Charles Sprague Pearce

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Sprague Pearce in his studio in Auvers-sur-Oise, photograph around 1895

Charles Sprague Pearce (born October 13, 1851 in Boston , † March 18, 1914 in Auvers-sur-Oise ) was an American painter. The artist, who mainly lives in France, initially worked as a portrait painter and later turned to subjects in the style of Orientalism and Japonism . In his early work there are repeated biblical themes, which he carried out according to the rules of the Académie des Beaux-Arts . After he settled in Auvers-sur-Oise in the mid-1880s, he devoted himself primarily to depicting peasants, whereby his now freer painting style was based on impressionism in style and choice of colors . The artist, who is equally successful in Europe and America, contributed to the decoration of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC with six wall paintings

life and work

Youth in the United States

Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt , 1877

Charles Sprague Pearce was born on October 13, 1851, to a wealthy family in Boston. His father, the merchant Shadrach Houghton Pearce, traded in Chinese porcelain. The mother, Mary Anna Sprague, was the daughter of the American poet Charles Sprague . In addition to the early contact with the products of foreign countries in the father's import business and the literary tradition of the family, the house music played by the parents on the piano and violin was part of the cultural childhood of the later painter.

Pearce received his school education at the Brimmer School and the Boston Latin School , where he showed his artistic talent at an early age. After finishing school, he worked for five years in his father's trading business, Shadrach H. Pearce and Co. , before he decided, on the advice of William Morris Hunt, to train as a painter in Paris.

Training in Paris

The Arab Jeweler , around 1882

In August 1873 Pearce arrived in Paris and enrolled in the studio of the successful painter Léon Bonnat, known for his works in the academic style . His classmates included other American painters such as John Singer Sargent , Edwin Howland Blashfield and Milne Ramsey . Pearce initially took over the wide range of motifs of his teacher and worked on genre pieces, history paintings and portraits, whereby his style was also based on that of Bonnat, as can be seen in the treatment of light and shadow in the works of this time. He stayed in Bonnat's studio until 1875 and made friends with other American painters living in Paris, such as Chester Loomis and Frederick Arthur Bridgman . With the latter he went on a three-month study trip to Egypt in the fall of 1873, during which he made numerous drawings. Pearce also hoped that the warm weather there would improve his poor health. In the winter of 1874/75 he traveled to Algeria with the painter William Sartain to study.

Oriental influences

Lady with a Fan , around 1883

Despite the impressions he had gathered during his travels to Egypt and Algeria, Pearce initially turned to portraiture in Paris and made his debut in the Salon of 1876 with the portrait of the American writer Ellen Hardin Walworth . In the same year he sent a work to the World's Fair in Philadelphia.

A year later, in the 1877 Salon, a biblical theme followed. One of the Ten Plagues is the motif in the painting Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt ( grief over the death of the firstborn of Egypt ). In this work he added an ancient Egyptian coffin and wall paintings to the composition. This turn to religious issues was under the clear influence of Bonnat and was not considered progressive at the time. The incorporation of oriental motifs, on the other hand, was inspired by painters such as Jean-Léon Gérôme , Eugène Fromentin and Eugène Delacroix and met with great interest from the public. He showed other biblical themes in the salon of 1879 ( Abraham's sacrifice ) and 1881 ( The beheading of John the Baptist ). The latter work received an Honorable Mention in the Salon and a 1st Class award when it was later presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts . In addition, Orientalism can be found in Pearce's work in the depiction of landscapes of the Orient, the local clothing and the description of local customs, which he often reproduces with almost photographic accuracy. An example of this is the painting The Arab Jeweler ( The Arab Jeweler ), in which he showed an oriental craftsman in appropriate clothing and surroundings based on models of European genre painting.

Reading by the Shore, 1883-85

In the early 1880s he devoted himself to motifs that were influenced by Japonism . Like his painter colleagues Édouard Manet , Claude Monet , Edgar Degas and James McNeill Whistler , he added objects such as kimonos , Japanese fans and porcelain to his paintings, which he found in shops such as that of Siegfried Bing on Rue Chauchat or in La Porte Chinoise bought from Madame Desoye in the Rue de Rivoli or known from Le Japon Artistique magazine . In contrast to the Arab motifs, with these subjects he does not show any impressions gained through travel, but only used props available in Paris to decorate his pictures. In the painting Femme à l'Éventail ( Woman with a Fan ) from 1883, there is no Asian woman to be seen, but a European woman, dressed in a kimono and holding a Japanese fan in her hand. In the painting Reading by the Shore , which is clearly influenced by Impressionism , this Japonism is reduced to an imported parasol that protects the woman, wrapped in European clothing, from the sunlight on the beach on the French coast.

