Metro Pulse/Secret History/The Modern

Comment
on this story

Our brief glimpse of contemporary impressionism

by Jack Neely

About 20 years ago, I was in the newly opened High Museum in Atlanta looking at some art by someone new to me, someone called Childe Hassam. Judging by his name, I assumed the artist was a hippie; this work, I figured, was brand new. The colors were bright, the brushwork bold. It seemed so fresh I was almost surprised the paint was dry. I wouldn't have been surprised if the artist had shown up beside me, reeking of marijuana.

I took it in, knowing it was something I could only find in a big modern city like Atlanta.

I later learned, of course, that Childe Hassam was one of America's two or three best-known impressionists, and was doing his best work a century ago. Later, I learned that if I had been in Knoxville back in 1911, I might have been looking at one of the same paintings. Hassam, along with Mary Cassatt, and Knoxville's own Catherine Wiley—who was developing a reputation of her own—were among the impressionists who exhibited at the Appalachian Exposition in Chilhowee Park that year.

The fact that Knoxville had some impressive impressionist shows during the period when impressionism was current—albeit at the tail end of it—owes a lot to a vigorous group of artists and art patrons. The Nicholson Art League was a group of genteel folks who were, or desperately wanted to seem, interested in art.

If we were to assemble most of Knoxville's professional artists as they were a century ago, throw in out best-known architects, a couple of journalists and UT professors, and then add an equal number of wealthy housewives, you'd have the bulk of the Nicholson Art League. Among the early members were Lloyd Branson, our best-known portraitist; Joe Knaffl, the celebrated photographer; Charles Krutch, the painter and organist; architect George Barber, nationally known for his Victorian house designs; Pattie Boyd, the pioneer female reporter; and Adelia Lutz, a painter of regional renown. Eventually the League recruited a young UT alum named Catherine Wiley. She'd spent almost all of her life in Fort Sanders, except for some summers studying impressionism in Provincetown, Mass., and a stint at the prestigious Art Students League of New York.

Founded in the 1890s, it was originally known as the Knoxville Art Club. Its president and chief benefactor was Confederate veteran, agriculture professor, and editor Maj. Hunter Nicholson; when he died suddenly in 1901, the club became the Nicholson Art League. After that, the spiritual leader of the NAL would be one Eleanor Audigier. A well-known art collector, she was widely regarded as a woman of perfect taste.

Their symbol was a half-unhelmeted Greek warrior in profile, within a laurel wreath. They held many of their meetings in the Gay Street portrait studios of McCrary & Branson. The fact that half their meetings were scheduled for 3 p.m. on a Tuesday suggests that most of its members were people of leisure.

Most of the NAL's programs were historical in nature. They were hardly cutting edge, but they weren't provincial, either—some of the program topics were actually pretty exotic, with extensive series on Japanese art, Florentine Renaissance, and even Islam ("Mahomet and His Religion"). One program was titled, "Cathedrals of the Kremlin"; another, "The Mosque of Omar." Lectures on the glassworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany or sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens were about as modern as they got. In 1904, Adelia Lutz lectured on the art of the St. Louis World's Fair.

But it's clear that by 1906, they were developing a strong interest in contemporary work. That was the year the word impressionism first showed up on the program. On March 15, 1907, Mrs. A. A. Yeager gave a lecture on "Degas, Monet, and their followers," followed by a round-table discussion of "Some Living Artists of France."

Mrs. Yeager might have mentioned that some of Degas' and Monet's followers lived here in town. Cautious followers of impressionism included painters Lloyd Branson and Charles Christopher Krutch, whose hazy landscapes of the Smokies show a strong impressionist influence, as well as Kingston Pike heiress Adelia Lutz. But chief among them was Catherine Wiley. Though described by personal acquaintances as a well-mannered Southern lady of the old school, she was also rumored to be the nude model for one of Branson's more daring paintings. Wiley, still in her 20s, was just beginning to experiment with impressionism, but she would be its truest disciple.

In 1910, civic boosters mounted a big fair at Chilhowee Park, the first Appalachian Exposition. Art wasn't its main attraction—most of the thousands who attended probably came to see Theodore Roosevelt, the dirigible, or the Wright flyer, the first airplane most locals had seen. But members of the NAL thought it might be a dandy opportunity to show off a little. They ran an exhibit of local art dominated by Knoxville painters like Lloyd Branson, whose impressionist-tinged oil, The Hauling of Marble, won the gold medal. Krutch's misty Smokies landscapes earned him the monicker, "The Corot of the South." The Exposition gave Wiley its award for best collection of oils; it was the first exposure of her sunwashed impressionism. Her paintings, populated almost purely of women, suggested comparisons to the work of Degas, an obvious influence. But it's clear she brought something of herself to her work, something subtle and indefinable that has left art critics to speculate about her life and her tragic fate.

