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About Charles Heberer
Born in St. Louis in 1868, Heberer began his art studies at the St. LouisSchool of Fine Arts, established in 1879. There had been an art academy in St. Louis, the Western Academy of Art, which opened in 1859 and inaugurated its first annual exhibition a year later. This institution finally merged with the St. Louis School of Fine Arts in 1879. Heberer probably enrolled in art history classes taught by Halsey C. Ives, the first director. There was also instruction in drawing, painting, anatomy, and perspective, as well as European history and literature. Other instructors included Carl Gutherz (1844-1907) and Mary Fairchild (1858-1947), who would become the wife of the sculptor Frederick MacMonnies, then Mrs. Will Hicoc Low. Like the young Fairchild, Heberer decided to study further in Paris. He enrolled at the Académie Julian under Boulanger, Lefebvre, Doucet and Constant, and between 1890 and 1895 he was successful enough to exhibit his works in the Paris Salon: these were unlocalized evening landscapes and rustic spots in Normandy. A Farm in Normandy was engraved for the catalogue of the Salon of 1890 (cat. no. 1184). A diagonal tree dominates the composition, which features cattle in the foreground. Shafts of light form counter-diagonals and the whole effect of rays of sun streaming in through foliage must have been stunning. Meanwhile, Heberer submitted one work to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), entitled The End of November(unlocated). "November" was a familiar title among plein-air painters associated with Bastien- Lepage, Alexander Harrison, and others who painted in Brittany and Normandy. Characteristic works by Heberer from this period display the popular influence of Bastien-Lepage's plein-air tonalism, in which clearly defined forms, usually figures of peasants, occupy spaces filled with softly diffused light.
A year later (1894) comes Farmyard, La Celle-au-Pontaise, a lyrical summer landscape most likely executed just east of Rambouillet along a brook called La Celle. Here tonalism has given way to the more progressive use of a bright palette, pure pigments, and a restricted range of values. There is plenty of free brushwork with broken color, especially in the sky
area near the horizon. The violet colored roofs and hints of violet in the sky add to this radiant plein air painting elements that acknowledge impressionism. Thus by 1894, Heberer, like so many other American painters working in and around Paris, was at least experimenting with the French aesthetic. In 1898, Heberer exhibited A Sunday Morning with Burns at Mossgiel at the
Art Institute of Chicago. This was the poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), whose farm was called Mossgiel. Therefore, Heberer was interested in historical genre and he seems to have admired the poet; he also painted Robert Burns and Highland Mary, on auction not long ago. "Highland Mary" was Mary Campbell, with whom Burns had one of many extramarital affairs.
Overshadowing the genre element, however, is the lush forest landscape with a shallow brook indicated below. Heberer was associated with the Society of Western Artists, founded in 1896. For some reason he did not
participate in the Universal Exposition in St. Louis in 1904. In fact, his artistic activity seems to have slowed down until his death much later in 1951. |
Paintings by Charles Heberer
| Farmyard, La Celle-au-Pontaise |
| oil on canvas: 15 x 18 inches |
| signed and dated 1894: lower left |
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