The legacy of Willard Metcalf as embraced by collectors and aficionados of American art essentially
began in 1905. Prior to that year, Metcalf was an accomplished, if undistinguished, artist whose career
successes had been a hodge-podge of commercial illustrations, one well-received showing at the Parisian
Salon during his time at the Academie Julian, and a tepid response from an 1888 exhibition at the St.
Botolph Club in Boston. In retrospect, his first St. Botolph’s exhibition, largely the product of three years
work partially spent by the artist in Giverny, was one of the earliest “glimpses the American public had of
their own school of Impressionism” (1). Alas, the one exception to this pattern of medium glory came in
1896 when Metcalf won the Webb Prize at the annual Society of American Artists’ exhibition for his
painting, Gloucester Harbor. Previous recipients of the prize, reserved for artists less than forty years of
age, included John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902), Theodore Robinson (1852-1896), and Metcalf’s
close friend, Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Largely on the strength of his interpersonal relationships,
Metcalf was included among the emerging set of American Impressionists who later seceded from the
Society, among them fellow Webb Prize recipients Hassam and Twachtman. This group famously
identified itself as The Ten American Painters and their egalitarian exhibition philosophy revolutionized
American art ( 2 ) .
Metcalf suffered a long struggle with landscape painting, at turns unsteady and unsure of his talent, but in
February 1905 he exhibited at Fishel, Adler & Schwartz Galleries twenty-one new paintings, all created
while escaping romantic and financial turmoil in New York by visiting his parents in Clark’s Cove, Maine.
The show netted him a considerable profit and, with greater confidence than ever before in his career,
Metcalf searched for a fresh place to paint. Hassam recommended Old Lyme and Metcalf made
arrangements with Miss Florence, whose friendship and support he would come to rely on frequently.
Over the course of the spring, summer, and fall of 1905, through a second show at Fishel, Adler in
February 1906, Metcalf continued to receive strong critical praise. Still, sales flagged. He felt that, again,
his career had come to the brink. That winter, Metcalf needed to decide whether to return to the proving
grounds of Maine or try again in Old Lyme. In Maine, Metcalf had the expectation of lower expenses by
virtue of his parents’ home in Clark’s Cove, but there would be little opportunity to fraternize with fellow
artists or to earn income by teaching. Miss Florence’s offer to extend credit on his room and board,
coupled with knowing that at least one student, Robert Nisbet (1879-1961), awaited his instruction,
eased Metcalf’s dilemma. He and his wife, Marguerite, returned to Old Lyme in May ( 3 ) .
Early Spring, Old Lyme is almost certainly Metcalf’s first major effort of 1906. The critical acclaim he
received that winter left Metcalf in an unfamiliar position – he no longer doubted his talent, but rather
worried only about selling enough work to meet his expenses. He painted steadily that spring and into the
early summer, when an accidental meeting permanently altered the trajectory of Metcalf’s career.
According to Bruce Chambers, sometime in the spring of 1906, Metcalf was encouraged by fellow Lyme
artist William Henry Howe (1846-1929) to meet with Thomas Adams of the St. Botolph Club, who
offered him a chance to return with a one-man exhibition to be held that fall (4). Excited by the prospect
of fresh sales, Metcalf increased the pace of his output to insure he would have enough work to hang.
The show opened on November 9th, 1906 and offered a collective portrait of the seasons in Old Lyme.
Though May Night, a nocturne of the Florence Griswold mansion, now at the Corcoran Gallery, was the
most celebrated work in the exhibit (though it did not sell), each of the paintings offered evidence that
Metcalf had, at forty-eight years of age, matured into an Impressionist landscape painter of tremendous
power. As noted by Chambers, the artist-critic Philip Leslie Hale commented on Metcalf’s “uncanny
ability to adapt his style both to his subject and to the sentiments and associations that the painter wished
to evoke in the viewer” (5). In Early Spring, Metcalf has mastered the effect of vernal renewal. New
green emerges on the trees. The grass, mottled by winter’s snows, has nearly returned. But the greatest
success is reserved for the sky. The diffuse gray, reminiscent of winter, has begun to dissolve just enough
to allow the sunlight falling on the trees to affect thin shadows on the ground. Above, the revealed blue is
barely tinged with pink, Old Lyme’s famous “Lyme light.”
