Russell Cheney
1888 - 1945
Death-PlaceKittery, ME
Birth-PlaceSouth Manchester, CT
BiographyRussell Cheney (1881-1945)(A Hartford Biography)
© Gary W. Knoble, 2014
Russell Cheney was born into a life of privilege on October 16, 1881 in South Manchester, Connecticut. He was the 11th and youngest child of Knight Dexter Cheney and Ednah Dow Smith. His paternal grandfather and three great uncles had founded the Cheney Silk Mills in 1838 and by the time of Cheney’s birth the thriving mills were providing a comfortable living for a large extended family. His family home was at 50 Forest Street. The house still exists but was much changed in the 1920’s. Only the living room remains of the original house.
The Cheneys were not strangers to artistic talent. Two of Russell’s great uncles, Seth Wells Cheney and John Cheney were accomplished painters and steel engravers. A second cousin Charles Adams Platt was an engraver, artist, landscape architect and architect. He designed or remodeled many of the Cheney mansions in Manchester in the 1920’s.
Cheney attended Hartford High, graduating in 1901. He studied early with Walter Griffin, possibly at Charles Noel Flagg’s Connecticut Art Students’ League, where Griffin taught for a while beginning in 1897.
He followed his five brothers to Yale. Like all five he was elected to Skull and Bones and graduated from Yale in 1904. Unlike his brothers, who had all returned to Manchester to work at the Cheney Mills, Cheney announced that he intended to pursue a career as a painter. His parents were “startled but acquiescent” and gave him their personal and financial support, unlike so many of his peers who pursued artistic careers in the conservative climate of the early 19th Century.
From Yale, he went to New York City to study at the Art Student’s League under Kenyon Cox and William Merritt Chase where he remained until 1907. In 1907 he made the first of many trips to Europe to study with Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian. In Paris he reconnected with his first teacher Walter Griffin, who had studied with Laurens in 1887. Griffin took a keen interest in young Cheney’s talent and remained his mentor and close friend until his (Griffin’s) death in 1935.
In 1909 he returned to New York and resumed his studies at the Art Student’s League. He was President of the League from 1909-1910.
In 1912 he spent the summer with his family at their summer home in Ogunquit, Maine and began painting with Charles Woodbury. He returned to Manchester at the end of the summer and established his studio at 30 Forest Street. Manchester was his primary residence from 1912 through the 1920’s. In 1916, his parents built him a “palatial” studio in a barn on the Cheney land. The studio was described in detail in an article in the Hartford Courant on December 5, 1920.
The studio is situated in a secluded spot on the large and beautiful Cheney estate. Tall pine trees are clustered about the entrance; the pathway leading to it is covered with a heavy carpet of pine needles. While it is secluded it is not separated from life there but is an essential part of it………In a large fireplace hickory logs burned merrily and sent forth a ruddy glow which rouged the faces of Mr. Cheney and his visitor as they stood before it. It was unnecessary to explain that this was an artist’s workshop. There were paintings everywhere. They were hung in frames on the walls. They rested in racks about the room. They stood end on end and side by side on the floor, their backs resting against the walls. And from a darkened corner of the large and spacious room, one caught the glint of a cluster of marigolds and later discovered they were resting placidly upon canvas……… At one end of the room stand case after case filled with the classical literature of all times. There were the poets, the novelists, and the dramatists who now sit with the gods on Olympus. At the other end of the room, a case filled with curios gathered from all portions of the world meets the visitor’s eye as he turns. Then about on window ledges and a large table, guarding large clusters of autumn flowers, are bits of precious porcelain and china conceived many years before the Ming dynasty.
His reputation in Hartford blossomed early. In September of 1914 he exhibited at the Art Society of Hartford. His work was singled out for praise in the Hartford Courant by his fellow Hartford artist, James Britton, who probably knew him from their mutual studies with Griffin.
