George B, Luks was the “premier humorist artist” for the ISew York World and through him Glackens succeeded in getting an assignment to do comic drawings for the World's Sunday supplement. This was Glackens’ hrst job in New York. He left it to become a sketch artist on the ISew York Herald. Harry Dart was then head of the Herald staff and Ernest <3 11 O WILLIAM GLACKENS Fall!' and Glackens did most of the sketching assignments during the year that Glackens was on the Herald. It was about this time that Glackens began to work for the maga- zines, McClure’s in particular. He was sent to Northwest Wiscon- sin to make drawings of a log drive to illustrate an article by Ray Stannard Baker. Returning from there he again worked for a time on the Sunday World. But upon the outbreak of the Spanish war he was sent by McClure’s to Florida with instructions to go to Cuba as quickly as possible and annex himself to Garcia’s army. His drawings were to be sent back as opportunity offered. Fortunately his instructions were cancelled when it was found that the United States Army was going to move that summer. And Glackens accom- panied the army together with a vast number of other correspondents who were dumped into Cuba to shift for themselves. He went through the campaign and returned to America with a not too bad attack of malaria. Again he took up magazine work, especially for Scribner s, and he also began drawing for the Saturday Evening Post. He became a member of The Society of American Artists and wlien they were absorbed by the National Academy he became automatically an Associate Academician. He has been a member of many art associations — too many he says. He has always had a horror of oflicial ])ositions hut somehow he became president of the Iiide|)endent and served one term. In 1903 at Hartford, Connecti- cut, he married Edith Dimock. <3 12 O WILLIAM G L A C K E N S The present position occupied by William Glackens as an artist may be described by the word solitary — a word by the way that describes the position of more than one artist, if not of all. For a youtbfnl period artists may flock in schools, groii])S, crowds, gangs, and by concerted action draw public attention to themselves as a group. Gradually the school disintegrates, the movement subsides, the crowd thins, the noise of organized publicity diminishes, and standing alone, one or two artists are left from each little crowd to go their separate ways and work out their individual salvations. Mediocrities can organize, play politics, seize upon the best com- mercial leads, obtain the best galleries, secure official plums and direct the policies of public artistic undertakings. For mediocrities, being bored by tbe actual practice of their profession, are glad to enjoy tbe temporary excitement of a plot or plan of organization. But tbe artist, in the truer sense of tbe term stands alone, and alone be must find his way. To understand why an artist like Glackens with a wide reputation, in tbe fulness of his maturity, should occupy a position apart, a brief sketch of certain American conditions is necessary. Once and once only tbe American artists organized on a national scale and that was in 1913 under tbe autocratic guidance of Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn and a few others. Tbe course of American art was changed by a single tremendous stroke. For tbe first time tbe outsiders were made to realize what tbe insiders always knew — ^tbat <3 13 O WILLIAM GLACKENS frock-coated art only wears a frock-coat to hide the fact that it isn’t art. But the big stroke has not been repeated, and the academies that trembled momentarily on their foundations have settled back into something like their old positions. Of course things are not as they were and never can be, which may he enough to be thankful for, yet today, ten years after the Armory exhibition, we find the only other large permanent exhibition galleries in New York in the grip of the officials. The officials occupy most of the seats in the juries of the important museum exhibitions throughout the country, and the regular trav- elling exhibitions for domestic consumption are almost entirely made up of the works of the manufacturers who belong to the “big club.” In a word the presentation of contemporary American art through- out the country is largely controlled by a conventional frock-coated spirit which .has outlived the frock-coat itself. Here and there a bright spot like The Arts Club of Chicago is willing to risk one eye. While the officials, showing a solid front, occupy the main metro- politan fortresses of salesmanship and display, and the corresponding vantage points througliout the