Charles Webster Hawthorne

Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930)

Charles Webster Hawthorne grew up in the fishing village of Richmond, Maine, where his father was a sea captain. About 1890 he went to New York, where he attended night classes at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Students League, studying with conservative academic painters Frank Vincent DuMond, George de Forest Brush, and Harry Siddons Mowbray; during the day he worked at a stained-glass factory. Hawthorne began attending summer classes at William Merritt Chase's Shinnecock, Long Island, art school in 1896, and the next year became Chase's assistant. In 1898 he traveled with the class to Holland, where he was exposed to Frans Hals's brushwork and picturesque scenes of fisherfolk. In 1899, after Chase's school closed, Hawthorne moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and opened the Cape Cod School of Art, which flourished under his direction until his death thirty years later. A highly esteemed teacher, he gave weekly critiques and instructive talks but never dictated his own methods.

Hawthorne's earliest still lifes of fish with pots and pans betray Chase's influence in their dark tonalities and bravura brushstrokes. After moving to Provincetown, Hawthorne began focusing on portraits of the hardworking fishermen of the village. In an era when facile brushwork, picturesque views, and genteel Impressionist subjects dominated but were quickly becoming outmoded, Hawthorne's early works were often praised for their ruggedness, realism, psychological insight, and American subject matter.

In 1906-7 Hawthorne traveled to Italy with his new wife, artist Ethel Campbell. He studied the Old Masters and developed new painting techniques, such as the use of oil glazes over tempera, which produced his marvelous color-saturated, glistening surfaces. Although he had begun exhibiting frequently after 1902, his success increased after he returned to Provincetown from Italy. He began showing at New York City’s influential Macbeth Gallery, and in 1908 was elected an associate at the National Academy of Design. In the early teens he exhibited at the Paris Salon and with the Society of American Artists in New York.

Hawthorne’s reputation was based on his portrayals of Provincetown fishermen and their families and of members of Provincetown society as well as on his generic, sentimental images of "American madonnas." Toward the end of his career he also painted watercolor views of Provincetown landscapes.

“The Fisher Boy (The Return, The Fisherboy's Return, Fischerjunge, Fisherboy with Bottle)”, ca. 1906

Oil on canvas on board; 39 1/8 x 39 1/8 in. (99.4 x 99.4 cm)

Signed (upper right): “C. Hawthorne”

John B. Talcott Fund (1912.2)

Hawthorne's favorite and most characteristic subject was the hardworking fisherfolk of Cape Cod, whom he began painting about 1899. His works are monumental images of human toil and of man's struggle against nature, yet they are also portraits of individuals surrounded by the tools of their trade. Encased in Hawthorne's thick glazes and dark, Old Master tonalities, these humble fishermen possess poise and dignity.

Provincetown cod fishermen typically spent the summer months off Newfoundland's Grand Banks, storing the daily catch in salt and returning home in September when the salt ran out. (1) “Fisher Boy” is one of a number of single-figure portraits of these local fishermen, many of which capture events or introspective moments surrounding the fall return of the fishing boats. Against a foggy background, through which the sails and masts of a fishing vessel are visible, a teenage boy surveys his home after months at sea. Slung over his left shoulder is a bag; under his right arm is a beautiful blue-glass jug, which may have held water-—or wine--during the journey. (2)

Hardworking immigrants were a favorite subject of a number of realists painters, such as Robert Henri, Jerome Myers, Hawthorne, and others, who disdained the upper-class genteel subject matter preferred by the conservative art world. Contemporary critic Charles H. Caffin appreciated such pictures as a "natural and wholesome reaction from the vogue of frippery, tameness, and sentimentality" that characterized many of the visual images of the era, which kept art far removed from actual experience. (3) For other reviewers, Arthur Hoeber among them, Hawthorne's images conveyed the immigrant’s attempt to build a new life in a new country through back-breaking work. More than simply picturesque characters, Hawthorne’s Portuguese fisherfolk were depicted as "real, tangible human beings, full of hope, ambition and the struggle for existence." (4)

MAS

Bibliography:

Duncan Phillips, "Charles W. Hawthorne," “International Studio 61” (March 1917): xix-xxvi; Charles W. Hawthorne, “Hawthorne on Painting: From Students' Notes Collected by Mrs. Charles W. Hawthorne” (New York, 1938; reprint, Dover, 1960); Elizabeth McCausland, “Charles W. Hawthorne: An American Figure Painter” (New York: American Artists Group, 1947); Edgar P. Richardson, “Hawthorne Retrospective”, exhib. cat. (Provincetown: Chrysler Art Museum, 1961); Janet Altic Flint, “Charles W. Hawthorne: The Late Watercolors”, exhib. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1983).

Notes:

1. On Provincetown fishing practices in the early twentieth century, see Nancy W. Paine Smith, The Provincetown Book (Brocktown, Mass.: Tolman Print, 1922); and Wesley George Pierce, Goin' Fishin': The Story of the Deep-Sea Fishermen of New England (Salem, Mass.: Marine Research Society, 1934).

2. Portuguese wine, to be exact (Robyn S. Watson, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, to the author, February 19, 1996). Fishermen reused these jugs, and many of their descendants display them in their homes.

3. Charles H. Caffin, The Story of American Painting (New York: F. A. Stokes, 1907), p. 378.

4. Arthur Hoeber, "Charles W. Hawthorne," International Studio 37 (May 1909): lxvi.