William James Glackens

William James Glackens (1870-1938)

Edith Dimock (Glackens) (1876-1955)

“A Hartford Biography”

© Gary W. Knoble, 2015

Although Glackens was never involved in the Hartford art circles, Hartford itself played and important part in his life. His wife, Edith Dimock, an artist herself, was born and grew up in the former Vanderbilt mansion on Farmington Avenue in what is now West Hartford. They were married there and often visited her family.

William James Glackens was born March 13, 1870 on Sansom Street in Philadelphia where the University of Pennsylvania is now located. He was the youngest of three children, the son of Samuel Glackens, a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Elizabeth Finn. His family was of English, Irish, and German decent. His brother Louis started drawing at a young age and was a newspaper and magazine illustrator. His sister Ada was musical. Glackens was educated at the prestigious Central High School. Three of his classmates, Albert Barnes, James Preston, and John Sloan were to play a large part in his life.

His wife, Edith Dimock, was born in Hartford on February 16, 1876. Her father was Ira Dimock, a prosperous silk merchant and president of the Nonatuck Silk Company, arch-rivals of the Cheney family silk mills in Manchester. (The Hartford born painter Russell Cheney was only 5 years younger than Edith, but there is no evidence that they knew each other.) Ira was born in Tolland, Connecticut, a descendent of Elder Thomas Dimock, who emigrated to Massachusetts from England in 1635. Ira was an outspoken person who often shared his opinions in the local newspapers and magazines. Edith’s mother, Lenna Louise Demont was a staunch advocate for women’s rights, which Dimock herself emulated.

Edith grew up in the family home, an eleven-acre estate on Farmington Avenue in West Hartford that had originally been built in 1879 for Cornelius J. Vanderbilt, although he never lived there. The house had been vacant for six years when Ira Dimock bought it in 1888

(image of the Dimock house from wikipedia)

The house was considered ugly, by many, and the household somewhat eccentric. A Hartford Courant article that appeared in October 6, 1957, two years after Edith’s death, described the house and it’s occupants.

“Some of Hartford’s older residents may remember the very large and ugly Victorian house that perched on Vanderbilt Hill overlooking Farmington Avenue. They also may recall the eccentric family that lived there; the father, a rick silk manufacturer whose opinions on countless subjects were aired in letters to The Hartford Courant and Hartford Times; the mother, a quiet English lady much interested in women’s rights; two sons and two daughters.”

In 1891, Glackens worked as a reporter for the Philadelphia Record and Press with his high school classmate, John Sloan. He also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art under Thomas Anshutz and the Hartford born Robert Vonnoh.

Glackens met Robert Henri at a party in 1892. Although Henri was just five years older than Glackens, his career was already well underway. They shared a studio in 1894 and in 1895 and 96 travelled together for an extended stay in Europe.

While Glackens was off to Europe, his future wife Dimock, began her art studies at the Art Students League in New York with William Merritt Chase. She studied there from 1895-98 and again in 1899.

“In Edith’s art student days she shared an apartment with May Wilson and Louise Seyms, a Hartford friend, in the 57th St. Sherwood Studios, where each week, as her son later noted ‘a capon, already roasted, was sent down from Hartford.’” (Berman pg12)

When Glackens returned from Europe he moved to New York City and shared a studio with George Luks.

In 1898 Dimock returned to Hartford and was studying with Chase at the Art Society of Hartford (now the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford). Chase was only in Hartford one day a week, which did not satisfy Dimock, so she returned to New York the next year to study full time with him at the Chase School. Several of Hartford’s female artists were studying in New York with Chase at the time including Katherine Seymour Day, Mabel Bacon Plimpton English, and Lillian Hale. Edith Dale Monson also studied with Henri from 1902-1904. They were all contemporaries, and three of them were born in Hartford, (Monson was born in New Haven), so it is likely that they knew each other, probably both in New York and in Hartford society.

