Robert William Vonnoh
American, 1858 - 1933
Robert Vonnoh was one of the first American artists to bring European Impressionism to the United States. A celebrated Impressionist landscape and portrait painter and a gifted and respected teacher, Vonnoh influenced many American artists. His students included William Glackens, Robert Henri and John Sloan, who would later form influential the Ashcan school. Although Vonnoh was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1858, he moved to the Boston area with his German-American parents as a youth and began his artistic studies there. He attended the public schools, trained in a lithography shop, and eventually enrolled in the Massachusetts Normal Art School, where he was a pupil under George H. Bartlett and met Edmund Tarbell. After graduation in 1879, Vonnoh began his long and illustrious teaching career, first at his alma mater, then at the Roxbury Evening Drawing School and the Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He also taught at the East Boston Evening Drawing School, the Cowles Art School, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, Vonnoh traveled frequently between America and France. In 1881, Vonnoh made the first of many trips to France. He enrolled in the Académie Julian and was a student under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. He frequented the Louvre and had his paintings accepted into the prestigious Paris Salon. During this period in Paris, the French Impressionists were exhibiting their work at the Georges Petit Galleries and at Durand-Ruel, but it is not known if Vonnoh saw these exhibitions. After two years, he returned to his teaching career in Boston in 1883. Between 1883 and 1886, Vonnoh was quite active in the artistic circles of Boston, He saw the two great shows of European Impressionist art in the United States—the "Foreign Exhibition" held at the Mechanics Building in Boston in 1883 and the exhibition of French Impressionist art in New York in 1886, which was organized by the American Art Association and lent by Durand-Ruel. Shortly after his marriage to his first wife Grace D. Farrell he return to live and work in France again between 1887 and 1890. Soon after his arrival in France, Vonnoh settled in the area of Grèz-sur-Loing near the Forest of Fontainebleau. He began exploring in earnest this revolutionary technique of impressionism and mastered it quite quickly. His adoption of the impressionist aesthetic has been attributed to the influence of Irish painter Roderic O'Conor, who had immersed himself in impressionism and who may have been in Grez during this period. Between 1887 and 1890, Vonnoh fully adopted the vanguard art of the impressionists, but like most Americans he never went as far as his French counterparts in dissolving forms into pure light and color. Many of the paintings he created during this time were accepted into the Paris Salon, others were sent to Philadelphia for a one-person show at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1889. In 1891, Vonnoh returned to the United States and assumed the position of principal instructor in portrait and landscape painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which he held through 1894. He also remarried, after his first wife's death, to American sculptor Bessie O. Potter in 1899.During his years in America, between 1891 and 1907 and again from 1912 to 1920, Vonnoh was considered one of the foremost landscape and portrait painters in the country. Around 1905, the Vonnohs discovered the artists' colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut, Vonnoh spent many summers there over the next twenty-five years and exhibited regularly at the Lyme Art Association exhibitions. After 1925 Vonnoh's eyesight began to deteriorate, bringing an end to his highly productive career. He returned to Grèz-sur-Loing, France and died of a heart attack in Nice in 1933.
Robert Vonnoh Paintings
Robert Vonnoh Paintings
Vonnoh was born on September 17, 1858, in Hartford, and died December 28, 1933, in Nice, France. He was in Old Lyme summers, c. 1905-c.1925.
Robert Vonnoh, one of the first Americans to adopt Impressionism, was born in Hartford in 1858 to German parents. The family soon moved to Boston, where Vonnoh studied at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. In 1881 he enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris, where he worked under Boulanger and Lefebvre, but when his money ran out in 1883, he returned to Boston and taught at several local art schools. He began to establish himself as a portrait painter.
By 1887 he was able to go to Paris for four more years. He participated in various European exhibitions, won honorable mention in the Salon of 1889, and bronze medals for two consecutive years in Paris expositions. He encountered French Impressionism during this second Paris stay, but he must have been aware of it already because Hamlin Garland (who met Vonnoh in Boston in about 1885 through the landscape painter John Enneking) wrote of these younger artists' violent criticism of "the 'Old Hat' schools of Munich" and their keen interest in the "new technique in the use of color" that was "the latest word from Paris." Enneking's friend, Lilla Cabot Perry, staged an informal impressionist exhibition in her home with a group of paintings by John Breck, which "widened the influence of the new school," according to Garland.
By 1891 Vonnoh was back in America, exhibiting landscapes at a Boston gallery in November; they were "a record of impressions gathered out of doors during summer holidays ill France in '89 and '90 and in this country the present year" (Vonnoh wrote in the preface to the checklist) "painted earnestly and sincerely with a desire to secure interesting effects of light and color as presented in certain phases of Nature."
That same year Vonnoh became principal instructor in portrait and figure painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he remained until at least the end of 1894, when he persuaded Theodore Robinson to take his place two days a week. In Philadelphia his pupils included Robert Henri, E. W. Schofield, W. L. Redfield, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Maxfield Parrish.
Vonnoh was married to Bessie O. Potter in 1899. She was a noted sculptor with whom he would often exhibit in future. They would become the first husband-wife members of the National Academy. There is evidence that the Vonnohs were in Old Lyme in 1906, but the couple probably first went there the summer of 1905. Statements that credit Vonnoh with being one of the founders of the colony in 1900 cannot be substantiated. Bessie Potter Vonnoh herself wrote that the colony was "famous" and "old" when she and her husband first visited there and that they met the Woodrow Wilson family at the Florence Griswold House - that could not have happened before 1905.
