Gorgeous to look at and filled with history, culture, and art, The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism shows how painting and gardens embodied a changing 19th-century America
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No period in history is stagnant. But life in the United States right now feels saturated with change and conflict. Every week seems to deliver its own set of challenges and events — ones that kindle, rather than douse, a simmering America. If reassurance is to be found anywhere, it might be by reflecting that this is hardly the country’s first encounter with upheaval.
America at the turn of the 19th-century was also a time of monumental change. Situated in the larger context of the Progresssive Era, the country was headed in new and unknowable directions. A multitude of factors gave rise to industrialization, urbanization, a burgeoning economy, and social reforms. Countless physical signs gave proof to this transformation, including congested cities, bustling factories, and trains and railroads. But there’s another manifestation of the period, albeit one less obvious, that encapsulated so much its spirit: a new breed of American painting alongside a growing zest for gardens.
Exhibition on Screen: The Artist’s Garden, American Impressionism (2017) gives us the fascinating story. Written and directed by veteran filmmaker Phil Grabsky, the documentary stems from an exhibition entitled The Artist’s Garden, which first premiered at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 2015, led by Anna Marley.
Focused on the years 1887-1920, the exhibition demonstrated the ways in which European impressionism, combined with a newfound interest in the role of the garden, helped stimulate the psyche of American artists. These two stimuli, among others, helped artists explore America’s changing identity.
The exhibition is now long over, but thanks to Grabsky’s film viewers have a chance to experience some of the glorious sights and art of this pivotal time in American history. Narrated by Gillian Anderson and featuring an insightful cast of curators and authors, viewers are in good hands.
If one isn’t an aficionado of gardening or an avid lover of art, be not deterred. There’s plenty on offer here. The exhibition provides an intriguing analysis of how social issues, a rising middle class, and a desire to get away from bustling city life, all combined to give birth to a distinct brand of American painting — one closely tied to the restorative, aesthetic, and symbolic natures of gardens.
Some of the names and movements featured will be familiar to many, while others may not ring a bell at all. But the figure who was absolutely vital in spawning a lust for gardens and their creative potential will be known by virtually everyone: Claude Monet.
Indeed, it was across the Atlantic and in the beautiful, sprawling gardens of the world-famous French impressionist that a group of American painters discovered the magic of combining the world of gardens with the world of art. Monet’s home of earthly delights — where he lived for four decades — was so magnetic and inspirational of a place that “[f]rom the mid-1880s, many American artists made the pilgrimage to Giverny.” Some, like John Leslie Breck and John Singer Sargent, became particularly close to the renowned painter. But for all of them, it was an eye-opening experience.
Also influential to the artists — along with a segment of the American population becoming increasingly interested in art — was the European impressionists as a whole. A Parisian art dealer named Paul Durand-Ruel was pivotal in this. His ability and enthusiasm for getting impressionist works to the United States not only paved the way for a far greater awareness of this art, but it also “introduced [French impressionism] into the American market.”
Another commodity also made its way across the sea in this vibrant story of the artist’s relation to the garden — flora. Experts acquaints us with an 18th-century man named John Bartram. Like so many other figures in this Exhibition on Screen, he might not be a household name, but his story is fascinating. The Pennsylvanian-born Bartram had the novel idea at the time (and apparently it really was novel), to grow “plants just because they’re flowers” — not for food, not for medicine, but for their aesthetic and creative possibilities. He was instrumental in the dissemination of flora, both to and from America.
Bartram’s love for the intrinsic beauty of flora lived on. By the late 19th century, gardens could be viewed “as an end in themselves, a luxury.” Their role would become increasingly expansive as this new conception blended with other cultural and artistic currents, like the City Beautiful movement. Likewise, a growing middle class utilized the garden as a beautiful haven from the frenetic energy of the cities, which were rapidly growing.
Painters like Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, and William Chadwick absorbed these myriad changes as they explored their artistic impulses. Many American painters found intimate and conducive settings in which to do exactly that. Replete with gardens and the comradery of fellow artists, north eastern art colonies — such as those established by Florence Griswold and Celia Thaxter — provided ideal environments. Here the artists would socialize, discuss, and create.
From their brushes came expressions of American life — its joys, its dilemmas, its morphing identity. The changing role of women, for instance, can be seen in paintings like Hassam’s “Summer Evening.” This painting — and many others — features a woman near a window, her hand on some sort of symbolic object (in this case, a potted flower “associated with the home”), and a world outside. As one curator aptly puts it, paintings like this one showed “women in liminal spaces, where they’re kind of betwixt and between, as they were in life.” The Progressive Era may have achieved significant strides for women, but many limitations remained.
But what steps to take – indeed if any at all — was a matter of dispute. Same with immigration. Same with social issues more broadly. None of this is surprising. Then, like now, what direction the country should move towards conjured up a mass of different viewpoints, opinions, and ideals. And yet, despite all the variance, the country remained intact.
With an unbelievably chaotic year now closed, and a season of rebirth on the horizon, it’s an ideal time to experience the wonders of the outdoors — and to reflect on the dynamic interactions between art, nature, and ourselves.
Spectatio 