country, the attacking forces show no leadership, no generous spirit, no breadth of view. Taking the ac- tivities of organized elliciency as the recompense of mediocrity and as a matler of course which is proved by historical precedents in many countries, they separate into small groups and attack each other. I'liey fonn little academies of their own, more narrow in scope than <3 14 O WILLIAM GLACKENS the ordinary academy. They indulge in grotesque errors of judg- ment. They make no distinction between artists and manufacturers. The line of distinction is the line between their little gang and the outside world, and they are more united against the artists outside of their little gang than against the mere politicians. Their organized publicity grossly exaggerates the value of their own limited circle and undermines, not the big obstacle, which is the effete frock-coat, but the perfectly genuine artists who don’t belong to their little club. It is one big club on one side and on the other a lot of little clubs just as academic in spirit as the big club. These little clubs with their nar- row rules about what is modern and what isn’t may sharpen the members’ wits by their frays. Perhaps the artist has to choose be- tween the soft happiness of contented and industrious manufacturing and spasms of conflict interspersed with solitude. The story is too long to complete, but these are a few of the aspects of the professional atmosphere in which an artist of the caliber of William Glackens hnds himself in America today. On the one hand he is not fashionable enough — the merest little beginner with a knack at imitating Derain is more fashionable — on the other hand he has passed far beyond decadent impressionism or feeble Sargent- ism which are the two main movements within the academies. He doesn’t belong among the officials, and he is not young enough to enjoy painting for theory’s sake. By avocation he is neither a parlia- mentarian nor a congressman as so many artists are. I have never met an artist who so consistently fails to indulge in blah. He is, I <3 15 O WILLIAM GLACKENS repeat, under present conditions, a solitary, too purely a painter to be honored officially, too uncomplex to be honored by the up-to-the- niinute cerebralists. So much for his position. Matisse, looking at a picture in a friend’s house said to his friend : “You ought to give me that picture.” The friend smiled. “But she is such a beautiful woman, I could love her so,” said Matisse. Shades of Freud, what simplicity! A senator buying an Aston Knight could hardly be more simple. But between simplicity and simplicity what a difference, the simple echo and the simple feeling. The summer boarder admires the sunset, not because she is stirred and love of life moves in her, but because she wants her rocking neighbor to believe that she has a soul above the afternoon’s gossip. A senator buys a “pretty bit” not because he is moved by bad painting but because he isn’t moved by good painting. Matisse saw a Renoir — it was a Renoir that he asked his friend to give him — and said: “Wliat a woman!” Had he seen a potboiler of the same subject he prol)ably would have said: “What a mess!” Simplicities are dif- ferent after all, which is well to understand, since uncerebral sim- ])licity is, I imagine, at the bottom of the art of William Glackens. He loves tlie fascinating little daughter of his, that you may see pictured in tlie reproduction at the beginning of this article. He loves to look at lier. The next step is to paint her. He is delighted by the crowd <3 16 O WILLIAM G L A C K E N S on tlie beach at Belport. He enjoys the scene. Ergo he paints it. He is not trying “to save the republic” to prove a theory, to illustrate hook-psychology. Talking about an amateur hook-psychologist who makes the mis- takes common to miickllecl learning, Glackens gave vent to the sim])le exclamation: “Psychology from hooks. . . .” The phrase trailed off into a sneer. Glackens doesn’t get it out of hooks and tiy to paste it incongruously on a canvas. His psychology is from life. He has had a long training looking at life. And when what he sees through his eyes gives him pleasure it is natural for him to paint his im- pression. In the days when Glackens worked on the Philadelphia news- papers there were no photographic supplements, no news movies. The artist was a reporter. But he did in drawings what his com- panion reporter did with words. He told the story. He told it as best he could with whatever aid he could secure in the quickest time possible. If he were sent to the coal regions to report a riot of the coal workers, well there was no time to he lost — he saw, observed, took notes. And