William Trost Richards - True to Nature: Drawings, Watercolors, and Oil Sketches at Stanford University

June 23 - September 26, 2010

Wall labels for objects in the exhibition

Aspiring artists made use of the many manuals and drawing books that proliferated in Richards's youth. But more influential than formulaic lessons were the English critic John Ruskin's books Modern Painters (1843) and The Elements of Drawing (1857) and the American painter Asher B. Durand's Letters on Landscape Painting (1855).

 

For them, Nature herself was the great teacher: "Take pencil and paper, not the palette and brushes," Durand advised, "and draw with scrupulous fidelity the outline or contour . . . If your subject be a tree, observe particularly wherein it differs from those of other species." The purpose of the exercise was not to impose a style, but to increase the draftsman's perception of nature.

 

Left to right:

 

Study of a Tree, 1853

Graphite on a white wove paper

 

Study of Tree Bark, c. 1862

Graphite on gray wove paper

 

Study of Trees, Darmstadt, 1867

Pencil on cream wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.1, .44, .52

 

Poetry and book illustration were serious interests throughout Richards's life. At twenty he set himself the goal of selecting and illustrating the "most characteristic and beautiful" poems by twelve American poets for a publication to be called The Landscape Feeling of American Poets -- "the embodiment of sentiment by form," as he described the project. Never published, the volume was to have included works by Poe, Whittier, Longfellow, and others in addition to this poem by Stoddard.

 

Although Richards had only a year of high school education, membership in Philadelphia's Forensic and Literary Circle kept him in touch with the poetry of the British Romantics favored by his friends. When he was 23, Richards married a poet, Anna Matlack, an ardent intellectual Quaker, and illustrated her work.

 

Castle in the Air, 1854

Vignette in graphite with touches of brown ink illustrating a poem by Henry David Stoddard

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.3

 

My castle stands alone / In some delicious clime /Away from earth and time / In Fancy's tropic zone / Beneath its summer skies / Where all the life-long year the summer never dies / A stately marble pile

 

Richards was strongly influenced by John Ruskin's writings on art, religion, and morality. "The duty of the painter," Ruskin wrote, "is the same as that of a preacher." By depicting nature precisely, the artist illustrated God's handiwork. So faithful was Richards to Ruskin's precepts that, in 1863, he was honored with membership in America's radically Ruskinian Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art.

 

Plant Study, c. 1862

Graphite on beige wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.29

 

This drawing of wheat growing in a blackberry bramble ties religion with nature and art through the illustration of the parable of the sower from the Gospel of Saint Matthew. The linkage was in keeping with Pre-Raphaelite usage of Biblical sources. But Richards seems also to make reference to the Civil War since the Union was symbolized in the popular press by wheat, the Confederacy by cotton. The American Pre-Raphaelite circle was thought to be both pro-Union and anti-slavery.

 

Richards's image was engraved by Samuel Valentine Hunt and circulated widely.

 

And Some Fell Among Thorns -- Plant Study

1862

Pencil on cream wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.26

 

The close study of uncultivated wayside plants recommended by Ruskin is seen in Richards's 29 botanical studies in the Cantor collection. Always dated and frequently annotated, many were sketched along the banks of the Hudson River near the town of Catskill, where Thomas Cole had lived and was buried. The first artist to exalt the unspoiled American landscape, Cole was venerated by Richards and his contemporaries in the second generation of Hudson River School painters.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Plant Study, Catskill Mountains

June 14, 1859

Graphite with white on beige wove paper

 

Plant Study, Catskill Mountains,

Upper Clove, June 17, 1859

Graphite with white on beige wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.10, .13

 

Right:

 

Plant Study, Cold Spring, New York

June 18, 1859

Graphite with white on beige wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.14

 

Like the English-born artist Thomas Cole, Richards was a Wordsworthian lover of nature, fond of long walks in the woods near his Pennsylvania home and of camping trips to the lakes and mountains of upstate New York. Drawings made on the trail could be incorporated in paintings completed at home. Richards's large canvases of the Adirondacks ally him with other artists of the Hudson River School.

 

Adirondacks Landscape: Mountain Road and Houses, 1866

Pencil

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.42

 

A View of the Adirondacks, c. 1857

Oil on Canvas

Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle

 

Ruskin's passionate interest in geology was reflected in Richards's carefully observed drawings of rocks. Indeed, the long evolutionary formation of the earth stirred enthusiastic interest as 19th-century Americans responded to the publications of scientists like Louis Agassiz and Charles Lyell.

