|
About John F. Carlson
Some early art historians correctly recognized the conceptual method in French impressionism when they referred to the artist’s purposeful subjective depiction of the nature he observed.1 The modern scholar Arnold Hauser points out that "this neutralization and reduction of the motif to its bare material essentials can be considered an antiromantic outlook . . . and seen as the trivialization . . . of all the heroic and stately qualities of the subject matter."2 If this is so, despite his European birth,3 John F. Carlson typifies the American spirit, as opposed to the French, in his re-adaptation of impressionism to native scenery, for his works are almost always romantic and heroic, yet comparatively objective.
Like the work of *Edward Redfield, his slightly older counterpart, Carlson’s work exudes what can be identified as *virility, which was praised in contemporary literature by art critics. Once formulated, Carlson’s manner matured to a personal imagery unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Born in Sweden in 1874, the son of a successful tailor, Carlson spent his first ten years in the town of Kolsebro in the province of SmDland. Perhaps his youthful adaptation to Sweden’s climate had something to do with his fondness for the winter season in America. The Carlsons emigrated to the United States in 1884 and made their home in Buffalo, New York. Once settled, the elder Carlson, recognizing his son’s talents, arranged for him to attend evening art classes at the recently organized Art Students League of Buffalo, New York. There, in the early nineties, John received instruction from Lucius Wolcott Hitchcock (1868-1942), a former pupil at the *Académie Colarossi in Paris and the *Art Students League of New York. After some time, this training and even the boy’s academic school work were halted by his family’s need for his financial support. Fortunately for his art, he was able to contribute funds by working in a lithography shop, where he continued to use his drawing skills.
Later, John resumed intermittent study at the Art Students League of Buffalo. In 1902, he received a scholarship to study back at New York City’s ASL. Always frugal, Carlson shared quarters above a brothel with fellow student George H. Macrum, a young bon vivant. At the League, John met *Birge Harrison (twenty years his senior), a painter known for his winter landscapes. Harrison was an important influence in Carlson’s career, as he had an appreciative but cynical view of the impressionist’s formula: he became Carlson’s friend and advisor. Carlson could not escape the influence of impressionism, but he assimilated its tenets with caution. To preserve funds, Carlson was careful in his use of materials, but he was exceedingly prolific and covered numerous canvases with a wide variety of images. During this time, he augmented his income by working as a free-lance illustrator for various publications. The extent of this commercial work is unknown.
In the first years of the new century, Birge Harrison taught painting at Byrdcliffe in *Woodstock, New York.4 Carlson won another scholarship in 1903 or 1904 to study at the Byrdcliffe Colony. He lived just outside of nearby Rock City, setting up a studio in a barn owned by a farmer named Levi Harder while boarding at the farm of Rosie Magee.5 Anita Smith stated that the young Carlson "lived on a near-starvation diet of cheese and beer," in his Rock City barn.6 Carlson began exhibiting work in such national shows as the annual of the *Art Institute of Chicago in 1905. From this period on, he maintained an active exhibition schedule and submitted works in a variety of media, though with particular success in watercolor and oil.
Following the Art Students League Summer School’s move from *Old Lyme to Woodstock in 1906, the League awarded Carlson his third scholarship to study at what was now called the *Woodstock School of Landscape Painting.7 Harrison was in charge of this school, which was devoted strictly to the advanced study of landscape painting. Although the issue of French impressionism was frequently sidestepped, it nonetheless played a role in the teaching of methodology. In terms of Carlson’s eventual stylistic maturity, it appears that his experiences at Woodstock had a proselytizing effect. Extant works from the period reveal a diminishing poetic or tonal interpretation and a greater personal expression in his brushwork. Always a prolific artist, Carlson executed his work with ingenuity and experimentation. Regardless of his originality, Carlson remained Harrison’s protégé, becoming a specialist in winter scenes and receiving an appointment as assistant director of Woodstock in 1908.8 Few spots in and around the Woodstock art colony escaped Carlson’s searching eye, though a certain repetition of compositional format is evident in his pictures of this period. Carlson worked with indefatigable energy until the end of the first decade, a time that signals the end of his student days and the beginning of his professional career.9
Carlson’s own, special type of impressionism was well received, as was proved in 1911, when he won his first important award at the Swedish-American Exhibition in Chicago and when he was elected to Associate membership of the *National Academy of Design. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed by the Art Students League to the directorship of the Woodstock School of Landscape Painting. This began Carlson’s lifelong reputation as the master of the Woodstock school of painting. Carlson demonstrated his artistic versatility in 1912, when the *Salmagundi Club presented him with the Vezin Prize for watercolors, as well as the First Isidor Prize. In the following year, when the *Armory Show shocked New York, Carlson continued his routine, winning a silver medal from the Washington Society of Artists. In the same year he married Margaret Goddard of Plainfield, New Jersey, an art student he had known since his first days at Woodstock. The couple made their home at his studio-residence near Rock City, and in 1914, their first child was born.