Despite his alcoholism and turbulent personal life, Metcalf had been fortunate in that he had stumbled into
or had been handed various opportunities to renew his career and reputation, the 1905 Clark’s Cove
show at Fishel, Adler & Schwartz being only one example (6). He was aware his chances for sustained
greatness were dwindling and he was determined not to slide into obscurity. Early Spring is thus visual
evidence of Metcalf’s recognition that he must both begin again and surpass himself. To that end, the
painting features a rock wall, an undulating boundary to abide. And there is a path, too, worn but not
permanent, though the tracks of Metcalf’s 1906 journey through the Old Lyme landscape would widen
and secure it.
Neither Metcalf nor Old Lyme were the same afterwards. If Hassam’s arrival at the colony in 1902 had
demonstrated that the regional landscape could serve Impressionism as well as Tonalism, Metcalf’s
twenty-six Connecticut pictures hung in St. Botolph’s like banners for the region’s varied pastoral beauty.
Though both would receive credit for establishing Old Lyme Impressionism as an “archetype” of
American art, the argument could be made that it was Metcalf’s prodigious output, not Hassam’s, that
cemented Old Lyme’s reputation (7). And despite his previous awards and membership in The Ten, it
was Old Lyme that, in turn, vaulted Metcalf into the first ranks of his day ( 8 ) .
The early 20th-century art critic Royal Cortissoz had a complicated relationship with Metcalf. While he
probably liked Metcalf personally, prior to 1906 Cortissoz expressed frustration that Metcalf’s canvases
did not match his potential. This sentiment also changed after 1906. In 1923, just two years before
Metcalf’s death, Cortissoz wrote a scattershot survey of American art, titled simply American Artists. In
his brief biography of Metcalf, Cortissoz appears delighted to praise his friend without having to challenge
him to greater accomplishment: “Nature as it touches him is nature eloquent only of its charms, its flashing
colors, its keen airs, its intensely characteristic forms. I have long felt in his paintings the force of what has
been called ‘the spirit of place’” ( 9 ) .
Metcalf, as demonstrated by Early Spring, is the spirit of Old Lyme.
Provenance: Martin Withington Clement, Ithan, Pennsylvania
By bequest to his granddaughter, 1965
By descent to her husband, Alexandria, Virginia, 1971
(Debra Force Fine Art, New York, New York, as agent, 2008)
Brock & Company, Concord, Massachusetts/The Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme,
Connecticut, 2008
Works cited:
1. H. Barbard Weinberg, et al, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915 (New
York: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994), 154.
2. Biographical information in this paragraph from: Bruce W. Chambers, May Night: Willard Metcalf at Old Lyme (Old
Lyme: Florence Griswold Museum, 2005), 15-55.
3. Elizabeth deVeer and Richard J. Boyle, Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf (New York:
Abbeville Press, 1987), 8 3 .
4. Chambers, 5 2 .
5. Chambers, 5 5 .
6. His wife, Marguerite, eventually ran off with his student, Robert Nisbet, confirming suspicions that had dogged
Metcalf during his time in Old Lyme.
7. Jeffrey W. Anderson, et al, Connecticut and American Impressionism (Storrs: William Benton Museum of American
Art, 1980), 131.
8. Richard J. Boyle, “Willard Metcalf” in Ten American Painters (New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1990), 110.
9. Royal Cortissoz, American Artists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), 143.
Presentation Notes: Expertly cleaned with trace in-painting of scant frame abrasion. Re-stretched with
new keys. In a reproduction gold-leaf Milch frame with extensive ornament.
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