Hiking and tramping his way up and down not only the Adirondacks and the Catskills, but also the Alps and Appenines, Richards made hundreds of sketches of trees, rocks, plants, and mountain scenery. By attending to nature with the same "scrupulous fidelity" that Asher B. Durand urged in his historic Letters on Landscape Painting (1855), Richards replicated botanic and geologic forms with accuracy, later, in the studio, working up his empirically derived impressions into idealized oil paintings. These poeticized transformations defined him as an artist attuned to the scientific and religious issues of an era that debated the age of the earth and the origin of species.

 

Vacationing on Mount Desert Island during the summer of 1866 with his family, Richards portrayed the rock formations that stretched along the island's stark and beautiful coast. By then, Mount Desert and the Adirondacks had become popular with both artists and tourists.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Massive Rocks, mid-1860s

Graphite on cream wove paper

 

Rocks and Trees (Conanicut Island?) 1877

Pencil on creamy beige wove paper

Dated at lower right July 7/77

 

Gifts of M. J. andA. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.46, .64

 

Center, upper to lower:

 

Rock Cliffs, Adirondacks, 1863

Graphite on pinkish gray wove paper

 

Rocks, Mount Desert Island, Maine, 1866

Graphite

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.36, .40

 

Right:

 

Rock and Surf at Shore's Edge, Newport 1870

Graphite heightened with white on tan wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.59

 

Having prospered from good sales of paintings sold through Michael Knoedler in New York, Richards took his second trip to Europe in 1866­67. He headed for Darmstadt in southwestern Germany, home of Paul Weber, his former painting teacher, who had returned there to live. Accompanied by his wife, Anna, and two children, the artist found "endless pleasure" in the nearby villages. As Richards told a friend, his wife's serious interest in German literature and her excellent knowledge of the language "made it possible to feel quite at home" in Germany. (In later years as the family grew, Anna accompanied the artist on half a dozen foreign trips, homeschooling her brood as they traveled. Five of their eight children survived infancy, among them were a Nobel laureate, a Barnard professor of botany, and a painter of distinction.)

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Village Street, c. 1867

Graphite on gray wove paper

 

Town Buildings, Nuremberg, Germany

1867

Graphite on cream wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.57, .49

 

 

Right:

Farmhouse, Grindelwald, Switzerland

1867

Graphite on cream wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.53

 

During the spring of the European stay of 1867, Richards made a quick trip south to Italy where he sketched Sorrento's rocky shore. But the beauty of Switzerland's mountain valleys held his attention for the entire summer.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Rocks at Shore, Sorrento, Italy, 1867

Graphite on cream wove paper

 

Brook's Rocky Embankment, Lauterbrunnen Valley, 1867

Pencil on gray wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.50, .56

 

Right:

 

The Jungfrau from Staubbach, 1867

Graphite on cream wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.55

 

Richards's first painting teacher was Paul Weber, a German émigré who settled in Philadelphia in 1848. A portraitist and landscape painter from Darmstadt, Weber worked out-of-doors in a realist style, paying close attention to nature. Richards's study with Weber came in off-hours from the commercial job he held, full and part-time for ten years. He had had only a year of high school before his father's death meant going to work to help support his family. Richards's talent for making small, meticulously detailed drawings got him a job with a Philadelphia firm of ornamental metal workers. Weber's teaching encouraged him to pursue plein air painting.

 

Paul Weber (1823-1916)

In the Catskills

Oil on canvas

Private collection

 

Left to right:

 

Trees and Rocks by a Stream, c. 1870

Watercolor and pencil on buff wove paper

 

Woodland Glade, c. 1870

Graphite heightened with white on gray wove paper

 

Trees and Rocks, 1870s

Pencil and thick pale beige wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.121, .63, .66

 

After returning from Europe in 1868, Richards was faced with a market that was losing interest in large oil paintings of landscapes. During the 1870s, he turned frequently to watercolors. In London he had seen the work of Turner and this, coupled with Ruskin's praise for the medium, contributed to his new interest. At home, moreover, the American Water Color Society, founded in 1866, offered exhibition space that opened up this new market. Richards exhibited with the Society for the first time in 1870.

