DOI issue:
Nr. 341 (October 1925)
DOI article:Teevan, Bernard: A painter's renaissance
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19986#0006
mceRHACionAL
THE OLD FARM BY WILLARD L. METCALF
especially how to define the character of a tree in a "figure man" and in accordance with the
every detail through good draftsmanship. "It is accepted tradition of those days he entered the
a point," Royal Cortissoz once wrote, "the lasting Juhen Academy and worked under Boulanger
virtue of which it is impossible to exaggerate." and Lefebvre. He also knew life at Giverny, in
From Brown's engraving bench Metcalf trans- the days of Robert Louis Stevenson, had a canvas
ferred himself to the school of the Museum of accepted by the Salon in 1888, and returned to
Fine Arts in Boston. Painting brought him too New York to take up illustration again,
little a return to live upon in those days and he By this time Metcalf was past thirty and he
grew to be one of those illustrators of the 1870's had not as yet found himself. He made a success
and 1880's who in later years became in turn such of his illustrating and painted enough canvases to
brilliant and famous painters. In fact by 1882 be admitted to membership in the Society of
his reputation in this line was sufficiently well American Artists and, eventually, the Ten Ameri-
established for the Century magazine to give him can Painters. In those days he chiefly painted
a commission to illustrate a scries of articles which figure subjects and his most faithful and oldest
Frank H. Cushing, of the Smithsonian Institution follower records a series of decorations he did
staff, was to write on the Zuni Indians in the about this time "for the walls of a well-known
southwest whither Metcalf had gone in the pre- tobacco establishment in New York," a long
ceding year. No illustrator made a fortune from frieze representing scenes in Cuba. He did well
his work in that period, however, and it was not in a material sense. He was growing in technical
until 1887 that he was able to go to Paris. Being achievement. He won medals at the Columbian
an illustrator he was naturally first and foremost Exposition in 1893, at the Society of American
SIX
OCTOBER I925
THE OLD FARM BY WILLARD L. METCALF
especially how to define the character of a tree in a "figure man" and in accordance with the
every detail through good draftsmanship. "It is accepted tradition of those days he entered the
a point," Royal Cortissoz once wrote, "the lasting Juhen Academy and worked under Boulanger
virtue of which it is impossible to exaggerate." and Lefebvre. He also knew life at Giverny, in
From Brown's engraving bench Metcalf trans- the days of Robert Louis Stevenson, had a canvas
ferred himself to the school of the Museum of accepted by the Salon in 1888, and returned to
Fine Arts in Boston. Painting brought him too New York to take up illustration again,
little a return to live upon in those days and he By this time Metcalf was past thirty and he
grew to be one of those illustrators of the 1870's had not as yet found himself. He made a success
and 1880's who in later years became in turn such of his illustrating and painted enough canvases to
brilliant and famous painters. In fact by 1882 be admitted to membership in the Society of
his reputation in this line was sufficiently well American Artists and, eventually, the Ten Ameri-
established for the Century magazine to give him can Painters. In those days he chiefly painted
a commission to illustrate a scries of articles which figure subjects and his most faithful and oldest
Frank H. Cushing, of the Smithsonian Institution follower records a series of decorations he did
staff, was to write on the Zuni Indians in the about this time "for the walls of a well-known
southwest whither Metcalf had gone in the pre- tobacco establishment in New York," a long
ceding year. No illustrator made a fortune from frieze representing scenes in Cuba. He did well
his work in that period, however, and it was not in a material sense. He was growing in technical
until 1887 that he was able to go to Paris. Being achievement. He won medals at the Columbian
an illustrator he was naturally first and foremost Exposition in 1893, at the Society of American
SIX
OCTOBER I925