Willard Metcalf (1858–1925)

WILLARD LEROY METCALF (1858–1925)
The White Mantle, 1906
Oil on canvas, 26 x 29 in.
Signed and dated (at lower left): W. L. Metcalf 1906

RECORDED: Royal Cortissoz, “Art Exhibitions,” New York Tribune, March 21, 1907, p. 7 // “Thirteenth Annual Exhibition: Landscapes in the Exhibition,” Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum 1 (July 1910), pp. 2–3 illus. // Elizabeth de Veer and Richard J. Boyle, Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987), pp. 85, 88 fig. 94 illus. // Spanierman Gallery, Ten American Painters, exhib. cat. (New York: 1990), p. 182 “Index to the Exhibitions of the Ten” // Barbara J. MacAdam, Winter’s Promise: Willard Metcalf in Cornish, New Hampshire, 1909–1920 (Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, 1999), pp. 13, 77 n. 26 // Spanierman Gallery, Willard Metcalf (1858–1925): Yankee Impressionist, exhib. cat. (New York: 2003), p. 55 n. 37

EXHIBITED: Montross Gallery, New York, March 19–April 6, 1907, Annual Exhibition of the Ten American Painters // Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1910, Thirteenth Annual Exhibition // Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1942

EX COLL.: the artist; to [Montross Gallery, New York]; to William Henry Bliss, New York; to his son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, Washington, D.C., by 1942; by gift to Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., 1944; to [Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, 1975]; to private collection, Massachusetts, and by descent, 1976 until the present

Retreating from the pressures of the New York art scene, Metcalf spent most of 1904 at his parents’ home in rural Maine, Clark’s Cove in Walpole on the Pemaquid Peninsula. Here he produced a body of work inspired by the local landscape. Metcalf returned to Clark’s Cove to spend Christmas 1906 with his parents. In his cash book, next to the entry for The White Mantle, the artist wrote “painted Christmas Day in Clark’s Cove, Maine.” The picture is one of a quartet of snow scenes that Metcalf painted during that period.

Royal Cortissoz, the respected art critic of the New York Tribune, took special note of The White Mantle in his review of the March 1907 exhibition of The Ten. Cortissoz wrote “The White Mantle ... confirms our confidence in his emotional growth. Technique alone would not have sufficed for the translation of the very spirit of winter into the elements of this picture.” This quintessential New England winter scene neatly illuminates the distinction that William Gerdts made between the New England pictures of Metcalf and his friend, Hassam:

[I]t was Willard Metcalf who was recognized in his time as the preeminent Impressionist delineator of the region—the artist who captured, not as had Hassam, the spirit of Puritan New England, but who understood the landscape as distinctly American, as did no one else—the landscape that varied from the rolling hills of Connecticut and the scintillating New England shoreline from Connecticut to Maine, to villages nestled in its valleys in Vermont and New Hampshire, and to some of its stately homes and mansions throughout the region (Gerdts, “Willard Metcalf: Painter Laureate of New England Impressionism,” Willard Metcalf: Yankee Impressionist, p. 61).

The first owner of The White Mantle was William Henry Bliss (1844–1932), a prominent Missouri lawyer who served as U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri and as a lawyer for the St. Paul and Duluth and Northern Pacific railroads. In 1894, when Bliss was a widower with two teenage children, he married Anna Dorina Blakesly Barnes, a wealthy widow in New York with a fifteen-year-old daughter. Bliss continued his civic involvement in New York as a director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Municipal Art Society. His son, Robert Woods Bliss (1875–1962), graduated from Harvard College in 1900. In 1908, Robert Woods Bliss married his stepsister, Mildred Barnes (1879–1969), the daughter of his father’s second wife. Robert Bliss had a 30-year career in the United States Diplomatic Service. William Bliss died in 1932 and, in 1933 Robert Bliss retired as the United States Ambassador to Argentina. He and Mildred moved into their retirement home, a Georgetown Victorian mansion renovated by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, with grounds designed by Beatrix Farrand, which they named Dumbarton Oaks. Robert and Mildred Bliss were art collectors, primarily of Byzantine Art. In 1940, they donated Dumbarton Oaks, with its collections, to Harvard University to serve as a museum and library. Ownership of The White Mantle passed from William Henry Bliss to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, then to Dumbarton Oaks, by 1944. Hirschl and Adler Galleries acquired it from Dumbarton Oaks in 1975, and, in 1976, sold it to a private collection, where it has remained to the present.