“Connecticut should be proud of Russell Cheney. He’s a real painter. And that is saying something in these days of photo-copyists and postcard imitators. His exhibition at the Art Society’s Gallery is a pleasant surprise-his work hadn’t been heralded and we were not prepared for it, but the pleasure of it is none-the-less. In several years of art reviewing for ‘The Courant’ the writer has seem little produced by a young Connecticut artist to compare with Mr. Cheney’s demonstration of versatility, and sensibility…….Mr. Cheney opens Hartford’s art season with a show which sets a high standard.” (The Hartford Courant, September 23, 1914)
In 1916 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. (A brother and sister had already died of the same disease.) He was treated in a sanatorium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His Yale classmate, and closest friend, Phelps Putnam, joined him.
He returned to Manchester and in January of 1917 had what was probably his first solo exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. The exhibition was again noted as a success in two consecutive articles in he Hartford Courant.
“Many prominent Hartford men and women attended the private view of paintings by Russell Cheney son of the late Knight D. Cheney of South Manchester, held yesterday afternoon in the Wadsworth Atheneum annex gallery. The painting will be on public view all the rest of the week from 10a.m. to 5p.m. .Half a dozen of the seventy-two canvases were sold yesterday when they had been on exhibition only and hour and a half.” (Hartford Courant, January 16, 1914)
“Mr. Cheney paints broadly with very pure colors. His work is modern, without being ultra modern……A snow scene in Vermont is also popular as is a scene call “Snowy Brook”. (Hartford Courant, September 23, 1917)
In 1919 he again had a solo show at the Atheneum, which received praise in the Courant from George Keller, who was teaching at Yale.
“There is an exhibition of paintings now on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Annex that is well worth seeing. It is a one-man exhibition, the work of Russell Cheney of Manchester, Conn, who while recuperating from a serious illness, occupied his time in depicting on canvas the magnificent scenery of Colorado where he was sojourning last year, away from all the tumult of the world war that he was unable to take active part in on account of his health. ….Mr. Russell (sic) paints in a broad style that rapidly catches fleeting effects and is not concerned with much detail, preferring to suggest rather than to waste his time on painstaking minutiae. … It is a peace exhibit that will help one to forget for an hour or so the fearful experiences of the past two years. ( Hartford Courant, December 7, 1919)
Through the 1920’s Cheney travelled back and forth between Hartford, New York, and Europe. He usually had annual shows and often two shows a year in Hartford and New York. The shows always received favorable notice in the local newspapers with the reviews becoming increasingly complementary.
In December of 1920 he had a show at the Atheneum with his friend Henry Varnum Poor. The Courant review on December 5th was glowing.
“For in all the paintings by the South Manchester artist there is something – undefinable- which cannot be secured in any cold reproduction in black or white or the ordinary reproduction color. It is as though the figures upon the canvas were alive; one seems to hear the cry of the driver of the heavy Vermont roller shout at the four powerful animals, which plow their way through the drifts. The palm trees of California are rustling in the soft breeze from the Pacific. The glowing western sun seems to drop from view behind the peaks of the Rockies, shedding all the colors of the spectrum upon the country……..So one might go on endlessly trying by adjective after adjective, and descriptive phrase after descriptive phrase, to tell of Mr. Cheney’s work….But printed words are so obviously inadequate to describe figures upon the canvas that it is more or less futile to attempt.
Russell Cheney has recently become an impressionist, and this is the most pleasing feature in all of his later paintings. There is but one way to catch the spirit and the ideal of his work. That is to see the work.”
During 1921 James Britton, a fellow Hartford born painter, noted two encounters with Cheney in New York in his diaries.
(On November 30, 1921, Britton’s first mention of Cheney in his diaries notes) : “See Russell Cheney again at Babcock’s Gallery. He introduces me to Henry Russell Wray, art critic of Philadelphia who is a gay little man.”
(December 5, 1921 Britton): “Stopped to see Cheney after I had found his card under my studio door. Said he was sorry to miss me. Shows me his catalog with one of his pictures in color on the cover. Introduces his sister, asks me of I’ll look at his pictures downstairs. Hauls them out one by one. Some good New England landscapes.”
The Catalogue for his December 1921 show at the Babcock Galleries in New York contained an essay by Christian Brinton, which indirectly criticized Cheney’s favored background and classical training. It drew a very interesting response from and unknown Hartford Courant writer. It demonstrates how strong the notion of the “starving artist” was at the time.
