American Realism. Gerry Souter

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      In 1886, Harnett developed rheumatoid arthritis and had to be hospitalised to bring down the inflammation. At the age of forty his health declined further when he came down with kidney disease and admitted himself to Saint Francis Hospital in Manhattan. By 1889 his sickness had intensified into acute diffuse glomerulonephritis or inflamed kidneys that can lead to kidney failure. This failure, or uraemia, shuts down the kidney’s ability to clean toxic material from the circulatory system causing nausea, vomiting, anaemia, hypertension, mental dysfunction and strokes.

      In that same year his mother, Honora, died. Her pride in his accomplishments as a painter had never wavered and her death left him depressed. Since his father’s death in 1864, Harnett had contributed to the support of his mother and sisters, which, though his paintings had sold well, left him very little spare cash. That summer, he journeyed to spas in Carlsbad and Wiesbaden in Germany to “take the waters” and relieve his crippling rheumatism. The application of hot springs provided some relief, but after returning to New York, his health slipped further downhill. After another hospital stay, he travelled to Hot Springs, Arkansas. That year, he completed only one painting, The Old Cupboard Door.

      This small painting includes a potpourri of his favourite subjects – but the choices are steeped in melancholy – from the torn binding of the book dangling by a thread (the frailty of life) to the small Roman figurine of Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. A violin bow diagonally brings the composition back to centre where it pauses at the circular stained tambourine and then continues along the angled pages pinned to the wood next to the violin. Above Harnett’s dying rose is sheet music for La Dernière Rose d’été, a popular tune of the period where Thomas Moore sees his life in comparison with the last rose of the season. Accepting the metaphoric road signs to mortality, it is at this point when the viewer takes in the overall view and becomes aware that William Harnett’s 1889 painting is virtually a Cubist abstraction. The sophistication of his elements, “… Many points I leave out and many I add…” amounts to a road map for future Cubists, Picasso, Braque, Rivera, Lipchitz and others who might well have seen his work in Europe. Picasso’s Still-Life with Violin and Fruit is a particularly startling comparison.

      Following his return from Arkansas, Harnett suffered a stroke on the pavement outside his Manhattan studio and collapsed into a coma. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he died on 29 October 1892. The doctor’s post-mortem examination revealed that Harnett was undernourished and anaemic. His estate amounted to $500 and a few paintings.

      As is the case with so many artists underappreciated in their lifetime, his death brought about a re-evaluation of his work and he became – for a brief time – eulogised as one of America’s finest still-life painters. However, the Impressionists and anything French was beginning to devour Manhattan wall space in galleries and museums. Harnett’s quaint still-lifes slipped from favour as relics of the past and for forty years – until 1939 – remained curiosities bundled together with other illusionists and forgeries still relegated to saloons and billiard parlours in small towns.

      In 1939 William Michael Harnett’s work was rediscovered and championed by Downtown Gallery owner Edith Halpert in her Greenwich Village establishment. Her interest had been piqued when she saw The Faithful Colt and brokered the sale of the painting to the Atheneum Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. Colt Firearms Manufacturing Company had their headquarters in that city and donated a wing to the Atheneum. Harnett’s painting was a welcome addition to the museum’s collection. Intrigued by Harnett’s work, Halpert began to acquire his paintings and in April 1939 staged a highly successful exhibition which attracted a cross-section of influential museums and collectors, adding their imprimatur to the resurrection of Harnett’s reputation. Over the years, he has risen to the top tier of American Realist Painters.[27]

      Frederic Remington (1861–1909)

      Frederic Remington, Self-Portrait on a Horse, c. 1890.

      Oil on canvas, 74.1 × 49.2 cm.

      Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

      “I paint for boys – boys from ten to seventy,” said Frederic Remington. No artist in the tradition of American Realism was more American or took to life at such a fast gallop. Sketches, water colours, oils and bronze sculptures seemed to rush from him over his all too brief career documenting the Western United States. His last name alone conjures up images of long-barrelled rifles and holstered pistols looped over bullet studded belts, the chink of spurs, the snap of a whip and the whistling arc of a braided lariat. His idea of his own epitaph was: “He knew the horse.” And that he did in hundreds of images: the American pony, mustang, thoroughbred and bronco emerged from his pen; accurate from cannon bone to throat latch, withers to barrel, the conformation of his horses was always correct. Cowboys, dudes, Native Americans, wagon masters, mule skinners and homesteaders all paraded across his sketchbooks faithful to a fault.

      Then there were the great skies, huge and cloud-washed, filled with heat or deep as the ocean above the blasted landscape of desert arroyos, wind-carved buttes and the scored trails of tumbleweed. His houses were Mexican stucco, mud brick, and lumber brought down from the high timberlines and sandpapered by never-ending dust. They were Native American tepees and settlers’ ‘soddies’ that seemed to grow from the earth with layers of grass-bound earth holding up lodge pole canvas roofs.

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