 

Left to right:

 

Sailboats near Newport, Rhode Island

c. 1869

Watercolor with body color on gray wove paper

Inscribed on verso Near Newport

 

Forest Scene with Child, c.1870

Watercolor and gouache on white wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.111, .122

 

Richards's watercolors of the 1870s share with works by several of his contemporaries the clarity, simplicity, and spaciousness of the elusive phenomenon known as Luminism, a style ascribed to the Hudson River School. Committed to the examination of terrain, space, and atmosphere, Richards, like other Luminists, kept design simple, while heightening the effect of light. Often working on blue paper, he used an extremely horizontal format, penciling in the low horizon line and leaving the sky untouched by wash.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Marine View in Setting Sun, 1869

Watercolor and gouache on blue wove paper

 

Coastal Scene, Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts

c. 1870

Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on blue wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.113, .115

 

Right, upper to lower:

 

Beach at Low Tide, c. 1870

Watercolor and pencil on blue wove paper

 

Ocean, Sky, Horizon, c. 1870

Watercolor and gouache on blue wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.120, .118

 

Having summered for years on Narrangansett Bay, the artist bought a house at Newport near the water for his growing family, which now included five children. With a large family to support and landscape paintings in the style of the Hudson River School going out of fashion, Richards focused instead on the Atlantic shore.

 

His work in watercolor coincided with radical changes in the way the medium was used. Earlier, because of their portability, watercolors had most frequently been used for preliminary sketches in the field and for enlivening topographical studies, or for illustrating travel accounts. In mid-19th-century America, however, artists began to see the evocative effects of watercolor, and, in the 1860s and 1870s, finished paintings in the medium became extremely popular.

 

Left to right:

 

Near Lily Pond, 1875

Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on thick gray wove paper

Inscribed in artist's hand on original mount Near Lily Pond

 

Coastal Scene, Setting Sun, c. 1870

Watercolor, gouache, pen, and brown ink on tan wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.124, 119

 

The taste for displaying watercolors as finished pictures like oil paintings was partially the result of technological advances in the manufacture of both paper and pigment. Sized paper yielded smoother, sturdier surfaces for the reception of color while the invention of Chinese white, an opaque paint, helped achieve some of the light effects of oil. Earlier, watercolorists had used zinc oxide for the opaque whites, but after time this tended to turn yellow.

 

Although Richards often used Chinese white to highlight clouds and foam, he increasingly added opaque tints to his transparent washes, demonstrating a shift from delicate atmospheric effects to the weight and color of shore views.

 

Upper to lower:

 

On the Ocean Drive, Newport, 1890s

Watercolor, gouache, and brown ink on cream wove paper

Inscribed in verso: On the Ocean Drive, Newport slight sketch of the picture which most attracted Mr. and Mrs. Leonard

 

Green Hills, Rocks and Lichen, c. 1875

Gouache with touches of watercolor on cream wove paper

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.136, .125

 

Recognizing that tourism had heightened the interest of American collectors in foreign scenery, in 1878 Richards set out for a two-year stay in England in the hope of broadening his market. Again, Turner seems to have been the inspiration. Turner's publication Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England (1826) was evidently suggestive for Richards, who found support from Harper's Weekly for an illustrated article on the Cornish coast.

 

Saint Michael's Mount, Cornwall, c. 1878

Gray wash and gouache heightened with white on white wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.83

 

Tintagel, on the headlands above the sea-tossed cliffs of Cornwall, captivated Richards at first sight-King Arthur's Castle, according to the myth. It was here that Tennyson came to collect material and color for the Arthurian poems he completed in 1885, The Idylls of the King-the most romantic setting in Cornwall, guidebooks said. Richards returned several times over the years to paint the inspirational scene.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Tintagel Castle, Birthplace of King Arthur

c. 1878

Watercolor

Title inscribed on verso

 

Near Tintagel, 1890s

Oil and gouache on wood panel (cigar box lid?)