Dimock and Glackens met in 1901. Dimock’s roommate May Wilson was dating Glackens’ high school classmate James Preston. Dimock had separately met Henri and he began a portrait of her in 1902 when they were both in New London where Dimock’s parents had a summer house.

Glackens and Dimock were married in 1904 at the Dimock mansion in Hartford. Kornhauser wrote, “The couple was married in the pink drawing room of the Dimocks’ chocolate brown house. The house, located on West Hill, was built around 1880 by Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt. It was considered the largest and least attractive house in Hartford. “ The Courant reported that Mr. and Mrs. Everett Shinn and Mr. and Mrs. George Luks were among the attendees. From 1904 until the death of Dimock’s parents, Glackens and Dimock were regular visitors to the West Hartford mansion and the family’s summer home on the Connecticut shore. After their marriage, the couple moved to Greenwich Village, first living at 3 Washington Square where Thomas Eakins and Augusts Saint-Gaudins had both lived, then at 10 West 9th Street just of 5th Avenue, and finally at 25 5th Avenue. While they moved with a Bohemian crowd, their life was very comfortable thanks to Dimock’s generous family allowance. However, Glackens was careful not to use the money coming from his in-laws to support his artistic endeavors.

Dimock continued to paint and in 1905 did the illustrations for “The Yellow Cat and Her Friends”, a children’s book that was frequently advertised in the Hartford Courant at the time. Glackens’ career was also flourishing. He was elected a member of the Society of American Artists in 1905. In 1906 the couple took a delayed honeymoon to Spain and France. Also in 1906, Glackens was made an Associate in the National Academy of Design.

Their son Ira was born in 1907. Edith went home to Hartford with the infant and remained there until 1908. Glackens visited the Dimock house at Christmas in 1907 when he painted “View of West Hartford” from the front yard looking to the east towards Talcott Mountain.

(View of West Hartford, 1907, Wadsworth Atheneum)

“In marrying Glackens, Edith had eagerly embraced the bohemian lifestyle of the Greenwich Village artist, but she would retain a lifeline to the house on the hill in West Hartford.” (Berman, page 144) John Sloan wrote in his diary, “A splendid dinner at Glackens’, very good cooking and things so nice. He should be happy. A Wife, a baby, money in the family, genius.”

A fictional account set at the time from Tom De Haven’s blog, titled “Painters in Winter” portrays what life might have been like at the Glackens’ home in Greenwich Village in 1907.

“Since the stock market went kerthump last March, he’s (Glackens) had a tough time financially; magazine revenues are down, which means smaller issues–and fewer illustration jobs at drastically lower rates. And with the new baby–the Glackens’ first child, Ira, born on the Fourth of July–he’s really felt the pinch.

Though, so far, he’s resisted borrowing from Edith’s father.

Glackens prefers to not be in his debt.

Makes for good relations.

And relations with Mr. Dimock are good, they’re very good, indeed–though he and his father-in-law never have much to say to one another, each being naturally reticent and neither having the slightest ken of the other’s business. Mr. Dimock is a prosperous silk merchant, and something of an oddball. Traces the progress of distant wars by sticking colored pins into maps. And writes long rambling letters to the Hartford Courant, deploring football, bullfights, and the horse fly.

Glackens is on good terms with everyone in the Dimock family, including the crabby old live-in aunt, who’d always hoped that her favorite niece would someday marry a European nobleman.

He just wishes that Edith wasn’t on such excellent terms with them all; wasn’t quite so–devoted to her relatives. He hates it that she’s forever training up there on visits that stretch practically into residence. If it isn’t some illness of her father’s, it’s her mother’s loneliness, or Edith’s sudden desire to spend time with her younger sister Irene.

Since August she’s been in Connecticut more than she’s been in New York. The house in West Hartford is big–it’s so much easier to take care of an infant in a great big old house, she says, with members of her own family around to help. Which is certainly true. The first weeks after Ira’s birth, Glackens nearly despaired of ever again doing any work.

