Written by Emilie Kefalas
Photo courtesy of the Telfair Museums website
The Telfair Academy hosted its third and final lecture Tuesday, Nov. 3, in its Monet series discussing the work and technique of the Impressionists in “Monet Lecture – Imprinting Impressionism.”
Courtney McNeil, the Telfair’s curator of fine art and exhibitions, delivered the lecture at the Trinity Methodist Church.
McNeil addressed the current exhibit’s focus on the similarities and stylistic influences of Claude Monet on the American Impressionist painters. She contributed an essay to the exhibit investigating the group of artists, rather than the artists individually, a topic on which very little writing can be found.
“Inspired by the potential for innovative artistic expression in printmaking, many of the French Impressionists would go on to create prints,” said McNeil.
McNeil discussed the etching revival movement in France and its influence on the Barbizon School of painters before it moved to the etching revival in England, eventually spreading to the United States.
Monet was the only major French Impressionist who didn’t engage in printmaking with his own two hands, though he did allow reproductive etchings of his work to be made by other artists for publications in the popular media.
“He certainly had that image and that aura of the genius artists, but he was a practical man on many levels and thought a great deal about the marketing and the sale of his work.”
American artist Mary Cassatt produced around 250 different prints beginning in 1879, the first year she exhibited with the French Impressionists. The works in Cassatt’s print production echo the subject matter she tended to lean towards in her paintings including scenes of domestic life.
“She approached her prints as a painter in many phases, combining several different painting techniques on a single plate,” said McNeil.
Cassatt visited an exhibition of Japanese prints in Paris in 1890, and the style had a profound impact on her own printmaking, McNeil explained.
Frank Weston Benson, a prominent painter in the Boston School of Impressionism also dabbled in etching as a student at the school of fine arts. He abandoned it until more than 30 years later when he was in his 50s. He went on to become one of the most prolific printmakers among the American Impressionists, creating more than 350 prints until the end of his working years.
“Although he is really well known as a sporting artists, he also did experiment every now and then with different forms of subject matter,” McNeil said.
McNeil also discussed Childe Hassam, a printmaker who produced 380 known etchings. Like Benson, Hassam experimented with printmaking in his early years as a student in the 1880s in Paris. Hassam turned away from the medium altogether until picking it up again later in his life. He made his public debut as an etcher in late 1915 with an exhibition in France he had created the previous summer, with subjects such as the landscape, contemporary urban overviews and parallels of the oil paintings that made him famous.
“All three of these artists began their serious engagement with printmaking only after achieving considerable success in oil painting,” McNeil said. “This raises the question of why these painters, at the height of their fame, would turn to a new, technically challenging medium of art making with which they had almost no experience.”
McNeil’s closing statements addressed the question of what created the sustained energy for these artists who weren’t making prints for money.
Perhaps even more importantly, McNeil said, printmaking provided a means of original artistic expression; as well as a true challenge for those who had most likely long ago mastered the use of a paintbrush and paint to make their work. McNeil said she feels this challenge provided for a new mode of artistic expression, which captivated and inspired Benson, Cassat, and Hassam.
