Theodore Robinson
Theodore Robinson
1852 - 1896
The son of a clergyman, Robinson was born in Irasburg, Vermont in 1852. His family lived in Townshend, Vermont, until Robinson was three, after which time they settled in Evansville, Wisconsin. Intent on pursuing an artistic career, Robinson began his formal training at the Chicago Academy of Design, studying there during 1869-1870. Chronic asthma, which would plague him throughout his life, led him to Denver, where he resided briefly before returning to Evansville.
In 1874, Robinson moved to New York, attending classes at the National Academy of Design (1874-1875) and at the Art Students League (1875), which he helped establish. However, like most American artists of his generation, Robinson felt the lure of France. He subsequently traveled to Paris in 1876, continuing his studies in the atelier of Charles-Emile-Auguste Duran (Carolus-Duran) and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he was taught by Jean-Leon Gerome and Adolph Yvon. During this period, Robinson painted landscapes and figure subjects in a realist style inspired by the French Barbizon School. He spent several summers in Grez-sur-Loing, associating with fellow Americans Birge Harrison and Will H. Low. He also made a trip to Italy, where he met the American expatriate painter, James A. McNeill Whistler.
Returning to America in late 1879, Robinson took a studio in Manhattan. However, his precarious financial situation soon forced him to return to Evansville. He remained there until early 1881, when he returned to New York to teach at Mrs. Sylvanevus Reed's School. He also worked as on various decorative projects for John La Farge and Prentice Treadwell. In his spare time, Robinson visited Boston and Vermont. He also painted views of Nantucket, where he summered in the company of fellow artists Abbott Thayer and Joe Evans.
Robinson returned to France in 1884. With Paris as his home base, he painted in Barbizon, Cernay-la-ville, and Grez-sur-Loing. He also visited Holland in 1885 and Dieppe in 1887.
Although he is known to have visited Giverny in 1885, his lengthy association with the village, located about forty miles northwest of Paris, began in 1887. Indeed, Robinson was among the group of six young North American art students - - John Leslie Breck, Henry Fitch Taylor, Theodore Wendel, Willard Metcalf, and the Canadian, William Blair Bruce - - who, upon visiting the village in the spring of 1887, decided it would be a perfect place to paint en plein air. In addition to its picturesque setting, nestled between the Seine River and a broad crest of hills known as Les Bruyeres, Giverny was also the home of Claude Monet, the master of French Impressionism.
Robinson lived primarily in Giverny from 1888 until 1892, residing in the Hotel Baudy, an inn that catered to artist-visitors, or renting various houses from local residents. After a period of experimentation, he evolved his own distinctive version of Impressionism, combining loose, broken brushwork and a light, delicate palette with an emphasis on structure and form. Throughout the course of his career, Robinson remained committed to the tenets of sound draftsmanship and a realistic depiction of nature, the legacy of his former academic training.
One of the few first-generation American Givernois to concentrate on the figure, Robinson painted renditions of local peasant women engaged in daily tasks or in quiet contemplation. In 1892, the year in which he was most closely involved with Impressionism, he produced some of his most beautiful figural themes, among them La Debacle (Scripps College, Claremont, California). He also painted landscapes and explored the concept of serial imagery in a number of panoramic views of Giverny, including Bird's Eye View of Giverny, France (1889; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), one of the first Impressionist pictures Robinson exhibited in the United States.
Although Monet generally avoided the foreign artists who came to Giverny, he became a close friend of Robinson's. Indeed, of the handful of Americans who gained admittance to Monet's inner circle, such as John Leslie Breck and Lilla Cabot Perry, Robinson established the strongest connection with the Frenchman. However, theirs was not a pupil-teacher relationship, but one of friendship and mutual respect: in addition to socializing with one another, the two artists frequently critiqued each other's painting. Robinson's close ties to Monet and his family are underscored in The Wedding March (1892; Daniel J. Terra Collection) which celebrates the nuptials of Monet's stepdaughter, Suzanne, to the American painter Theodore Butler.
During his Giverny period, Robinson continued to make trips back to New York, where, through contact with his many friends and colleagues, he served as a conduit for the dissemination of Impressionist precepts. Robinson's Giverny canvases were also featured in exhibitions in Manhattan and Philadelphia, capturing the attention of critics as well as such discerning collectors of contemporary American art as William T. Evans and George Hearn.
Robinson moved back to New York City in December of 1892. Thereafter, he was active in upstate New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, applying Impressionist strategies to the depiction of New England scenery. Robinson produced some of his most colorful landscapes along the Erie and Delaware Canal in Napanoch, N. Y. Robinson was also active in Cos Cob, Connecticut, painting alongside his friend and fellow painters, John Henry Twachtman and J. Alden Weir. Several of his late works, characterized by simplified forms and two-dimensional surfaces, reveal the influence of Japanese prints. In 1895, a major retrospective of Robinson's paintings, including many of his recent American views, was held at the Macbeth Galleries in New York.
During these years, Robinson supported himself by teaching outdoor summer classes for Evelyn College in Princeton, New Jersey, and for the Brooklyn Art School at Napanoch. His brief but influential career was cut short in April of 1896, when he died of an acute asthmatic attack in New York City.
Theodore Robinson is represented in major public collections throughout the United States, including the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois; and the Brooklyn Museum. Robinson's diaries (1892-1896; Frick Art Reference Library, New York), provide a valuable chronicle of the early history of American Impressionism, especially in relation to the Giverny art colony and the New York art scene at the turn-of-the-century.
CL
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