On the way back the sky turned gray and the air chilly. When we got off the boat, Mr. Sargent handed me the painting. “I hope your mother likes it,” he said. “She will,” I thought, “more than you could ever know.”
We trotted back to Broadway as quickly as our pony could take us. Lizzy and I pulled our sweaters tightly around ourselves and sat close for warmth. Papa said, “Now that the weather is changing, I’m thinking about going home.”
“Home?” we said. “To Boston?”
“No, home to Giverny,” answered Papa.
“Yippee!” we shouted, and we laughed and talked about what our next adventure might be.
CREDITS
In order of journal entry
April 2, 1895
Theodore Robinson (1852–1896)
The Young Violinist (Margaret Perry), c. 1889. Oil on canvas, 321/16 × 261/16 inches. The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland BMA 1950.290.
April 8, 1895
Claude Monet (1840–1926)
The Thames at Charing Cross, 1903. Oil on canvas, 28¾ × 39½ inches. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. Photograph © Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Giuseppe (or Joseph) De Nittis (1846–1844)
Westminster, 1878. Oil on canvas, 45¼ × 77½ inches. Gaetano Marzotto Collection, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library.
May 2, 1895
James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)
Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket, c. 1875. Oil on wood panel, 23¾ × 18⅜ inches. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Photograph © 2001 The Detroit Institute of Arts/The Bridgeman Art Library.
May 14, 1895
Sidney Starr (1857–1925)
The City Atlas, c. 1889. Oil on canvas, 24 × 201/16 inches. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa/The Bridgeman Art Library.
June 1, 1895
Philip Wilson Steer (1860–1942)
Mrs. Cyprian Williams and Her Two Little Girls, 1891. Oil on canvas, 30 × 40¼ inches. Tate Gallery, London. Purchased with assistance from anonymous subscribers, 1928. Photograph courtesy of Tate London/Art Resource, New York.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851)
Rain, Steam, and Speed, The Great Western Railway, painted before 1844. Oil on canvas, 35¾ × 48 inches. National Gallery, London. Photograph © National Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library.
June 28, 1895
Sir John Lavery (1856–1941)
Boating Scene at Maidenhead, 1913. Oil on canvas, 40 × 50 inches. © Private Collection/ © Whitford & Hughes, London/The Bridgeman Art Library.
July 7, 1895
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
The Late Major E. C. Harrison as a Boy, c. 1888. Oil on canvas, 68 × 32⅞ inches. Southampton City Art Gallery, Hampshire, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.
July 20, 1895
Walter Frederick Osborne (1859–1903)
The Children’s Party, 1900. Oil on canvas, 24¼ × 30 inches. Photograph courtesy of Pyms Gallery, London.
July 21, 1895
Sir James Guthrie (1859–1930)
A Hind’s Daughter, 1883. Oil on canvas, 36⅛ × 30 inches. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh/The Bridgeman Art Library.
July 28, 1895
John Singer Sargent painting in the countryside, 1889. Photograph copyright © The Illustrated London News Picture Library, London/The Bridgeman Art Library.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
Portrait of Miss Dorothy Vickers, c. 1884. Oil on canvas, 18 × 15 inches. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Carrozzo. Photograph courtesy of Adelson Galleries, Inc.
September 15, 1895
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
The Black Brook, c. 1908. Oil on canvas, 21¾ × 27½ inches. Tate, London. Photograph courtesy of Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York.
All other photographs and ephemera collection of the author.
THE ARTISTS
EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY (1852–1911) Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Abbey was a self-taught illustrator and muralist. When he was fourteen he got a job at Harper’s Weekly in New York and later traveled to England on assignment for it. He liked London so much he decided stay on. When his friend Frank Millet moved to the village of Broadway, Abbey went with him, and they, along with John Singer Sargent, formed the nucleus of the colony of “plein air” painters that sprang up there. In 1902, Abbey was chosen as the official painter of the coronation of King Edward VII.