“A Painter and his Critic”
“In a forward to a catalogue of the paintings by Russell Cheney of Manchester at the Babcock Galleries in New York City, Christian Brinton writes that the accident of training and worldly circumstances does not appear to have deprived Mr. Cheney of the priceless pleasure of adventuring in paint. We presume the accident of ‘worldly circumstances’ means that the young man was not forced to starve in a garret while he pursued his artistic education, a circumstance. If so it is to be called, extremely popular in the lives of the great painters in fiction, but not always, as some romantic persons seem to love to think, an absolutely necessary postulate for success in the real art world.
We assume, we say, that that is what Mr. Brinton means by worldly circumstances. He leaves nothing to the imagination, however, when he speaks of the accident of training. He says, with brutal directness: - ‘The young man of aesthetic proclivities who could survive Yale, the Art Students’ League, and the Adademie Julien – who could cherish a genuine zest for pictorial expression after studying under some of our most drably routine preceptors merits consideration not to say congratulation’. If Mr. Brinton were extremely young or were he quite among the elders such talk would surprise us less. Instead he has but rounded out a half century and from his windows overlooking quaint Gramercy Park can appreciate the beauty that is possible of survival even in our largest and, we assume, our most materialistic city. At 19 we agree, I would have been natural thus to sling stones at Yale, at the Art Students’ League, at the Academie Julien - the latter, at least, so well known by hearsay to many of us who make no pretensions concerning our knowledge of art. That is one of the first rights of youth. At 80 he would be within his accredited rights, sacred because of tradition, to view with melancholy eye the hidebound rules and procedures of established methods. But at 51 to look with such amazement on the coming of any good thing from such a training is, we reluctantly say, a little too naive to be naive, a little too pessimistic to be convincing, a little to clever to sound reasonable.
The supposition that Mr. Cheney would have been a better artist or that it is amazing that he comes forth and artist at all because, for instance, he did not turn aside from ditch digging to the palette, is, we think, somewhat absurd, just as it is absurd to infer that because he drew from the antique in class, saw others there depict upon canvas life size nude figures and beheld still others paint resplendent red hussars or even ‘the dramatic colors of Judith and Hologernes’ he has little chance of displaying spirit and élan which we agree with Mr. Brinton, is the source and soul of all creative art.
A well known musician once told a questioning pupil that there are no great teachers of singing, there were only great students. Mr. Cheney’s success, and the growing recognition of the merit of his paintings are things we all appreciate in Hartford, where his ability as a painter did not have to wait upon the approval of larger places for acknowledgment. But we are old-fashioned enough to believe that there was little danger of his ruining his career because he attended Yale, the Art Students’ League or even the Academie Julien. The artist takes from such training what is valuable; it is the dullard, the mere grind, the person unblessed with inspiration or great natural ability who comes forth only stamped with the diploma of the institution. Not all members of Phi Beta Kappa are the leaders of, though following their academic careers. We hardly think Mr. Brinton would consider his key, for that reason, a handicap in life. We believe Mr. Cheney indeed merits consideration and congratulation but no because of what he has escaped but for the things he as accomplished.” (Hartford Courant, December 13, 1922)
On November 11, 1922 the Courant review noted his growing success:
“It is extremely gratifying to observe the cordiality and sincere appreciation with which Mr. Cheney’s exhibition has been received in New York City, especially by artists. And who are better qualified to bestow praise than artists? This painter pays respect in art, giving design, construction, drawing, color, all the constituents of a well made picture…..Mr. Cheney has something personal to express and as he goes on the realization of his idea will become richer and more personal.” (Hartford Courant, November 11, 1922)
George Keller again reviewed the Hartford show, noting Cheney’s favorable development.
“Mr. Cheney’s paintings are of a more robust character to these previous exhibitions. He paints with a full brush and dashes of his color as if invigorated by his life in the open. (Hartford Courant, December 9, 1922)
Still more effusive was and article that appeared in the Courant In January 1923.