Relocation to Auvers-sur-Oise

Young Brittany Girl

In 1884 Pearce moved with his French wife from Paris to Auvers-sur-Oise , 35 km northwest , where he bought a farm to spend the rest of his life there. In the years that followed, farmers and children were his favorite subjects in the tradition of Jean-François Millet and influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage and Jules Breton . His previously precise style of painting increasingly changed in the direction of a freer representation and a choice of colors based on impressionism. He continued to exhibit regularly in the Salon and participated in numerous other exhibitions in France and abroad, where he often received awards for his work. In 1889 he served on the jury of the Paris World's Fair and sat on the Paris Advisory Board for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

At that time he was commissioned to design six murals in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC . This cycle of pictures, completed in 1896, covers topics such as family , religion and work . In 1904 he traveled again to the United States, where he was a member of the Paris Committee at the St. Louis World's Fair . He also worked on the preparation of the first exhibition of American artists in Belgium, which was already shown in 1894 as part of the world exhibition in Antwerp . In the same year he was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honor . In 1898 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1906 Pearce took part in the Salon de Paris for the last time and again showed Jeune Picardie, a rural theme that had been preferred since the 1880s; that year he was also elected Associate Member ( ANA ) of the National Academy of Design in New York . Charles Sprague Pearce died in his home in Auvers-sur-Olise in 1914 and was buried in the local cemetery.

Works in public collections

The work , mural in the Library of Congress
  • Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt , 1877, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
  • The Arab Jeweler , 1882, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • Fantasy , 1883, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia
  • A Cup of Tea , 1883, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts
  • Young Brittany Girl , Indianapolis Museum of Art , Indianapolis
  • A Village Funeral in Brittany , 1891, Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts
  • Six murals: The Family , Religion , Labor , Study , Recreation , Rest , 1896, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
  • The Shawl , circa 1900, Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin
  • Landscape , Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt, Blérancourt
  • Le Retour du troupeau , Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt, Blérancourt

Awards and jury memberships

Pearce has received many awards and medals including:

  • 1881: Awarded the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts for the best figure painting.
  • 1887: Gold medal at the art exhibition in Munich.
  • 1888: Gold Medal of Honor in Ghent.
  • 1891: Grand honorary diploma in Berlin.
  • 1889: Member of the jury of the Paris Exhibition and the Paris Advisory Board.
  • 1894: Member of the jury of the Antwerp World's Fair.

literature

  • Thomas William Herringshaw: Pearce, Charles Sprague . In: Herringshaw's national library of American biography… Volume 4 . American Publishers' Association, Chicago, Ill. 1909, p. 407 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Pearce, Charles Sprague . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 26 : Olivier – Pieris . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1932, p. 330 .
  • Mary Lublin: A rare elegance: the paintings of Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914). Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York 1993.
  • Kathleen Adler: Americans in Paris, 1860–1900. National Gallery, London 2006, ISBN 1-85709-301-1 .
  • John Y. Cole, Henry Hope Reed: The Library of Congress: the art and architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building. Norton, New York 1997, ISBN 0-393-04563-3 .

Web links

Commons : Charles Sprague Pearce  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pearce, Charles Sprague . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 26 : Olivier – Pieris . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1932, p. 330 . - Here different place of death Paris.
  2. ^ A b c d e f Kathleen Adler: Americans in Paris, 1860-1900. 2006, p. 251.
  3. ^ Members: Charles Sprague Pearce. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 18, 2019 .
  4. ^ Deceased Associates - Pearce, Charles Sprague . In: National Academy of Design (Ed.): Illustrated catalog of the annual exhibition . New York, National Academy of Design, S. 83 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ Thomas William Herringshaw: Pearce, Charles Sprague . In: Herringshaw's national library of American biography… Volume 4 . American Publishers' Association, Chicago, Ill. 1909, p. 407 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris . In: United States Congressional Serial Set . tape 39 . US Government Printing Office, Washington 1893, p. 68 ( books.google.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Pearce, Charles Sprague
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1914
Place of death Auvers-sur-Oise