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About Harriet Randall Lumis
Harriet Eunice Randall received a well rounded education at the Connecticut Literary Institution in Suffield. Little is known about Harriet’s childhood and adolescence; in 1892, she married Fred Williams Lumis, an architect living in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her first formal painting instructor was Willis S. Adams (1844-1921) and she produced her first landscapes under his influence, resulting in works in the tonalist tradition. From Adams, she turned to Leonard Ochtman, who was moving more toward impressionism at that time. Under Ochtman at the New York Summer School at Mianus, near Cos Cob (ca. 1910-13), Lumis began to loosen her technique, set a brighter palette, and replace the more traditional, broad vista type composition with more specific slices of nature. Harriet Lumis first submitted her works at the age of forty-two (in 1912) to the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. A local critic reported that her canvases were "all characterized by unusual refinement of color and a poetic, but sure touch." She followed this by showing three of her canvases in the 1913 annual exhibition of the Connecticut Academy of the Fine Arts, and in the same year she exhibited at the Providence Society of Artists. Lumis became an inspired, highly productive painter, perpetually striving for artistic maturity. At the age of fifty, she attended Hugh Breckenridge’s summer school at Rocky Neck, in Gloucester, home of America’s celebrated artists’ colony. In addition, she was one of the founding members of the Springfield Art League in 1919.
The Birches proves that Lumis painted forms more as solid objects than did the typical French impressionist. Her original style paralleled her conviction that "America not only has an art of her own but she has an art [that] will stand as high as the contemporary art of any European country." Lumis was attempting to contradict another woman impressionist painter, Cecilia Beaux, who claimed that America had no art that was comparable to that of France. The technique of Lumis changed from a heavy application of impasto texture to a use of wash-like patches of subtle hues, contrasted with large areas of brilliant broken color. Using saturated color, she attained a natural luminism without the high-keyed palette associated with her earlier years. |
Paintings by Harriet Randall Lumis
| The Birches |
| oil on canvas: 21 x 26 inches |
| unsigned |
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| The River |
| oil on canvas: 24 x 28 inches |
| signed: lower left |
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| Winding Stream |
| oil on canvas: 25 x 28 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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| Early Morning Gloucester |
| oil on canvas: 21 x 16 inches |
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| Maples |
| oil on canvas: 22 x 18 in. |
| signed: lower right |
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| Old Fish House, Gloucester |
| oil on canvas: 12 x 10 inches |
| signed: reverse |
| circa: 1910 |
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