“OUTLOOK’ PRAISES CHENEY PAINTINGS
Recent Issue Devotes Two pages to Manchester Artist
Beauty and Charm in Every Canvas
Critic Finds Strength, Sanity and the Modern Approach
(The critic Harmann Hagedorn wrote) “A combination of strength, sanity and the modern approach are sufficiently rare in painting nowdays to make the lover of art who has been bewildered by futurism and its successors hail any instance of it with delight. The work of Russell Cheney, which has recently been exhibited at the Babcock Galleries in New York and in the Atheneum in Hartford, is as modern a radio, but it is firmly based on tradition. It is unsensational, and comprehensible. It has nothing in common with the unconstructed jigsaw puzzles of the so-called modernists; it presents scenes and people which correspond to nature and man as the average layman knows them; and it is as relaxing to the nerves and as stimulating to the mid and spirit as only art can be which is an authentic expression of immediate experiences.” “ Christian Brinton in a preface to the catalogue writes; “but as a rule he is a quiet, clear-eyed, and surefooted realist, whose realism, however is a revelation not of harsh facts ……..
It is worth noting that one of Mr. Cheney’s largest canvasses entitled “Skunkinmaug Morning” has been purchased for the permanent exhibition of the Morgan Memorial Museum in Hartford.” (Cheney later lamented that he was represented in the Atheneum by this painting, which he considered an immature work.) (Hartford Courant, January 6, 1923)
In 1924, back from painting in Cassis on Riviera in France in the company of his Yale Classmate and good friend Phelps Putnam and his wife, Cheney showed his recent paintings at the Moyer Gallery in Hartford. The Courant review again noted his continuing development as a painter.
“Russell Cheney of South Manchester, one of America’s best know younger artists, is back in America after a long sojourn in France. This week at the Moyer Gallery on Pratt Street, many of his recent paintings are on exhibition and all of the show directly the French influence.
The observer who viewed Mr. Cheney’s work at his exhibitions in the city a year ago will find today an entirely new quality in them. In the past this clever young artist seemed to be working more for the design. Having progressed to a satisfactory point with his design, he turned his attention, apparently, to light and it is because of this that certain of his paintings shown in the present exhibition appear to be, with out question, among the best that he ever has done. One notices a remarkable diffusion of light in all of the pictures; there is a certain luminosity that was absent before. …..All in all, the exhibition is a delightful one. It seems to point distinctly and surely to the fact that Mr. Cheney’s day of definite study are past and that he is now entering upon an epoch in which superb work my be expect of him.” (Hartford Courant, September 5, 1924)
While Cheney’s professional life was thriving, his personal life was in a state of crises. He was having problems with his family, he had doubts about his talent and accomplishments, and he was having problems with alcohol. Brinton’s implied criticism had hit its mark. In September he had a major argument with Putnam, his long time friend who told him “what Griffin told him last winter in Cassis: that he must decide whether he will become an artist or degenerate into a dilettante.” Cheney decided to take Griffin’s advice and sailed for Venice in September.
The trip would prove to be a fateful one. On board the ship he met F. O. Matthiessen then twenty-two and just out of Yale on his way to Oxford for his second year as a Rhodes Scholar. The two formed a strong emotional and physical relationship that last until Cheney’s death twenty-one years later. They were both avid letter writers and exchanged over 3,000 letters. At the end of the voyage, Matthiessen continued on to Oxford and Cheney went to Paris where he saw his old friend and mentor, Walter Griffin. Cheney wrote Matthiessen, “I went to see old Mr. Griffin and find him just back to town with a splendid crop of paintings. Hasn’t been drinking at all evidently. He’s a damn fine painter – gosh, I had a satisfactory time with him. He advised Venice at once.” Cheney took his advice and spent the fall in and around Venice. Matthiessen joined him during winter break in early 1925 and their relationship matured.
In May of 1925 he was back at the Atheneum. James Britton noted the show in his diaries.
Russell Cheney’s snow scene strong but rather raw. At first I thought it was a John Carlson.
(Britton diaries, November 1925, Misc. Volume 4, page 32) (There is no record of November 1925 show in Hartford. It is likely that Britton is referring to the May who but writing later.)