Inscribed in pencil on verso Near Tintagel

 

Tintagel, 1890s

Oil on wood panel

Inscribed in verso Tintagel

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels

1992.55.126., .150, .213

 

Right:

 

Tintagel, Birthplace of King Arthur, c. 1900

Oil on artist's board

Inscribed in verso Tintagel Birthplace of King Arthur

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.200

 

The cliffs along the south and Atlantic coasts of England stirred Richards's imagination much as the mountain wilderness of the Adirondacks had in his youth and he visited there often. Traveling over moor and farmland to Kynance Cove, 22 miles from the nearest railroad station, was "like some old Adirondacks experience," he wrote to a friend in 1878. With their five children, William and Anna, who was expecting a baby that winter, took up all the rooms in the only available cottage. Damp and unheated, the year's accommodations were as much "like life in a Log Cabin as one could expect." And Richards loved it. In front were the cliffs and the wild sea, and "lying around loose," he told a friend, "were the most tremendous subjects for big drawings."

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Cornish Coast-Kynance Cove, 1890s

Oil? and gouache? on artists's board

 

Rocky Coast, Cornwall, 1890s

Oil on cardboard

 

Gifts of M. J. and A.E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.202, .201

 

Right:

 

Cliffs on Cornish Coast, 1890s

Oil? and gouache? on artist's board

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.209

 

Coastal settings provided all the elements of Richards's romantic inheritance-the exalted feeling of nature, the sense of isolation against infinite stretches of sky, the drama of light breaking over the fathomless ocean.

 

Upper, left to right:

 

Cornish Coast

Brown wash on gray wove paper

 

Breaking Waves, Stormy Sky

Brown wash on gray wove paper, framed with pencil line

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.98, .103

 

Lower, left to right:

 

Storm Clouds and Sea

Brown wash on gray wove paper, framed with pencil line

 

Cornish Coast

Brown wash on gray wove paper, framed with pencil edge

Signed on verso W.T. Richards

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.106, .97

 

The difficulty of portraying the surf while standing at the edge of the water was huge, as Richards wrote to a friend:

 

I watch and watch it, try to disentangle its push and leap and recoil, make myself ready to catch the tricks of the big breakers and am always startled out of my self possession by the thunder and the rush, jump backward up the loose shingle of the beach, sure this time that I will be washed away; get soaked with spray, and am ashamed that I had missed getting the real drawing of such a splendid one, and this happens 20 times an hour and I have never got used to it.

 

Left:

 

Waves Crashing on Rocky Shore, 1890s

Watercolor

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.138

 

Center, upper to lower:

 

Waves Coastal Cliffs, Cornwall, 1890s

Oil? and gouche? on artist's board

 

Rocky Cliffs (Cornish Coast?), 1890s

Oil on artist's board

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.227, .177

 

Right, upper to lower:

 

High Surf

Brown wash on gray wove paper. Framed with pencil line

 

Waves Crashing on Cliffs

Brown wash on gray wove paper. Framed with pencil line

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.105, .108

 

In 1880 Richards built a house for his family on an island in Narragansett Bay-Conanicut Island. The artist chose to live in remote seaside places in order to experience nature directly. Feeling the wind and the rain on his skin, seeing the effects of storm and changing light on the sea, he sought to capture its immediacy with pencil and brush, often working in oil. Painting out-of-doors, he often used cigar boxes fitted with slots to hold cardboard panels in place.

 

Left:

 

Graycliff, Richards's Home on Conanicut

1880s

Brown wash on board

Inscribed on verso William T. Richards home at Jamestown, Conanicut Island, RI

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.84

 

Right, upper to lower:

 

Beavertail, Conanicut Island, 1880s

Oil on cardboard

Inscribed verso Beavertail Conanicut Island

 

Easton's Point, Newport, 1880s

Oil on wood panel

Inscribed on verso Easton's Point Newport

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.181, .175

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Conanicut, 1880s

Oil on cardboard

 

Landscape on Conanicut, 1880s

Oil? and gouache? on artist's board

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.204, .203

 

Right:

 

Coastal Scene with Fort Dumplings, c.1880s

Oil on wood panel

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.228

In London in the spring of 1879, Richards had the pleasure of seeing his oil painting of Trabarwith Strand exhibited at the Royal Academy where it was sold on private view day. In addition, he was invited to exhibit at the fashionable Grosvenor Gallery, to which he sent a view of Newport he had brought from home. Hung between two Whistlers, the effect was peculiar. Richards wrote that it looked "like a joke for my picture is by contrast so exceedingly realistic." Aware of the shift in public taste away from Hudson River School art and toward the tonalism of Whistler and Homer Martin, Richards mocked himself as an "old fogey." Nonetheless, he stuck to the realistic depiction of nature in the light-filled deep space of the mid-century.

