Summer 2017

Summer 114 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com T he phenomenal rise in the popularity of watercolor painting in the United States that followed the formation of the American Watercolor Society in 1866 drew energy from a new talent bank of artists and an expanding class of collectors, on the rise after the Civil War. Determined to overturn the prejudice against watercolor as a medium for amateurs and commercial artists, the members of the new society recruited support from all corners of the art world. Beginning with respected Hudson River School landscapists, they also gathered previously marginalized artists, including Ruskinian reformers, illustrators, designers, young progressives returning from Europe, and women artists seeking a professional foothold. The annual watercolor exhibitions, held in the galleries of the National Academy of Design in New York beginning in 1867, became an arena where fresh, unknown painters—such as Thomas Eakins and Edwin Austin Abbey—could win laurels, and older artists, including Winslow Homer, could refashion their reputations. The liberality of the watercolor jury created an exciting and eclectic display, with shocking “impressionist” sketches jostling for attention alongside the polished work of old-fashioned realists, and the paintings of venerable academicians side by side with architectural elevations and flower pieces by obscure beginners. Eakins, Abbey, and Homer all sent in work for the first time in 1874 as the new society began to catch on with artists, critics, and collectors; by 1882 there were few painters in New York who were not working in watercolor. Homer, Sargent, and the American Watercolor Movement This enthusiasm for the new medium created a new market, and a set of new stars, particularly Homer, who tested his audience with a series of startling changes in style and subject matter that reflected the shifting tastes of the watercolor movement between 1874 and 1882. By the mid-1880s, Homer was recognized as the leader of the American school in watercolor, and by the 1890s his exhilarating hunting and fishing subjects in the medium had won widespread admiration and a steady clientele. His death in 1910 was followed by a series of tribute exhibitions and publications that celebrated his watercolors as both personal and national triumphs. Just as Homer was canonized, the much younger John Singer Sargent began to exhibit his watercolors for the first time. Like Homer, he had used the medium from childhood, but Sargent preferred to keep his watercolors private until 1904, when he sent several to an exhibition in London. A much larger solo show of watercolors in 1905 was followed in 1909 by a landmark New York exhibition that was purchased in one fell swoop by the Brooklyn Museum. A frenzy of competitive collecting by American museums and patrons ensued, demonstrating Sargent’s entrancing appeal in the medium as well as the by-now-established fondness for watercolor all across the United States. By the time of Sargent’s death in 1925, the medium was a favorite of the next generation, including a diverse parade of young moderns such as Charles Burchfield, Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper, and John Marin, who all learned watercolor from early experience in illustration or design. The arc of this watercolor story, from the neglected status of the 1860s to the wide-ranging practice of the 1920s, is told in the exhibition and catalogue, American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through May 14, 2017. For more information, call 215.763.8100 or visit www.philamuseum.org. By Kathleen A. Foster