On May 6, 1926 Cheney was at the Atheneum again to lecture about his great uncles Seth Wells Cheney and John Cheney during an exhibition of their works. In September of 1926 he wrote Matthiessen from Manchester:
September 22, 1926 Manchester “An old painter I know – darn nice – came originally from Windsor – Tuttle by name (Ruel Crompton Tuttle 1866-) – paints sometimes very well – came along to see my stuff and we talked and talked. Says he, ‘Florence has gotten into your work at Venice. It has distinction and severity that carry it ahead of any you’ve done before,’ Maybe it’s true. It’s what we hoped, isn’t it?”
May of 1927 saw another show at the Atheneum. This show again impressed his fellow artist James Britton, who noted in his diaries:
(May 18, 1927): Stop at Atheneum Annex to see the exhibition of Russell Cheney’s work. Find the pictures very fine in color with some effective designs. Three portraits one of himself sitting with palette outdoors under big straw hat, one of Dorothy Cheney in nurses costume and one of young man at window with sky and town behind rather coarse in drawing. Cheney uses the corner rooms and hangs the windows with orange colored net cloth uses rugs and makes a presentable display. (Misc. Volume 7, page 90)
In June of 1927 Cheney and Matthiessen began to spend their summers together in Kittery Point, Maine. A few months later in November of 1927 he had another exhibition in Hartford, this time at the Moyer Gallery, that was even more successful in the eyes of the critics who clearly viewed him as at the top of his form. Cheney attributed this maturation mainly to Matthiessen’s settling influence.
The critic Viggo Andersen wrote in The Hartford Courant on November 16, 1927:
“Followers of Russell Cheney, well known South Manchester artist, will experience some disconcerting moments when they visit the exhibition of his most recent paintings, which opened Tuesday in the gallery of Curtis H. Moyer art 252 Trumbull Street. Mr. Cheney has gone modern with an abruptness and boldness that is somewhat breath-taking. For some time the South Manchester artist has been making tentative overtures to the modern school of painting, but in the exhibition he openly declares his affiliations.
In this somewhat violent exposition of realism there is little to suggest the dream, romantic touch that many found delightful in Mr. Cheney’s Venetian paintings, exhibited several moths ago at the Atheneum Annex. The pensive dreamer has been thrust rudely aside and his place before the artist’s easel usurped by a strong-handed realist.
Mr. Cheney seems to have sickened suddenly of beauty and his paintings imply that he has sought relief in choosing ugly themes for his brush……
But if there is little of beauty……There is strength that is almost brutal; there is directness and purpose of line; there is vigorous, well-handled color; and the ominous clouds that whirl through the skies are superb. “
Reviewing the same show, T. H. Parker, the well-know Hartford critic observed that Cheney’s Realism was like “a mirage, in which Fords, houses, lunch-wagons and lampposts have no value pictorially, but resolve themselves into some much line, mass, plane and rhythm, which combines into compact, unified and emphatic design...He has a peculiar chromatic scale, in which the colors generally appear all the same value. What they lack in brilliance, they make up for in delicacy, while their selection is unique.”
Walter Griffin came up to Hartford by train to see the show. Cheney met him at the station and they walked to the gallery.
“Walt came across fine. I took him to the gallery and he spent an hour – Kittery Point, Depot Square, Lilies and Salute, Putnam, Lugarno, Ponte de Ruga Vecchia. The substance, after detailed suggestion, was that I ought to paint less and dream more. He means of course dream over the actual canvas, work and listen to it, and work again…..As he left me at the station he said, ‘you’re all right, only dream more over them.’”
He was also popular with his fellow Hartford artists. Britton notes that Bradford Green had a flower picture by Cheney over the mantle in his large West Hartford house on Steele Road, there “is a very fine oil very decorative and good in color”.
He and Phelps Putnam obviously reconciled and in 1928 Putnam wrote a poignant poem that captured the essence of their close relationship. While Putnam had never been able to return Cheney’s physical attraction, they clearly had a strong and enduring affection for each other.
Christ never rose again, but you arose,
My ribald saint, out of a deathly bed
To snatch my insubstantial life from those
Despairs and poisons which had made me dead.
How dark and delicate you are, and yet
How full of blood, and I am only caught
In irony, a nervous vulgar net.
