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About Robert Blum
Robert Blum (1857-1903) studied under Frank Duveneck in the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. After completing his training, Blum took an illustrating job with Scribner's in 1879. He traveled first to Munich where he was reunited with Frank Duveneck, and became one of the "Duveneck Boys" who went to Venice in 1880. There, he met James A.M. Whistler (cat. no. 45) who was a major influence on the young artist. Upon his return to the U.S., Blum cooperated with his friend William Merritt Chase (cat. no. 6) in the founding of the Society of Painters in Pastel and served as its president. In 1890, Blum became one of the first American artists to visit Japan and was commissioned by Scribner’s to illustrate Sir Edwin Arnold’s book Japonica. Blum died suddenly in 1903, leaving his estate to the Cincinnati Art Museum where most of his works are held. His art is noted for conveying a fine sense of decorative composition and for the ease in which objects are defined through rapid, painterly means.
Japonica is an example of Japonisme, or the Japanese influence in European and American art at the turn of the century. Japanese art works reached France after Commodore Matthew C. Perry concluded his expedition to Japan (1852-54), which "forced" the country to admit outside influences. Japanese prints may have reached America as early as 1855. Hokusai and other popular Japanese artists had a direct influence on progressive French artists, such as Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. Besides Mary Cassatt and Whistler, Robert Blum showed an interest in Japonisme. Japonica, which describes the country, its people, and customs, would have been a novelty to most readers. The illustrations are factual but pleasantly decorative. The girl walks in a characteristic way, in her wooden clogs, dressed in the traditional kimono.
In the midsummer of 1857 Robert was born to Mary Haller Blum and Frederick Blum in Cincinnati. Robert enrolled in the tuition-free Ohio Mechanics Institute, studying under Frank Duveneck, Cincinnati’s star painter. Like Edward Potthast, who was also going to school while serving as apprentice in a Cincinnati lithography shop, Blum made good use of his diverse training and progressed rapidly in his draftsmanship.
In 1875, Blum enrolled in the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati. He followed in the footsteps of John H. Twachtman, who had just left the McMicken School for Munich, as had Duveneck; the latter’s Munich School style created a sensation that year at the Boston Art Club. At McMicken, Blum made the acquaintance of Potthast and other former Duveneck students – Kenyon Cox and Joseph R. DeCamp. Blum visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (1876) with Cox; the former was impressed by the work of Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) and the painter-illustrator, Mariano Fortuny. Moreover, the unique simplicity of Japanese art, which Blum saw there, "augmented the wild desire that had grown up in him" to tour that "country of art," which he would, later in 1890-93.1 First, Blum and Cox made arrangements to stay in Philadelphia and study at the Pennsylvania Academy, where Thomas Eakins worked as an assistant under the direction of Professor Christian Schussele.2 Studying at the Academy during the winter of 1876-77, Blum learned a good deal about the human figure. He continued to work there until 1879, when he moved to New York. There, Alexander W. Drake, art director of both Scribner’s Monthly and St. Nicholas Magazine, offered him an illustrator’s position.
In the spring of 1880, Blum and Drake sailed from New York for a European excursion. Joseph Gutmann refers to Robert Blum’s visit to Paris as a "rare exception" among the American artists of Jewish background.3 Apparently, most Jewish artists traveled instead to Munich and Düsseldorf. From Paris, Blum continued his trip to Genoa, Rome, and finally to Venice, where he found the legendary Duveneck and Whistler working, together with Otto Bacher and other students, on their etchings in the Casa Jankovitz. Blum joined Bacher and the other "Duveneck Boys." In addition to Blum’s attempts at etching prior to his European trip, the brief experience with Whistler in Venice inspired the former with new endeavors in the medium and Blum’s short time in Europe introduced him to a variety of artistic trends.4
Blum was back in New York by September of 1880. After settling into a studio at 58 West 57th Street, he made the acquaintance of several stage actors and executed various drawings of these theater personalities in costume. Boyle points out that "Blum was an avid theater and circus goer and enjoyed the company of actors and actresses."5 Soon, Blum crossed the Atlantic again for Europe and, while in Venice, executed work in watercolor and other media. Later he devoted considerable time to the production of small watercolors and copied works by Velázquez in the Prado Museum in Madrid.6
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Paintings by Robert Blum
| A Musume Tripping Down The Street |
| ink on paper: 10 x 7 inches |
| signed with chop mark: lower left |
| date: circa 1890 |
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| At the Marketplace |
| watercolor on paper: 9 1/4 x 8 inches |
| signed & dated 1881 and inscribed: lower right |
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It was in Spain that Blum executed At the Marketplace, a watercolor on paper 9¼ x 8 inches. The Brooklyn Museum has another watercolor entitled Green Grocery in Rome, formerly identified as Market Scene, Spain dated 1881 (17 5/16 x 21½), which is obviously related, as is Toledo Water Carrier, a painting from the collection of Thomas B. Clarke, which includes the same blinding sun that strikes a smooth adobe wall and the figures silhouetted against the architecture.7 Yet another example of Blum’s trip to Spain (dated 1881) is known: Spanish Dance, a 19 x 22 inch oil in the collection of Miss Yvette Ganz, New York. Of these outstanding paintings by Blum, contemporaries praised them as exquisite and fresh. There is something truly enchanting about the freedom of handling and the plein air spontaneity of the works done by Blum and others of the Duveneck Boys, which includes At the Marketplace.
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