So Edith is quite right–it is the best arrangement for everyone, for the time being.”

Glackens’ career was now in full gear. 1908 saw the first show of “The Eight” (Davies, Glackens, Henri, Lawson, Luks, Prendergast, Shinn, and Sloan) at Macbeth Galleries in New York City, which drew large crowds and raves from the critics. In the same year Glackens painted “Family Group”, Dimock’s sister Irene on the left, Dimock, her son Ira, and her Hartford friend Grace Morgan, in the Glackens’ Greenwich Village apartment on 5th Avenue.

(“The Family, 1908)

Glackens helped organize the “Exhibit of Independent Artist” in 1910, with Dimock participating. She continued to actively paint for another 20 years.

In 1912, his high school classmate, Albert Barnes had amassed a considerable fortune from a pharmaceutical invention and asked Glackens to travel to Europe to buy art for him. While in Paris, Glackens visited the apartment of Gertrude and Leo Stein to view their collection. Glackens organized the American section of the legendary Armory show in 1913. Dimock had eight watercolors included in the show. Their daughter Lenna was born in the same year.

In 1917 Glackens was made the first President of the American Society of Independent Artists. One of his actions was a vote to reject Marcel Duchamp’s “The Urinal” from the show. However he did invite Duchamp to lecture to the Society and to bring “The Urinal”. In the same year Dimock’s parents both died of illnesses within a few weeks of each other and Dimock came into her inheritance. In 1917 or 1918, Glackens exhibited at the Painter-Gravers club with the Hartford artist James Britton, and Theresa Bernstein, Childe Hassam, Rockwell Kent, John Sloan, J. Alden Weir, and others. In 1918 he exhibited in “American Paintings and Sculpture Pertaining to the War” at Knoedler & Co., along with James Britton again, George Bellows, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, John Sloan, and others.

Three of Glackens’ paintings painted in 1917 and 1918 depict the gardens of the Hartford mansion.

(“Lenna by a Summer House”, 1917, daughter age 5 in garden of Ira Dimock’s house in West Hartford)

(“The Gazebo Summer House in Hartford, 1917”

(Garden in Harford, 1918)

These paintings were done among their last visits to the Hartford house. In 1920, Dimock’s brother razed the mansion and replaced it with a luxury housing development now called the “West Hill Historic District”. Only the front wall of the estate and driveway remain.

Glackens’ career continued to flourish. He was made an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1933. He died on May 22, 1938 during a visit with his friend Maurice Prendergast in Westport. He is buried in the Dimock family plot at Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Late in her life Dimock was named Honorary Secretary of the National Union of Women’s Sufferage Societies. In 1950 she returned to live in Hartford and died in her home at 7 Niles Park on October 28, 1955.

The Wadsworth Atheneum presented a memorial exhibition of her watercolors in 1956 and in 1957 purchased Glackens’ “View of West Hartford”.

(Glackens’ and Dimock’s grave, Cedar Hill, Hartford, CT)

Andrews, Lenna Young, “William Glackens, my great uncle”, creativelenna.com

Berman, Andrew (editor), “William Glackens”, 2014

De Haven, Tom, “Café Pinfold, a Blog by Tom DeHaven“: Chapter Eleven

Dearinger, David B., “Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design”, 2004, pg. 227

“Encyclopedia of Connecticut Biography Genealogical-Memorial”, 1917, page 274

Hartford Courant, 2/17/1904, 10/21/1905, 10/29/1955, 7/4/1956, 10,6,1957, 11/1/1957

Kornhauser, Elizabeth M., American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum, page 410

Livingplaces.com, “West Hill Historic District”

The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, 2007, page 181

Pene du Bois, Guy, William J. Glackens”, from the catalogue of a Memorial Exhibition at the

Quest Royal Fine Art, LLC, “Robert William Vonnoh (1858-1933)

Whitney Museum, 1939

Wikipedia, “William Glackens”, “Edith Dimock”