We were a sturdy differential fraught
With an unlikely mirth, and hand in glove
Between strange-forted friends and gay disdain;
But all the time, beyond my scope of love,
Lonely you prowled the inward vaults of pain,
Seeking, beyond harsh loyalty, some rest
From bearing the vague misery of quest.
In April of 1928, Cheney attended the fabled Venetian Fete that the new Atheneum Director C. Everett “Chick” Austin organized. A long and detailed account of the event was noted in the Hartford Courant on April 13, 1928. The long list of participants reads like a directory of Hartford Society. Cheney appeared as the painter Gian Battisto Tiepolo. His fellow Hartford painter William Bradford Green is also noted as attending as part of the “Comedy Group”.
According to Matthiessen,
“The next two years (1928 and 1929) look in retrospect mainly like another siege of growing pains. Cheney no longer tried to paint in his Manchester studio, except for a couple of months in the winter of 1928 when he turned out one of the still lifes with which he remained most satisfied: ‘the most beautiful pale mauve tulips in a post, and I got a good arrangement of drapery of much the same color and a little white Kwanyin, all drawn in solid….Subtle in conception, a ‘synthesis’, as they say, of line and tone, and very colorful’.” (Matthiessen pg. 75)
Sometime in 1928 his friend Phelps Putnam was lecturing at Bryn Mawr where he met and fell in love with the future actress Katharine Hepburn, who was from Hartford. The relationship did not develop but they were friends long enough for Cheney to paint a now lost portrait of her, who they called “The Kid”, when they were in New York together.
Cheney continued to worry over his commitment to art. While attending another exhibition of his work in New Haven, he visited Matthiessen’s New Haven apartment while Matthiessen was away. He left a note in the apartment.
“You did me a hell of a lot of good, quieted and balanced me…..I sat an hour or so in the quiet of your home here and the books seem unfamiliar…A bird or a woman hanging out clothes opposite would catch me eye and I’d watch them move but closely, My show….seems to say clearly that I’m not a silly feller either technically or from point of view of interpretation and selection.” (Matthiessen page 79)
Writing to Putnam at about the same time he stated:
“Art? Now will you just tell me, Mr. Putnam, is Art a little game to be replaced by planting pear trees as John Cheney found? Or a delicate emotion as Seth Cheney found? ….John and Seth must have been very similar (to me) you know especially Seth. Funny I should be all them and look like Mother’s family.” (Matthiessen page 79-80)
Still headquartered in South Manchester Cheney was active in the Hartford art scene. An article in the Hartford Courant on February 24, 1929 lists him as a member of the jury of awards for the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts along with the Hartford born painter, Robert Vonnoh. The jury of selection included fellow Hartford artists Daniel Wentworth, Carl Ringius, Paul Saling, Frances Hudson Storrs, James McManus, Alburtus Jones, Hilliard Smith, and Guy Wiggins.
On April 19, 1930, after an extended stay in New Mexico for his health, he returned to Manchester as a resident probably for the last time. His note to Matthiessen is short but optimistic.
South Mancester, April 19, 1930, after unpacking his western canvases. “I think I am suddenly become a man…I sure can paint.”
On May 16, 1930 a short notice appeared in the Hartford Courant noting that Mr. Cheney’s car had been stolen on Wells Street, perhaps a fitting going away present.
By June he was back in Kittery with Matthiessen where they bought a house together on Old Ferry Lane. This was to be Cheney’s permanent residence and studio for the rest of his life. During the summer of 1930, in Kittery, he painted a double portrait of himself and Walter Griffin that was based on a photograph taken when they were both in Cassis, France six years earlier. While painting he remarked to Matthiessen, “He’s a savage old feller in spite of a friendly smile and I want to get that in”.
In June he participated in a show in Ogunquit organized by former Hartford resident, Nunzio Vayana.
He did return to Hartford from time to time for exhibitions that were somewhat less frequent now that he was not longer living there.
An important show was held at the Atheneum from December 21, 1930 to January 11, 1931. It was a joint show with the other Hartford “Modernists” Milton Avery, Aaron Berkman, and Clinton O’Callahan, and the only show of local artists Chick Austin organized during his tenure as Director of the Atheneum. Oddly no review of the show appears to have been published. Reviews of the few subsequent shows he held in Hartford indicate that perhaps he had become too “Modern” for the conservative Hartford crowd, but not modern enough for Austin and his friends who favored European modernism.
