Charles Courtney Curran

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942)

Charles Courtney Curran was born in Hartford, Kentucky, and grew up in a succession of Ohio towns where his father worked as a teacher, public-school administrator, and attorney. His first art lessons most likely came from his father, an amateur artist and wood-carver. In 1880 Curran entered the Cincinnati School of Design, where he spent a year studying still-life drawing. In 1881 he moved to New York, enrolling at the Art Students League and then at the National Academy of Design. Curran began exhibiting at the National Academy in 1883 and with the Society of American Artists in 1887. In the mid-1880s he produced some of his strongest works and attained a measure of prominence in the New York art world. He was noticed by critics and his works were purchased by such important collectors as Thomas B. Clarke and Samuel T. Shaw. In 1888 he was elected an associate member of the National Academy, mainly on the strength of his painting “Breezy Day” (1888; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), which was awarded a Hallgarten Prize.

In 1888 Curran left for Paris, accompanied by his new wife, the former Grace Winthrop Wickham of Norwalk, Ohio, and two friends and fellow artists from New York, Carlton T. Chapman and William J. Whitmore. Curran studied at the Académie Julian with Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, and Jacques Doucet and exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1889 to 1891, receiving honorable mention for “Lotus Lilies” (1890; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago). His pre-Paris pictures were often decorative Americanized peasant scenes in the mode of Jules Bastien-Lepage's “Joan of Arc” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which had created a sensation at the 1881 Society of American Artists exhibition. Curran's exposure to academic art and symbolism in Paris is evident in “Lotus Lilies”, which pairs women and flowers in a mythical, mysterious atmosphere. “Scent of the Rose” (1890; private collection) is the first of a rather large series of paintings inspired by Moore's poem "Paradise and the Peri"; “Bacchanal” (whereabouts unknown) is a symbolic rendition of nymphs frolicking among grape vines with Bacchus riding among them on a donkey.

After Curran returned to the United States in 1891, he continued to produce figural paintings with rural genre subjects, often with Symbolist or Whistlerian Tonalist overtones. His paintings continued to win prizes at notable exhibitions, such as the World's Columbian Exposition (1893), the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta (1895), and the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo (1901). Active as an organizer as well as an exhibitor, Curran served as the assistant director of the American art exhibitions at both the Paris Exposition and the Pan-American Exposition. He was elected to full membership in the National Academy in 1904 and served as recording secretary of the National Academy from 1910 to 1920, when he was elected corresponding secretary, a position he held until 1941. Curran taught at Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, and Cooper Union and was a member of the New York Water Color Club, American Water Color Society, Society of American Artists, Lotos Club, and Salmagundi Club.

Curran is often associated with the Shawangunk mountaintop art colony at Cragsmoor, New York. The Currans first visited Cragsmoor in 1903 and built a home there in 1910, joining Edward Lamson Henry and other artists, writers, and musicians who were attracted by the magnificent scenery and unsurpassed views. The place was an ideal setting for Curran’s paintings. Works of this era, such as “On the Heights” (1909; Brooklyn Museum of Art), are typified by portraits of modern young women, often dressed in white, their youth and beauty set off by Cragsmoor's spectacular vistas, ever-changing skies, and beautiful gardens. Curran is best known for works of this type, whose bold colors, blazing sunlight, fresh breezes, and lush foliage ally him with American Impressionists, though he retained the tight academic brushwork of his Paris period.

Woman with a Feathered Hat, 1890

Oil on panel, 12 x 8 7/8 in. (30.5 x 22.5 cm)

Signed and dated (lower left): CHAS• C CURRAN• NA• 90

Gift of Mrs. Althea Delahefte (1979.3)

This portrait, executed in Paris in 1890, is one of several early canvases portraying Curran’s wife, Grace Wickham Curran. Curran seemed to prefer her as a model during those early Paris years, from 1888 through 1891, whether out of economic necessity or because they were newlyweds and very much in love. Grace and Charles had been childhood sweethearts and married at her family's home in Norwalk, Ohio, on July 12, 1888. A graduate of the Lake Erie Seminary in Painesville (now Lake Erie College), Grace was an extraordinary woman of great charm and intelligence though rather plain-looking.

Whenever Curran used Grace as a model, she is usually posed in profile or looking down at something; she rarely looks directly at the viewer. In the few paintings in which she is posed frontally, her face is partially obscured by a child, a book, or the shadow cast by the brim of a hat or by an umbrella.

Curran had been exposed to the aesthetics of Japanese art long before he arrived in Paris. Early photographs show his New York studio in the Sherwood Building decorated with treasured Oriental objects. “Woman with a Feathered Hat” demonstrates a Japanese influence in its choice of subject matter, a woman and flowers. The subtle light coming from an unseen source against a dark background gives the painting a brilliant coloristic effect and clearly defines the figure, her clothes, and the flowers. The softly curling feathers on the hat, the lush curling petals of the chrysanthemums, and the long luxuriant fur of the fox collar create an image that flows gently onto the canvas, creating a balanced symmetrical composition. The sense of the woman becoming a flowerlike blooming form is enhanced by the bow tied under her chin, which separates her face from the fur collar. The setting is tranquil and the focus is such that it shows Curran in absolute control of his imagery of a woman as a beautiful budding flower.

KB

Bibliography:

Clarence Cook, "A Representative American Artist," “Monthly Illustrator and Home and Country” 11 (November 1895): 289-92; Theodore Dreiser, "Charles Courtney Curran," “Critic” 18 (January 1899): 227-31; Augustus Saint-Gaudens, "Charles Courtney Curran," “Critic” 48 (January 1906): 38-39; William H. Gerdts, “American Impressionism” (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984).