You sometimes hear art experts speak in patronizing tones about Knoxville's impressionists' late arrival. After all, by 1910, impressionism was 40 years old. Manet, Gauguin, and Cezanne were all dead. Degas was 76, and going blind.

But Claude Monet, regarded as the founder of impressionism, was still active; he'd just finished his impressionist masterpiece, "Water Lilies." Some younger painters, like Pierre Bonnard were still bearing the impressionist standard.

The Nicholson Art League's enthusiasm fueled a flurry of lectures on the subject. On May 5, 1911, Catherine Wiley led the discussion: "Impressionist Painting and the Impressionists of America."

Knoxville mounted a second Appalachian Exposition at Chilhowee Park that September, 1911. The thousands of others who attended had the chance to see what may have been the biggest show of high-profile contemporary modern artists in Knoxville history.

The gallery in the main exposition building featured Mary Cassatt's "The Reading Lesson" and Childe Hassam's "The Abilone Shell," as well as works by prominent Boston impressionist Frank Benson, New York impressionist Ernest Lawson, Philadelphia portraitist Cecelia Beaux, realists Charles Hawthorne and William Paxton, as well as impressionists Robert Vonnoh, Edward Redfield, Elmer Schofield, and about a dozen other painters whose names are remembered today.

The Nicholsonians' 1912-13 year was vigorous and furiously modern. It was the year Catherine Wiley was president of the club: she hosted dozens of lectures about "Contemporaneous American Painters," talks about Hassam, Cassatt, and Thomas Eakins.

At the 1913 Conservation Exposition—two months long and nationally advertised, it was the biggest fair held in Knoxville before 1982—the Nicholson Art League saw it as their duty to expose the fair's one million visitors to impressionism. This time they rated their own "Fine Arts" building, a separate gallery surrounded by trees.

Included was work by at least one major American painter, Robert Henri, the rebel of the legendary "Ashcan School." Many other contemporary artists at the 1913 show had been the subject of recent Nicholson League lectures: Joseph DeCamp, Vonnoh, Arthur Dow, and tonalist landscape artist Birge Harrison.

Winner of the silver medal was Karl Albert Buehr's "Dejeuner sur L'Herbe." The German-American artist would later achieve greater fame, especially as a magazine illustrator.

With company like that, organizers judged regional submissions to the art show separately; Hugh Tyler, the artistic uncle of James Agee ("Andrew" in Agee's novel, A Death In the Family), won the medal for best collection of artwork. Krutch won for best watercolor.

The Nicholsons dropped their old Victorian symbol for an edgy, modern-looking logo of their acronym, NAL, and began printing their itineraries in a faux-oriental art-nouveau design. Otherwise, they seemed to lose their interest in modernity.

In 1916, after five years in Europe, Audigier, "Our Foreign Correspondent," reported to her beloved Nicholson Art League: "I have seen the Cubists and the Futurists," announced the 52-year-old matron, "and I think it is reprehensible for any government to permit the exhibition of such works—as to allow a madman the freedom of the streets."

To be fair, if any 50-something American dilettante saw anything worthwhile in Cubism in 1916, she was an exception. After all, it was only in 1913 that Americans got their first glimpse of cubism, via New York's shocking Armory Show. Picasso and Braque were almost 20 years younger than Audigier and, in her eyes, ridiculous upstarts. That year, when the NAL featured a year's study of Spanish art, Charles Krutch gave a lecture on "Goya, the Iconoclast," but offered no update on Picasso.

After its flourishing, the Nicholson Art League continued to feature some interesting-sounding programs, including a series on the prospect of riverfront development by architect Charles Barber. But in the 1920s, its programs begin to sound more domestic, demonstrating an interest in interior decoration, fashion, gardening, and furniture. A whole series of programs in the 1920-21 season were religious in nature.

In late 1921, they hosted a lecture by nationally known illustrator Joseph Pennell, who had exhibited at the 1913 exposition. "You should have an art gallery here," he said, "A community such as yours could well support one. It should be in the heart of the city, accessible to all."

But Audigier and Tyler had left town. Wiley seems to have quit the NAL as an active member. Then Branson died, and in 1926, Catherine Wiley was committed to a mental institution near Philadelphia. The nature of her disorder remains a mystery, as does much of her life. In the institution, she found comfort in doodling bizarre cartoons, but gave up impressionism; friends said she daydreamed of returning to Knoxville, but was still institutionalized there when she died in 1958.

After death, she earned some of the national respect she failed to find in life. In the 1960s and '70s, her work joined the collections of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian in Washington. Several of her paintings were prominently featured in "The Genius Of the Fair Muse," a 1987 show at New York's Grand Central Galleries. The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture recently cited her as the state's greatest impressionist. Today, her works can be seen at the Knoxville Museum of Art and at the McClung Collection, downtown, hanging on the walls among the bookshelves.