 

Upper to lower:

 

Trebarwith Strand, c. 1878

Oil on artist's board

Inscribed on verso Trebarwith Strand

 

St. Ives Beach, Cornwall, 1890s

Oil on wood panel

Inscribed verso St. Ives Beach, Cornwall

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.207, .176

 

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1904)

Cliffs and Breakers-Clodgy Point, St. Ives

Oil on wood

Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

 

Attracted to the Cornish coast and the maritime tradition of British art, Richards made seven trips in all to the British Isles. But rural England engaged him, too. Summering at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, Richards sketched a shady road near Tennyson's summer home, Farringdon Park, "as good a piece of rural England as can be found," he wrote home to a friend. He sketched trees in New Forest, too, when he and his wife crossed the Solent and camped "in the most charming little inns in the heart of the forest."

 

Left:

 

Tennyson's Lane, Isle of Wight, 1880

Pencil on buff wove paper

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.67

 

Right, upper to lower:

 

Looking Down from Hampton Court

c. 1880

Oil on wood panel

Inscribed verso Looking down from Hampton Court

 

New Forest, England, c. 1880

Gouache on cardboard

Inscribed on verso New Forest, England

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.172, .232

In 1880, Richards's enthusiastic patron the Reverend Elias Magoon gave 85 of the artist's watercolors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art thereby inaugurating the Met's American drawings collection. Together the two men visited Magoon's home state of New Hampshire and Richards sketched sites of interest.

 

Upper to lower:

 

Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire

c.1883

Oil on wood panel

Inscribed on verso Monadnock

 

Peterborough, New Hampshire, c. 1883

Oil on cardboard

Inscribed on verso Peterborough, New Hampshire

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.221, .211

 

The American scene engrossed Richards for much of the 1880s when he moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania, to help out his daughter Eleanor and her husband who had bought a chicken farm. Times were hard for farmers. Faced with the difficulties of making a go of the venture, Richards took up the land's ecology as a new focus: "I hope that my market will give me the chance of doing some beautiful things around here," he wrote to a patron.

 

Left:

 

Chester Valley, Pennsylvania, c. 1889

Watercolor on cream wove paper

Inscribed verso Chester Valley, Penn

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.44.141

 

Right, upper to lower:

 

Landscape with trees and Pond, Chester County, 1880s

Oil or gouache on cardboard

 

Landscape, Chester County, 1880s

Oil on artist's board

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.193, .192

 

From the decade of the eighties come plein air sketches of Connecticut scenery made during visits to Fidelia Bridges's home in Canaan. Richards's former student and longtime friend, Bridges's delicate nature studies were strongly influencd by her teacher. Richards had helped Bridges set up her Philadelphia studio in the 1860s and introduced her to his patrons; later, she joined the Richards family during their stay in Darmstadt. Two of her watercolors came to Stanford with the van Löben Sels gift of the Richards material.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Canaan, Connecticut, c. 1887

Oil and gouache on wood panel

(cigar box lid?)

Inscribed in pencil on verso Canaan, Conn

 

Canaan, Connecticut, c. 1887

Oil on cardboard

Inscribed on verso Canaan

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.153, .224

 

Center:

 

Miss Bridges's Garden, Canaan, c. 1887

Oil on cardboard

Inscribed on verso Canaan, Miss Bridges's Garden

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.225

 

Right:

 

Fidelia Bridges

U.S.A., 1834-1923

Nature Study

Watercolor

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.59

 

During a two-year trip abroad in 1891-92, Richards traveled to Majorca and visited Guernsey. In Scotland, he made an oil sketch of the wildly romantic ruins of Fast Castle high on the cliffs above the raging sea in Berkwickshire. This was the setting for Sir Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor (1819). The miniature version at Stanford is an early sketch for the painting of Fast Castle at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

Upper to lower:

 

Near Majorca, c. 1892

Oil on wood panel

Inscribed on verso Near Majorca

 

Wolfscrag, Scotland, c. 1892

Oil on cardboard

Inscribed on verso Wolfscrag

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.168, .188

 

Ruins of Fast Castle, Berwickshire, Scotland: The Wolf's Crag of the "Bride of Lammermoor," 1892

Oil on canvas

Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

Ocean views absorbed Richards almost exclusively during the 1890s. The titanic pull of the tides and the spill of clouds across the sky were for him manifestations of spiritual significance -- "all the saddest and wildest noises of nature are reproduced by the surf," he wrote to a friend. And he worked hard to catch the revelatory light on the surface of the sea.