Carlson won a silver medal at the *Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. This was an extremely active period for the painter. His works were submitted to numerous national exhibitions and were usually praised by critics. Carlson was given an important one-man show at the *Art Institute of Chicago in January 1917. This was followed by a two-man exhibition at the City Art Museum in St. Louis and another solo performance at the *Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Referring to Carlson as "a *Bouguereau of winter woods," one critic observed that "his canvases are distinguished by the quality of the light which invariably envelops and irradiates the scene, integrating all its rich colors in one full-toned harmony. About his woodland interiors there is a majesty and solemnity."10 This was the nature of Carlson’s work during the second decade of the twentieth century. He was presented with the Carnegie Prize and the First Altman Prize by the National Academy in 1918, and, in the following year, he resigned his position as director of the Woodstock School because of differences he had with the modernist radicals *Henry Lee McFee and *Andrew Dasburg, as well as with the administration, which agreed to allow students to practice plein-air figure painting even though they had not yet achieved basic skills in figure drawing.
In 1920, Carlson, joined by *Robert Reid, began teaching during the summer months at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Carlson founded the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting at Woodstock upon his return from Colorado in 1922, thus continuing the art colony in that town. In the same year, the Woodstock School of Painting, headed by *Charles Rosen, Dasburg and McFee, was founded. These two schools were the options for students, following the closing of the Art Students League Summer School at the end of the 1922 season. Although the excitement of impressionism was over, Carlson continued to influence students. Despite his reputation as a conservative among the Woodstock liberal wing, it was inevitable that his style would change with the times. His earlier method of applying pigment in small strokes and contrasting patches of color gave way to an expressive, indeed, almost explosive, brushwork. In spite of this powerful spontaneity, Carlson kept control of his medium in a way that exemplified his obsession with technical perfection: "In painting we are apt to be very forgiving of poor technical performance. . . . In art, intentions have no place; only results."11
Carlson’s traditional imagery was aptly praised by the conservative members of the NAD when he was elected to full membership in 1925. Profiting from his excellent reputation as a teacher, he published Elementary Principles of Landscape Painting in 1929. This book, known two years earlier in textbook form, was geared toward an elementary study of painting but extended beyond that scope in many instances. One interesting idea presented by Carlson was his intention to instill in his students a "landscape sense" that he defined as "something apart from beauty, or color relation, of form relation . . . the ‘float of a cloud’ – the lightness of it . . . the weight of the ground, its solid, massive form."12 Thus, it is obvious that he replaced *Claude Monet’s method of reducing all elements to a common pictorial ensemble of color and light with a personal and characteristically American concern for the specific identity of physical objects and forms in landscape painting.
Like others of his generation, Carlson was able to maintain a style roughly akin to impressionism in later years. Indeed, in this matter, Carlson typifies the waning of impressionism in America during the late 1920s. Within the first few months of the beginning of the Depression, the *Macbeth Gallery presented twenty-seven of his landscapes in a one-man show, but the next few years were difficult. Carlson continued to win awards in the thirties, including the Altman Prize in 1937. He worked less in Woodstock and, instead, spent time in New York City, Plainfield, and *Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he taught with Emile Gruppe in 1940.13 Although his kind of art was old-fashioned by this time, Carlson owned an impressive list of credentials, and his work was included in important museums in the United States. An avid reader of classic literature and philosophy, Carlson had an exceedingly prolific career prior to his death in New York two months before his seventy-first birthday.
REF.
Harrison, 1909; Stuart, 1917-C; Le Gallienne, 1923; Carlson, 1929; "John F. Carlson," 1942; Anita Smith, 1959, pp. 48, 71-76, 92-95; Grand Central Art Galleries, 1964; Phillips, 1973, vol. 2, p. 95; Marling, 1977, n.p.; Vose Galleries, 1978-A; Vose Galleries, 1980-A; A Century of American Impressionism, 1982; Swanson, 1982, p. 16; Vose Galleries, 1982; Evers, 1987, pp. 434, 440, 452, 511, 516, 550; Wolf, 1987, pp. 19-23, 66-67; Preato, Langer, and Cox 1988, pp. 9, 30, 46-47; Pike’s Peak Vision, 1989-90, pp. 30-40; Gerdts, 1990, vol. 3, pp. 170-171; Love, 1999, pp. 215-218, 348-349, 361-361, 366-370, 394-400, 406-409. |
Paintings by John F. Carlson
| Sunlight Stream |
| oil on canvas: 30 x 42 inches |
| signed: lower right |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
|
Winter Grove: Oaks in January |
| oil on canvas: 30 x 40 inches |
| signed: lower left |
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
|
)
)