then coming hack from the coal mines in a shaky train, on a rough road, with the car swinging hack and forth and u]) and down, he scratched away as best he could under the adverse cir- cumstances. Concentration and speed counted. <3 17 O WILLIAM GLACKENS Or it might be a murder, a yacht race, a prize fight, a dead person in a coffin. Not that the dead person was depicted in the coffin. But the evidence that her eyes were blacked or her shoulder broken, or whatever the accident might be was there, and the evidence had to be noted and applied to the living image of the dead. But why continue with these details? The point is that William Glackens began to be an artist not in a comfortable school where there was much theorizing. He began to be an artist in the school of experience. His work filled a purpose in demand by a common every- day world. All the time that he worked as an illustrating reporter he also worked at painting, always wishing to be a painter, and mean- while doing something that had to fill a demand, that had to be useful and desired by someone willing to pay for it. And this is a point not to be forgotten in thinking of the work or the character of William Glackens. Or at least that is my belief. If today he does exactly what he himself wants to regardless of the desires of others, if he disregards with a phenomenal passivity all the excitements of his fellow artists, all the requirements of prospective clients, why is this so? It is because for so long he had to do what he liad tf) do. Now he does what he wants to do. But to return to his youthful career. While working on the newspajiers in Philadelphia, he also went to the Philadelphia Acad- emy, and so much impression did the various instructors make upon him that today he can hardly remember who taught there when he was <3 18 O WILLIAM GLACKENS a pupil. Yes, Anschutz did teach there. But Glackens was not a steady pupil. He was a working newspaper reporter, and so he could not go to school more than occasionally. He went to school, roughly, when he wasn’t working. In those days he shared a studio with Robert Henri. Henri taught in an art school in the mornings and Glackens worked in the afternoons. The arrangement was perfect. Glackens was a member of the Philadelphia group of which Henri, Luks, Sloan, and Shinn were other members. He always wanted to be a painter, but he had a homely practical training in illustrating, and he became the leader of the American illustrators. Years ago I remember Albert Sterner’s speaking of the complaints that used to come to McClure s Magazine because Glacken’s illustrations were not sweet enough. They were too real, too original, too fresh and amusing to appeal to a public saturated with false illustration. Like every artist of the day Glackens eventually found his way to Paris, where the early painting in the Luxembourg Gardens was done. This hints much more of Manet than Renoir, his later enthusiasm. But before he found need of a rich palette akin to Renoir’s to express his pure delight in color, Glackens painted such darker simpler can- vases, simpler from a color point of view, as the early Summer House. Then there is the party at Mouquin’s, which has its period stamped on it. But Glackens’ gift did not flower fully until he came into contact <3 19 O WILLIAM GLACKENS with the art of Renoir. He delighted in the art of Renoir to such an extent that the uninitiated, the unthinking and the prejudiced have called him an imitator of Renoir. The surest way to see that he is not is to hang up some Renoirs besides some Glackens. Had Glackens been a cerebralist he would have covered up his tracks. He would have formed a Renoiresque style such as we see in so many German pictures of the day. But Glackens took Renoir just as he took the bathers playing pranks on the beach, or the flowers in the fields. Renoir for him is part of the beauty of the world. He gladly acknowledges his obligations to Renoir. For Glackens doesn’t have to try to be original. Look for example at the reproduction of the young nude girl that was in the New Society exhibition this year. The form is pure Glackens. The Glackens’ point of view remains an entity that can easily be traced throughout his extensive production of drawings, pastels and paintings. That point of view is uncomplicated by the problems of the chess player. Men like Marcel Duchamp, for ex- ample, get their artistic pleasure from setting up intellectual problems for lliemselves and working them out. Instinct plays a very small ])art ill siicli work. It is almost purely intellectual and has a strong apjieal to the intellectuals. Glackens plays at painting. There is no tormented, morbid