 

A trip to Norway in 1901 provided yet more material to satisfy Richards's lifelong interest in the grandeur and variety of mountain scenery. Recently widowed, he made the trip with two of his children: Anna, by then a successful painter living in London, and Herbert, a botany instructor at Barnard College. (The Richards collection at Stanford was Herbert's share of his father's estate.)

 

The party spent time at Svolvaer, whose spectacular summer beauty made it a major attraction of the Lofoten Islands. (Currently the controversial subject of a proposal to develop its rich oil reserves, the fate of the Lofoten islands is to be decided by the Norwegian parliament in 2010.)

 

Upper to lower:

 

Svolvaer, c. 1901

Oil on artist's board (card stock)

Inscribed on verso Svolvaer

 

Norwegian Mountain Scene, c. 1901

Oil on artist's board (card stock)

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.187, .186

 

Moving farther north in the Arctic Circle to the Westeralen Islands, Richards made an oil sketch of the Witches Peaks at Romsdel. His little oil of Trold Andene is painted on the back of a ferry schedule.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

The Witches Peaks, Romsdel, Norway

c. 1901

Oil on paper (card stock)

Title inscribed on verso

 

Near Oldens, Norway, c. 1901

Oil on paper (card stock)

Title inscribed on verso

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.217, .220

 

Right, upper to lower:

 

Trold Andene, Romsdel, Norway, c. 1901

Oil on paper (card stock)

Title inscribed on verso with ferry schedule printed in Norwegian and dated 1900

 

Fjaerland, c. 1901

Oil on paper (card stock)

Inscribed in verso Fjaerland

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.218, .216

 

Richards's interest in Norway reflects the country's "discovery" by 19th century British and American mountain climbers, travelers, sportsmen, and scientists. Tourists flocked to the Land of the Midnight Sun, coaxed by the Victorian passion for mountain scenery. Always on the lookout for new material attractive to collectors, Richards may have had a publication in mind for his sketches.

 

Left, upper to lower:

 

Svolvalo, 1902

Watercolor

Inscribed and dated verso Svolvalo 1902

 

Sisfjord, Norway, 1902

Watercolor on white wove paper

Inscribed on verso Sisfjord, Norway

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.146, .143

 

Right:

 

Blaahorn Pic, c. 1901

Watercolor and gouache on textured buff paper

Inscribed on verso Blaahorn Pic

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.142

 

Throughout his long career, Richards remained faithful to the Ruskinian precepts of his youth. Long past the epochal changes of the late 19th century, he continued to work as an idealizing realist-true to nature. If his style was old-fashioned, it hardly mattered to him for it continued to please his conservative clientel-he had a large family to support. Five of William and Anna's eight children survived infancy, and the artist was devoted to their support and education. A daughter attended the Cowles Art School in Boston, two sons went to Harvard, one of whom was a Nobel laureate in chemistry in 1911. Attracted by the transcendental appeal of Richards's art, collectors of the American establishment went on buying his canvases well into the 20th century, responding, perhaps, to the sense of lonelinesss expressed in the vast space of his seascapes and the blue eternity of his watercolors.

 

Left:

 

Land's End, c. 1880

Gray wash and gouache heightened with white

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.87

 

Center, upper to lower:

 

Keel Strand, Ireland, 1905

Watercolor on cream wove paper

Inscribed verso Keel Strand Ireland 1905

 

Lake Placid-2, c. 1904

Oil on artist's board

Inscribed verso Lake Placid

 

Gifts of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.144, .206

 

Right:

 

Land's End, 1905

Oil on artist's board

 

Gift of M. J. and A. E. van Löben Sels, 1992.55.185

Return to William Trost Richards - True to Nature: Drawings, Watercolors, and Oil Sketches at Stanford University

Editor's note: RL readers may also enjoy biographical information on artists cited in this article in America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.

Copyright 2010 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.