A March 22, 1932 review in the Courant of a show held at Moyer’s Gallery in March and April illustrates clearly that his new style was not to the liking of many of his past followers.
“Any public showing of Mr. Cheney’s work is an event of unusual interest to his many friends and admirers here but the present exhibition is particularly noteworthy, in that it is at once a vindication of the artist’s convictions and a striking testimony of his talents.
Mr. Cheney paints in the modern manner. A few years ago he abruptly turned his back on the academic school under whose guidance he had tarried long and comfortable, and struck boldly out on a pioneer trail in art in company with a group of other restless and venturesome artists who had so experience the urge to cast off restraining shackles and tread new an freer paths.
Startled by this defiant and unexpected declaration of independence, Mr. Cheney’s friends shook their heads forebodingly and resigned themselves to await the worst. Their skepticism was not long in finding some measure of confirmation. For, impatient to still their dissenting murmurs by producing results the artist impetuously exhibited some of hsi early experiments with the new techniques. This gesture did not meet with the hoped for results. While reviewers found much to praise in the paintings, Mr. Cheney exhibited at that time, the majority of his followers would have none of them. Habit is strong, and they had learned to expect an entirely different sort of thing from Russell Cheney. They could not reconcile these strong, savage paintings of crooked lines and unbelievable angles with the enchanting views of Venice, the dreamy landscapes, this gifted artist was wont to achieve. They turned their thumbs down.
Disturbed but not discouraged, Mr. Cheney took his easel and grimly departed from the Connecticut scene. In distant parts he applied himself with determination and industry to the mastery of his new technique. That the time and effort spent in this direction were not in vain was demonstrated by the chorus of acclaim that greeted the recent exhibition of his work at the famous Montross Gallery in New York City. And now Mr. Cheney has brought a number of these recent paintings to Hartford and his friends are happy again.
………….
Mr. Cheney’s work is as modern as the day after tomorrow, but he gains his interesting effects without sacrificing restraint. Nothing is distorted or meaninglessly dramatic. There is tremendous strength but it is harnessed strength well under control. Nor has Mr. Cheney, like so many other artists, forgotten that there is such a thing as draughtsmanship and that most people like a decent amount of it in the pictures they buy to adorn their homes…….
Probably the outstanding quality in their paintings by Russell Cheney is their freshness and directness. They sparkle with life.”
Only one more show in Hartford is noted. It occurred in April 1935, again at the Moyer Gallery, and again there was no review recorded.
He did return to Hartford briefly c. 1936 for treatment of his alcoholism at the Hartford Retreat.
He struggled with poor health, depression and alcoholism from 1936 until his death from a heart attack on July 12, 1945, in Kittery. Maine. Matthiessen returned his body to South Manchester for burial in the Cheney plot.
“He was buried in the family plot in Manchester. Helen Knapp, her heart breaking with the loss of her favorite uncle, accompanied Matty to the funeral where the family’s veiled hostility towards him (Matthiessen) made her feel even more protective towards this man whose whole settled life had been shattered.” (Heard, Candee)
His obituary was published in the Courant on July 13, 1945. It noted in passing that he lived in Manchester, “until he joined his friend Professor F. O. Matheisen (sic) of Harvard University in Kittery Maine about 10 years ago”.
On April 16, 1947 the Atheneum mounted a memorial exhibition for Cheney. The Hartford Courant review was lauditory.
“Avery shows Cheney Work as Memorial
The memorial exhibition of paintings by Russell Cheney of Manchester which is now on view at the Avery Museum, is more than a survey of the 30 or so years which terminated with his death in 1945. Especially for those who knew him, it is very much a revocation of the man. The amount of self in an artist’s work varies greatly. In Russell Cheney’s pictures it was immediate and intense, and at the museum show there is even now a sense of personal presence as real and accountable as the canvases themselves.
This reviewer was not among Mr. Cheney’s close friends, but enjoyed what might be called a gallery acquaintanceship, formed at the artist’s exhibitions or in chance meeting about town. But it was sufficient to give the impression of a man restrained almost to the point of shyness, more than commonly devoted to painting and immensely sensitive.
