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Artist or Maker: Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858-1925)
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Provenance: Joseph Fitler Braun, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1913.
Cyrus H.K. Curtis, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Mary and Edward William Bok, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, daughter and son-in-law of the above.
By descent until 2001.
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Exhibited: New York, Montross Gallery, Exhibition of Pictures by Willard L. Metcalf, January 2-13, 1912, no. 1.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 107th Annual Exhibition, February 4-March 24, 1912, no. 637 (erroneously titled as Spring Fields).
Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago, 25th Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, November 5-December 8, 1912, no. 167.
Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Fourth Exhibition: Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, December 17, 1912-January 26, 1913, no. 117.
New York, Spanierman Gallery, LLC, Willard Metcalf (1858-1925): Yankee Impressionist, May 8-June 28, 2003.
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Literature: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Papers, Archives of American Art, microfilm roll P55, frame 529.
Willard Metcalf Papers, Archives of American Art, microfilm roll N/60-13, frames 528, 529.
A. Hoeber, "Art and Artists," New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser, January 3, 1912, p. 12.
"Willard Metcalf Exhibits at Montross Gallery, 550 Fifth Avenue, N.Y. City," Long Island Democrat, January 6, 1912.
"Some Art Exhibitions," New York Evening Mail, January 6, 1912, p. 16.
L. Merrick, "Exhibitions Now On: Metcalf at Montross's," American Art News 10, January 6, 1912.
"Things Seen in the World of Art," New York Sun, January 7, 1912, p. 4.
Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts, January 8, 1912. "Prize Winners and Critique of 107th Annual Exhibition The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts," Philadelphia Public Ledger, February 4, 1912, p. 9.
"Four Important Prizes Awarded by Art Academy," The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 4, 1912, p. 1.
"Pennsylvania Academy Exhibition," New York Evening Mail, February 5, 1912, p. 7.
Rev. D.H. Steffens, "Sister City's 107th Milestone in Art," The Baltimore Sun, February 11, 1912, p. 8, illustrated.
"Academy Exhibit Marks an Epoch in American Art," New York World, February 18, 1912, p. 5.
"Jennie Sesnan Medal--Awarded to Willard L. Metcalf for his picture entitled 'The Red Oak,' No. 637," International Studio, April 1912, illustrated.
L. Merrick, "The Pennsylvania Academy's Exhibition," Art and Progress, April 1912, illustrated.
B.J. MacAdam, Winter's Promise: Willard Metcalf in Cornish, New Hampshire 1909-1920, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1999, p. 70.
B. Weber, American Paintings X, New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, 2002, pp. 60-2, illustrated.
Spanierman Gallery, LLC, Willard Metcalf (1858-1925): Yankee Impressionist, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2003, pp. 118-9, no. 30, illustrated.
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Notes: Painted in Cornish, New Hampshire, The Red Oak (No. 2) depicts an expansive farm in the crisp light of an autumn day. In the foreground, an immense oak tree casts a dappled pattern of shadow and sunlight on the hillside. At the top of the composition, set against the vivid blue sky, a farmhouse breaks the line of the high horizon and lends an element of domesticity to the civilized landscape which characterizes much of the artist's New England views. In Cornish, Metcalf painted not just in the summer months when the artist's colony there was at its peak, but also continued his work into the autumn and winter.
The landscapes of 1911, now counted among some of his most successful works (including The Red Oak (No. 2)), culminated in an exhibition the following year at Montross Gallery in New York. One of the most finished and dramatic of his New England views, The Red Oak (No. 2) also traveled that same year to three other major venues, the annual exhibitions at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Willard Metcalf, Yankee Impressionist, p. 64, 118)
"As his Cornish paintings from 1911 so effectively demonstrate, the artist had mastered a distinctive approach to landscape painting by this point. Described as 'tender and withal true,' his manner appealed to many for its satisfying balance of naturalism and artifice, and his idyllic New England imagery reinforced widely held nostalgic conceptions of the region and of Yankee culture. Early in 1912, Metcalf's 1911 Cornish paintings figured prominently in three widely acclaimed solo exhibitions--at the Montross Gallery in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Boston's Copley Gallery. That his art pleased such a large and diverse clientele did not go unnoticed. A reviewer of the Boston exhibition bluntly observed: 'The most remarkable fact about these pictures is that every one likes them.'" (B.J. MacAdam, Winter's Promise: Willard Metcalf in Cornish, New Hampshire, 1909-1920, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1999, p.19)
Consistently, critics in Metcalf's lifetime lauded the Americanness of his art, in particular with respect to his New England landscapes. In a tribute to Metcalf, Catherine Beach Ely noted this connection: "Perhaps nowhere else do the seasons put their imprint on landscape with such incisiveness as in New England. [It was] this section to which Metcalf almost exclusively confines himself. Every picture of Metcalf's is a poignant portrait of a local American scene, so that a lover of New England landscape feels a grip at the heart in viewing a country church, an old homestead, a Spring, Autumn or Winter day of his." (Willard Metcalf, Yankee Impressionist, pp. 65-6) At his memorial address for the artist, the celebrated writer, Royal Cortissoz echoed this sentiment. "I return," he said, "with a special appreciation to the Americanism of his art, to the sincerity and force with which he puts familiar motives before us. He got into his canvases the simple, loveable truths which, perhaps, only an American can feel to the uppermost in our apple trees and our winding streams." (W.H. Gerdts, American Impressionism, New York, 1984, p. 199)
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Willard L. Metcalf catalogue raisonné authored by Dr. Bruce Chambers, Ira Spanierman, Dr. William H. Gerdts and Elizabeth de Veer.