struggle with profound life facts disturbing him. He doesn’t delve deeply into psychology. The color of the world makes him thor- <3 20 O WILLIAM GLACKENS oiighly happy, and to express that happiness in color lias become his first and most natural impulse. He lives in a kind of dream of painting, absorbed, distrait, unaware of the problems that bother more unhappy natures. His opinions of art are clear and unjiretentious. Emotional, vague, mouth-filling, and didactic expressions bore him. And he can’t be log-rolled by the crowd. I imagine he thinks Derain is more of an eesthete than a creative artist, hut his admiration of Pascin is undiluted, and in fact between the two dissimilar arts of Pascin and Glackens there is something in common. Both are among the best illustrators of their day. Both go straight to life for their subjects, and are only interested in their craft in so far as it will more fully express their direct apprehension of the world through their eyes. And both look out on life with eyes that see its humorous aspects. Pascin is more ironic and devilish. But Glackens is strictly American. His painting tradition is French, hut his point of view is American. His sense of humor is American. Look at the beach scenes herewith reproduced. It’s hard to say why exactly they appear so American, and of course it is not merely the scene itself. The whole attitude is American. The subject is seen through American eyes. If we were not so timid about our own ])ai liters, or if Glackens had any of the publicity sense that nearly all European artists have found necessary for salvation, there would not lie a museum in America <3 21 O WILLIAM GLACKENS which did not have some of his works. He is one of the gayest, most delightful and accomplished painters in the world today. If he were more heavy-handed and ponderous there would be much more made of our good fortune in having such a painter in our midst. In the meanwhile the important facts are established. He him- self doesn’t care what people say or think. The respect that he has won from the artists, as well as the fact that collectors have sought his work — whatever his material success has been or might become does not seem to matter. A vase of flowers, or any other subject suggest- ing full flowing color could distract him in an instant from all the material problems in the world. Painting is his problem. In this he is completely absorbed. He plays, works, lives with paint. In the early days he reported events for the newspapers. Now he re- ports whatever he sees that tickles his fancy and gives him a chance to play with color. Consequently in the end you remain at a loss to describe the charm of his painting. You may try to explain the charm of such ^rt, even as people will try to describe the appeal of a particular woman. In the end you have to see for yourself. Finally one asks why a painter whose color flows and sings and plays, who lias a quite phenomenal understanding of how to use the medium of oil paint, should occupy a position so betwixt and be- tween; and tlie only answer seems to be that in America, particularly, so much art, written, carved, or painted, is dedicated, definitely thoiigli not necessarily consciously, to a modernistic or an academic <3 22 O WILLIAM GLACKENS audience. And this, despite the fact that it is only inidedicated work that stands tlie test of time. Tlie moh rushes to one side or tlie otlier. And it requires a rather sound aesthetic constitnlion for the artist to give no heed except to liis own sweet will. If he wants })rizes let him heware of too much point of view in his work, and if he wants the intellectuals to ajipland, he must wear his modernism on his sleeve, where all can see it with half a glance upward from the “Wastelands of Ulysses,” to quote our favorite columnist. And yet it is one of the foolish little twists of modern life that the artist who goes his own pleasant way rejoicing, finally rises mountains higher than those who are too susceptible to the proper dedication of their craft. <3 23 O Reproductions of Paintings by WILLIAM GLACKENS Collection of iSlr. Albert Gallnltn ‘ ^ V . LoUectwn of Mr. Albert Gallatin ERNEST L A W S 0 N ( Ti 1 1, o g r a p li ) AT MOUQUIN’S THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS PORTRAIT GROUP The Barnes Foundation The Barnes Foundation The Barnes Foundation PORTRAIT The Barnes fuuitauuun C IKL PINNING ON HAT fVt The Barnes Foundation NUDE THE ARTIST’S DAUGHTER •ifr-y YOUNG GIRL The Barnes Foundation OUTDOOR RESTAURANT A L T E R II A M P I) E N FLOWERS "t -r rv ^ r®-ii ";M:-y - s ;- r. -/V' j^vs >' ' f'~»y 'kJi ’‘V ;y. 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