Certainly these qualities are apparent in the paintings now on display. Across the three decades of Mr. Cheney’s work, they represent the harvest of a quiet eye. Landscape, still-life, portrait, France, Maine, the West, the mood is pensive, the spirit inturned and not without lonely overtones.
Yet about Mr. Cheney’s technical style there is nothing delicate. He had his paint-roots in the tradition of the bolder brushmen of American painting at the beginning of this century. He handled pigments in a broad way, he liked the simple, vigorous design.
The penchant toward the decorative, the use of linear patterns were perhaps more his own. But like them he was fundamentally academic all his painting life. He did not see imaginatively. His special gift was to feel with great personal sensitivity.
………
To infer that Mr. Cheney became and ecolier de Paris would be far wrong. Yet he was by no means a purblind academist. His art was basically much his own. He was definitely an individual painter, an estimable artist, an isolate spirit, and the present memorial exhibition illustrates a man as well as his work.”
At the same time, Matthiessen honored his lover with a loving tribute, a book entitled “Russell Cheney 1881-1947, A Record of His Work” . The book chronicled his life and his work drawing heavily on their correspondence. A review of the book appeared in the Courant on April 20, 1947.
“Mature Connecticut Painter (review of Mattheissen book) Patricia Bennett
‘I could turn out such nice pictures and serve tea with them so charmingly,’ wrote Russell Cheney to his friend F. O, Matthiessen. A typical remark for the Connecticut-born painter (who) felt he had constantly to cope with his own too-facile talent.
……
His difficulties are depicted with intense clarity . Possible every artist goes through such agonies, doubts of his own abilities and shattering emotional crises, but few have so sharply brought them home to the reader. This painter’s gift for prose was almost equal to his talent for painting.
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Towards the end of his life there appears some unevenness and a recurring uncertainly. The work of the 1920’s exhibition his distinctive style at its best, is perhaps his most successful period.”
“In 1950, Matthiessen ended his own life by jumping from the window of a commercial hotel near the North Station, Boston. Without the sustaining love of his friend and partner, which he had had throughout his 1938 breakdown, he was unable to fight the horrors of depression. He was forty-eight years old. After Matthiessen’s suicide, dozens of Cheney’s remaining canvases and panels were distributed to members of the extended Cheney clan and friends or colleagues of both men, as well as to museums and universities around New England. “(Heard, Candee )
According to Louis Hyde, Matthiessen left his collection of Cheney’s paintings to Ward Cheney, Russell Cheney’s younger brother who was one class ahead of Matthiessen at Yale and a close friend of them both of them, “……in the hope he will manage them with care and interest.”
Cheney’s papers were given by Matthiessen to the Beinicke Library at Yale.
Little notice has been given Cheney in Hartford since. In 1971, there was a memorial show at the Manchester Library on the 90th anniversary of his birth. In 2001 the Manchester Historical Society held an exhibition of his work at the Cheney homestead drawn mainly from the paintings held by members of the Cheney family.
In 1978, Louis Hyde, Matthiessen’s Skull and Bones friend at Yale, published “The Rat and the Devil”, excerpting the journal letters of “Matty” and Russell between 1924 and Cheney’s death.
Cheney’s Grandniece Carol Lispenard Cheney, and Richard M. Candee have create an admirable website heralding his work.
He was is truly a passionate and talented “Hartford” painter who’s work deserves to be “rediscovered”.
Barlow, Susan, “Russell Cheney, Manchester Artist”, Manchester Historical Society, 2014
Britton, James, “Diaries, in James Britton Papers”, Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Candee, Richard M., “Rediscovery of a New England Master”, Antiques and Fine Art.com, 2008
Hartford Courant, 9/23/14, 12/5/20, 10/24/24
Heard, Patricia L., Candee, Richard M., “Russell Cheney: Artist of the Piscataqua,
Hyde Louis, “Journal Letters of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney”, 1978
Matthiessen, F. O., “Russell Cheney 1881-1947, A Record of His Work”, 1947
Russellcheney.com, 1996, 2008
Person Type(not assigned)