GIUSEPPE (OR JOSEPH) DE NITTIS (1846–1884) De Nittis came from Barletta, in the south of Italy, and studied at the art academy in Naples. He moved to Paris and, in 1874, at the invitation of Edgar Degas, participated in the first Impressionist exhibition there. A trip to London the following year inspired more Impressionist paintings, including his large canvas in this book, Westminster, one of ten views of the city commissioned by an English banker and patron of De Nittis.
SIR JAMES GUTHRIE (1859–1930) Guthrie was born in Greenock, Scotland, and trained as a lawyer before turning to painting. He traveled to France in 1882, where he learned to paint “en plein air.” Back in Scotland, he continued to paint directly from nature and became a leading member of the Glasgow School of artists. He was made president of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1902 and was knighted the following year.
SIR JOHN LAVERY (1856–1941) Born in Belfast, Ireland, Lavery was apprenticed as a young man to a photographer in Glasgow, Scotland, where, retouching negatives and colored photographs, he decided he wanted to be a portrait painter. As a student at the Académie Julian in Paris, he was influenced by Whistler and the Impressionists, then went to London where he had an immensely successful career and painted portraits of the royal family. The face of his beautiful wife, Hazel, graced the Irish pound note until the 1970s.
FRANCIS DAVIS MILLET (1846–1912) Born in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, Millet was a drummer boy during the Civil War. After graduating from Harvard University, he attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium. In 1895, Millet traveled to England with his wife, Lily, and their four children to live and paint in the picturesque village of Broadway, where he was soon joined by a lively group of artists and friends, including Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent and the writer Henry James. In 1912, traveling to New York without his family, Millet bought a first-class ticket on the Titanic and went down with the ship when it struck an iceberg.
CLAUDE MONET (1840–1926) Oscar Claude Monet was born in Paris but moved to Le Havre with his family when he was five. Even as a boy, he was gifted, and he was encouraged by his parents and teachers to study art. In 1859, he returned to Paris to attend Académie Suisse. In 1862, he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, and together they founded an independent group of artists. They organized their first group exhibition in 1874. Monet’s painting Impression: Sunrise gave rise to the name “Impressionism” and defined the group’s style. In 1883, after his first wife, Camille, had died, Monet moved with Alice Hoschedé and her six children to Giverny. They settled into the Maison du Pressoir, or “Cider-Press House,” where he lived—painting, gardening and landscaping—for the next forty-three years.
WALTER FREDERICK OSBORNE (1859–1903) A native of Dublin, Ireland, Walter Osborne was the son of animal painter William Osborne. He studied at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, then in Antwerp under Charles Verlat. His affectionate paintings of children and his loose brushstrokes have invited comparisons with Berthe Morisot’s sensitive Impressionist work.
ALFRED WILLIAM PARSONS (1847–1920) A British landscape painter and illustrator, Parsons was born in Somerset, England. His love of painting flowers led him to garden design and horticulture, which he enjoyed at Luggers Hall, his Broadway estate. Frank Millet named his youngest son, John Alfred Parsons Millet, after his good friends John Singer Sargent and Alfred Parsons.
THEODORE ROBINSON (1852–1896) Born in Irasburg, Vermont, Robinson was one of
the first American painters to travel to Giverny and one of the few to befriend Monet. Although Robinson was never his pupil, Monet offered to critique his paintings, and the two worked closely together from 1888 to 1892. Robinson’s Giverny paintings are charming portraits of people outdoors, bathed in color and light, set among the beautiful walled gardens, stone footbridges, winding roads and rising hillsides of the village that so enchanted him.
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS (1848–1907) The son of a French shoemaker and an Irish mother, Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to New York with his family when he was six months old. Completing school at thirteen, he apprenticed to a cameo cutter and attended Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. When he was nineteen, he moved to Europe, where he continued to study classical art and architecture in Paris and Rome and began work as a professional sculptor. In 1880, back in New York, Saint-Gaudens received a public commission that brought him success and fame: a monument to the Civil War naval hero, Admiral David Farragut, which still stands in New York’s Madison Square Park.
JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856–1925) Sargent was a brilliant and successful painter. Born in Florence to American parents, he grew up abroad and learned to draw and paint at an early age. Recognizing his son’s talent, his father arranged for him to study portraiture under Carolus-Duran in Paris. Sargent was a friend of Monet, and the two artists exhibited together and collected each other’s work. In 1886, Sargent decided to settle in London and moved into Whistler’s old studio on Tite Street. He traveled extensively around the world, capturing in oil and watercolors the scenic places he visited and the friends and family who traveled with him.
SIDNEY STARR (1857–1925) Starr was one of ten painters known as “The London Impressionists,” who chose as their mentors Whistler, Monet and Degas. A painter of modern life, Starr portrayed the hustle and bustle of London’s railroad stations, crowded streets and busy restaurants as well as the city’s leafy suburbs with their large villas and fashionable society. He could often be seen researching his subject matter from atop a large omnibus like the one in his painting in this book, The City Atlas.
PHILIP WILSON STEER (1860–1942) The son of an art teacher, Steer was born in Birkenhead, England, and was encouraged at an early age to experiment with drawing and painting. In Paris, he studied at the Académie Julien and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was influenced by Whistler and Manet and, throughout his career, looked to France and the Impressionists for inspiration.
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (1775–1851) The son of a barber, Turner was born in London’s Covent Garden. He showed artistic talents from an early age and was admitted to the Royal Academy when he was only fifteen. He traveled widely throughout his career in England, Scotland, France, Switzerland and Italy, studying the effects of water and sky in every kind of weather. Known as the “painter of light,” he was an inspiration to the Impressionists, in particular Monet and Whistler, who carefully studied his techniques.
JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER (1834–1903) Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Whistler moved with his family when he was nine to St. Petersberg, Russia, where his father was a civil engineer for the construction of a railroad line to Moscow. He studied drawing at the Imperial Academy of Science, and after several years at West Point Military Academy—where he excelled only in drawing—Whistler decided to become an artist. He moved to Europe permanently when he was twenty-one, settling in London in 1863. A friend of Gustave Courbet’s and Edouard Manet’s, he soon made a name for himself as a talented painter, witty art critic and flamboyant dandy in the style of another friend, Oscar Wilde.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Charlotte Glidden is not a real girl, although a girl just like Charlotte could very well have traveled with her mother and artist father to France in the 1890s, when American painters flocked there to learn the new French way of painting called Impressionism. Her journal is based on historical fact. Artists like James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent and Theodore Robinson traveled to Giverny in the beautiful Normandy countryside to paint “en plein air”—outdoors—in the village where the great master Monet lived and painted. From there, many American painters, like the fictitious Glidden family of this book, traveled across the channel to London where they captured the hustle and bustle of modern life on busy city streets and the romantic atmospheric effects of light, fog, smoke, rain and mist on the river Thames. They dined and danced at the Savoy Hotel, took in the Crown Jewels and the ravens at the Tower of London, visited the world-famous Wax Museum of Madame Tussaud, watched fireworks from Victoria Embankment and studied the paintings of J. M. W. Turner, “the painter of light,” at the National Gallery. To paint “en plein air” in the countryside, they took the Great Western train to the rowing races at the Henley Royal Regatta and traveled by coach to the picturesque Cotswold village of Broadway where a lively artists’ colony sprang up around the American artists Frank Millet, Edwin Abbey, Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John Singer Sargent. Like the Gliddens, many stayed at the Lygon Arms (where you can still stay today) and were invited to rollicking late-night parties at the Millets’ and all-day painting expeditions by motor launch along the Avon River.
The author wishes to thank the National Gallery in London, the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading and the people in beautiful Broadway who so kindly answered questions about the Cotswolds then and now.
Text © 2008 by Joan MacPhail Knight.
Illustrations © 2008 by Melissa Sweet.
All rights reserved.
Book design by Amelia May Anderson and Jessica Dacher.
Typeset in Melissa Sweet Two and Adobe Garamond.
The illustrations in this book were rendered in
mixed-media collage and watercolor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2538-8
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Charlotte in London Page 3