Guildy pleasure

The watercolors and pastels of the Gilded Age

by Leon Nigrosh

GILDED AGE WATERCOLORS AND PASTELS At the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, 220 State Street, Springfield, through March 1.

The "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain to describe the period from the end of the Civil War to the financial Panic of 1873 (later, art historians extended the time period into the 1920s). It was an era, not unlike our 1980s, filled with political shenanigans, inflation, conspicuous consumption, lavish entertainment, and opulent homes. Fortunately for the artists of the time, the robber barons placed great value on amassing personal collections of original art. It was also a time that many American artists were traveling through Europe and discovering new modes of artistic expression in pastel and watercolor.

The current exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts offers a rare glimpse at the work of nearly 30 American artists who excelled at creating images with these difficult techniques. Pastel sticks are dry and crumbly and the marks they make are easily smudged. Watercolor demands both control and spontaneity, hesitation can cause paint blotches. The fact that the work was produced on paper makes the finished pieces susceptible to the ravages of time, humidity, and light. We are therefore indeed lucky to have the opportunity to view these works in such fine condition.

Notwithstanding the inherent technical difficulties, this exhibit evokes the exuberant energy of a young and growing country of almost a century ago. The large watercolor by Childe Hassam (1859-1935) of famed actress Lillie Langtry sets the tone of the exhibit. The artist deftly captures Langtry's smoldering sensuality in an intimate moment of introspection. Hassam's quick pencil and rapid brushstroke enliven his subject with a snapshot spontaneity which a labored oil painting would have been unable to capture.

Many of these artists used their small paper pads as sketchbook journals of their travels, often painting landscapes on the spot. George Elbert Burr (1859-1939) painted a six-by-eight-inch watercolor rendition of a Bay at Nevin, Wales that is almost totally abstract. The sky and water blend together, with only tiny colored sails on an indistinct horizon acting to differentiate the blocks of pale blue. In his Sunset After Storm, Otto Gaertner (1845-1909) also approached the abstract by blurring together wet stripes of translucent red-brown color to form the impression of clouds clearing above a lowland countryside.

In sharp contrast to these two artists, William Trost Richards (1833-1905) approached his landscapes with photographic realism as would any card-carrying American Pre-Raphaelite. Upset over rampant consumerism and industrialization, he felt that his highly detailed renderings of nature would cause others to return to simpler times and ways. His Rocky Cove, a sun-splashed waterscape with tiny sailboats gliding along through the pristine water as white gulls hover lazily above, could make anyone want to give it all up for a day at the seashore.

A small pencil, charcoal, pen, and ink drawing by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) represents a similar frame of mind. This drawing of a delicate and wistful child was made to illustrate Kenneth Grahame's book the Golden Age, published in 1899, which offers a humorous view of an indulgent childhood meant for older readers. Several years later, Grahame wrote his best-known work, The Wind in the Willows.

The exhibition displays a wide range of styles and subjects, all the way from Winslow Homer's gun-totin' bear hunters to William Bagdatopoulos's romanticized back alleys of Ajmer, India, and Alice Pike Barney's portrait of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, with his readily recognizable pointed beard and monocle.

For many of these artists, working in pastel and watercolor was perceived as a respite from the rigors of oil painting, for others it was a chance to get out of the studio and make records of new venues. Whatever the reason, their efforts colorfully and vividly portray many different elements of an important period in the maturation of our nation. Shown together in this exhibition, these disparate drawings and paintings form a remarkably positive and unassuming view of the intimate side of an otherwise ostentatious and frenetic chapter in America's history.

The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Call (413) 263-6800, ext. 312.