Although the Vonnohs did not participate in the annual Old Lyme art exhibitions until 1917, they returned to town regularly for at least twenty years and had a summer home in the area. 'I-hey also had a place in Grez-sur-Loing, a French village beloved by the earlier generation of Barbizon painters, but Bessie Vonnoh wrote that she and her husband did not get to their French house from World War I until 192.3. Instead, they went to Lyme to be among many of their friends.
Once the Vonnohs began to exhibit in Lyme Art Association exhibitions, they did so regularly for about a dozen years, and Robert Vonnoh occasionally exhibited with the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts as well. In 1920 he won its top prize. His retrospective exhibitions of 1923 and 1926 traveled from New York to Kansas to California. These were one-man exhibitions, the first since his marriage not to include Bessie Potter Vonnoh's sculptures. That gives some credence to rumors that the Vonnoh marriage failed at some point, although there was never a divorce. Sometime after 1925 Robert Vonnoh seems to have moved permanently to Grez - alone and with failing eyesight. He died in Nice in 1933. His career had included both portraiture and landscapes that were sometimes so heavy with impasto they were described as reliefs in oil.
Further reading:
Vonnoh, Bessie Potter. -Tears and Laughter Caught in Bronze." The Delineator, October, 1925, pp. 8 ff.
-The Vonnohs.- International Studio, 54 (Dec. 1914), 48-52. "Vonnoh's Half-Century.- International Studio, 77 (June, 1923), 231-133.
Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton
Robert Vonnoh, one of the first Americans to adopt Impressionism, was born in Hartford in 1858 to German parents. The family soon moved to Boston, where Vonnoh studied at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. In 1881 he enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris, where he worked under Boulanger and Lefebvre, but when his money ran out in 1883, he returned to Boston and taught at several local art schools. He began to establish himself as a portrait painter.
By 1887 he was able to go to Paris for four more years. He participated in various European exhibitions, won honorable mention in the Salon of 1889, and bronze medals for two consecutive years in Paris expositions. He encountered French Impressionism during this second Paris stay, but he must have been aware of it already because Hamlin Garland (who met Vonnoh in Boston in about 1885 through the landscape painter John Enneking) wrote of these younger artists' violent criticism of "the 'Old Hat' schools of Munich" and their keen interest in the "new technique in the use of color" that was "the latest word from Paris." Enneking's friend, Lilla Cabot Perry, staged an informal impressionist exhibition in her home with a group of paintings by John Breck, which "widened the influence of the new school," according to Garland.
By 1891 Vonnoh was back in America, exhibiting landscapes at a Boston gallery in November; they were "a record of impressions gathered out of doors during summer holidays ill France in '89 and '90 and in this country the present year" (Vonnoh wrote in the preface to the checklist) "painted earnestly and sincerely with a desire to secure interesting effects of light and color as presented in certain phases of Nature."
That same year Vonnoh became principal instructor in portrait and figure painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he remained until at least the end of 1894, when he persuaded Theodore Robinson to take his place two days a week. In Philadelphia his pupils included Robert Henri, E. W. Schofield, W. L. Redfield, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Maxfield Parrish.
Vonnoh was married to Bessie O. Potter in 1899. She was a noted sculptor with whom he would often exhibit in future. They would become the first husband-wife members of the National Academy. There is evidence that the Vonnohs were in Old Lyme in 1906, but the couple probably first went there the summer of 1905. Statements that credit Vonnoh with being one of the founders of the colony in 1900 cannot be substantiated. Bessie Potter Vonnoh herself wrote that the colony was "famous" and "old" when she and her husband first visited there and that they met the Woodrow Wilson family at the Florence Griswold House - that could not have happened before 1905.
Although the Vonnohs did not participate in the annual Old Lyme art exhibitions until 1917, they returned to town regularly for at least twenty years and had a summer home in the area. 'I-hey also had a place in Grez-sur-Loing, a French village beloved by the earlier generation of Barbizon painters, but Bessie Vonnoh wrote that she and her husband did not get to their French house from World War I until 192.3. Instead, they went to Lyme to be among many of their friends.
Once the Vonnohs began to exhibit in Lyme Art Association exhibitions, they did so regularly for about a dozen years, and Robert Vonnoh occasionally exhibited with the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts as well. In 1920 he won its top prize. His retrospective exhibitions of 1923 and 1926 traveled from New York to Kansas to California. These were one-man exhibitions, the first since his marriage not to include Bessie Potter Vonnoh's sculptures. That gives some credence to rumors that the Vonnoh marriage failed at some point, although there was never a divorce. Sometime after 1925 Robert Vonnoh seems to have moved permanently to Grez - alone and with failing eyesight. He died in Nice in 1933. His career had included both portraiture and landscapes that were sometimes so heavy with impasto they were described as reliefs in oil.
Further reading:
Vonnoh, Bessie Potter. -Tears and Laughter Caught in Bronze." The Delineator, October, 1925, pp. 8 ff.
-The Vonnohs.- International Studio, 54 (Dec. 1914), 48-52. "Vonnoh's Half-Century.- International Studio, 77 (June, 1923), 231-133.
Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton
