Masterpieces of the Sea/Chapter 2

by Harrison S. Morris

II.

William T. Richards (the middle initial standing for Trost) was born in Philadelphia on November 14, 1833. I know little about his early education, nor about the family traits that may have inclined him to art in an arid and unprofitable day. But Miss Fidelia Bridges, a pupil and life-long friend, tells of the unusual skill of his grandfather Trost, a Dutch goldsmith, from whom he may have inherited his manual dexterity and his phenomenal patience.

Sully was about fifty when Richards was born, and Stuart had died five years earlier, leaving the field to Neagle and Otis and Inman and the younger Peales; but by the time young Richards took up his brush these had passed, and their successors were mostly the "idle singers of an empty day." Thus he emerged upon a barren horizon, and he made for himself those opportunities for study and association which are needful aids to talent.

I can do no better, from this stage of Mr. Richards' career, than give the outline of his early years furnished me, with characteristic kindness, by his friend and fellow painter, Mr. W. H. Willcox, of Germantown, Philadelphia. Mr. Willcox has thus, genially, set down his remembrances:

"My acquaintance with Mr. Richards began in the early fifties of the last century. At that time he filled a position in the firm of Archer, Warner & Miskey, manufacturers of gas fixtures and other ornamental work. Previous to this he was a boy in an Eighth Street store, and seeing an advertisement for a designer for the above firm he applied for the position. Some designs were given him to copy, which he did so well that he was awarded the situation, and when I first knew him, or soon after, he was receiving a salary of $1500 a year. His labors for the firm occupied nearly all his daylight, but he followed the bent of his ambition by drawing on wood at night. I had seen some crude pictures which he exhibited at the Art Union Galleries, which adjoined the building subsequently occupied by the Earles, but was not favorably impressed. My preceptor, Mr. Isaac L. Williams, had made his acquaintance, and invited me to call with him, which I did. He was then living with his parents in the lower part of the city—about Bainbridge Street, I think. I had not formed a very high opinion of his ability; but his drawings quite astonished me, and I recognized his talent. There were few young men who aspired to paint in those days, and our mutual interest drew us together and developed into an abiding friendship. We went sketching together, and I counted much upon his criticism of my work. I remember our making studies of some fine old chestnut trees at what is now known as Belmont, but then as Judge Peters' farm, and each thought his own picture the best. He was almost as ambitious as

BREAKERS

a litterateur as he was a painter in those days, and with some chosen spirits established a club which they named 'Forensic and Literary Institute.' I had nothing to do with this. Long years after we made a trip to New York together and lay awake far into the night talking over our boyish experiences.

"After his marriage he removed his family to the country and I lost sight of him for a while. Later he occupied a studio in the Art Union building with Alexander Lawrie. Paul Weber was the most successful landscape painter in Philadelphia at the time and represented the Germanesque side of the art, and Richards was reported to have received instruction from him, but I have no knowledge of it, and never thought to ask him if it was true. There was, however, no indication of it in his manner of painting. Turner and English art were in the ascendancy, and Richards became an imitator of the former with large ambitious canvases of which the chief merit lay in the skilful drawing. This, however, did not continue very long. One day I met him on Chestnut Street, and he told me that he had placed a picture in the studio of Mr. Hugh Davids, on Fourth Street, which he wanted me to see. I went and met Edmund D. Lewis there. To say that I was both surprised and delighted would express my feelings mildly. All the previous absurd Turneresque imitating had been thrown aside, and he had painted his subject directly and most elaborately from nature, spending months in its production. It was a complete revolution, and was the beginning of his future success. From that time on he ignored all fads and adhered to his own individuality.

"He had come to live in Germantown before this, first in Greene Street, then at the northeast corner of Mill Street and Market Square, from which he removed to Penn Street, near what is now Wakefield, where he lived many years, and painted some of his most remarkable pictures. I passed many very happy hours in this last house.

MID-OCEAN

"During this time he had become acquainted with Mr. George Whitney, who became a most enthusiastic patron, and for whom he did some of his very best landscape work. Nothing can exceed the wonderful painting of tree trunks in some of his wood pictures.

"During all this time I have no recollection of his painting the sea. His first efforts in this direction were remarkable for differing from the usual method of painting it but were indifferent in quality when compared with his later work, but he gradually gave his attention to it more and more, until the sea and coast occupied nearly all his time, his very best work being among his latest.

"Mr. Richards' removal to Newport in the seventies was for the express purpose of studying the sea and shore at home, and his wise choice was manifest both in his work and in his investment, for in addition to his talents as a painter, he was remarkably shrewd as a business man. He was also an indefatigable and prolific worker, which was rendered possible by his uniform good health. He was intellectual in his tastes, affable in disposition, and though not particularly social in his habits, was a firm and true friend, whose loss will long be felt by those who enjoyed his intimacy."

There seems to be little doubt that the young fellow of fifteen or so, received instruction from Paul Weber, and it is probable that this able follower of the grand style in landscape was his first teacher. But as his powers grew and his knowledge of art and life expanded, it became necessary to add experience to teaching, and in 1853, Richards left the designing-room of the Archer & Warner firm and devoted himself exclusively to his art.

Thus he went on with such self-training and local aids as were available until he became of age. He then resolved to see more of the world and its stores of art than were afforded by the narrow vistas of Philadelphia, and with his accustomed pluck he set forth for Europe. This was no holiday adventure as now, when the big steamers furnish a six-day ferry across the sea. It was a serious undertaking, especially if funds were limited, as was the lot of young Richards.

But, with a stout heart and confidence in his own talent, he sailed away from home, and visited Paris, Florence and Rome, where he spent a good deal of time with no express effect upon his painting; though contact with the work of the contemporary French and Italian schools was a vastly excellent discipline for a youth who had hitherto been influenced only by the lesser followers of those great men. He never spoke of receiving any ideas from such masters, but it was his aim to see at first hand what they were producing; and to an imaginative lad with ambition to succeed in painting, their methods and designs must have been deeply stimulating. Nor did his art show any effect from a closer knowledge of the great works of the Renaissance and antiquity. Yet the mental discipline must have been quietly powerful and as his drawing grew in precision with his maturing talents it is not an extreme presumption to say that his native gift received, at this impressionable period of his life, its largest force from the knowledge of such perfection. We know how such a trip affected Benjamin West, his fellow-townsman of an earlier day; how it colored all his after career and biased him for what was called "historical painting" and made him a leader of his day in the land of Reynolds and Gainsborough and Constable and Lawrence.

But this voyage of discovery was, perhaps, the outgrowth of other instincts than those of art, for the eternal masculine had, before this, met the eternal feminine and in seeking his fortunes up and down the world he was to learn how to lay the foundations of a home as well as to find a broad base for his artistic career.

At the house of Robert Pearsall Smith and his wife, Hannah Whitall Smith, in Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia, young Richards had met Anna Matlack,

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1855

MRS. WILLIAM T. RICHARDS (ANNA MATLACK RICHARDS)

FROM A PORTRAIT BY WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, 1862

an ardent, intellectual Quaker girl, who even then had written dramas and published verses. The young people were a part of the group, literary and artistic, that the Pearsall Smiths attracted to their hospitable house, and it was out of the association thus formed that they came to know each other better and to prize each other for likable traits.

Thus, before the young painter went to Europe, they were engaged to be married, though they had agreed to withhold the news from their friends, and concerning this romantic episode Miss Bridges says: "It was their mutual interest in Browning and Tennyson, and all the poets of that day, which drew them together"—a fine start for a household of ideals such as found embodiment in the tranquil home to be.

Its beginning was not long delayed—for on June 30, 1856, very soon after Mr. Richards' return, they were married by Quaker ceremony; not in the home of the bride, because the distaste for artists still prevailed under the austere rooftree of Dr. Charles French Matlack, but in the house of the painter's loyal friend, Ellis Archer, in Philadelphia.

The honeymoon was spent in the Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, and one of their labors of love during those first months of happiness was the composition and illustration of a manuscript volume of poems for their friend, Hannah Whitall Smith, who had brought them together.

But these were hard times; there was little or no demand for pictures because of the great panic of 1856, and the wolf had to be kept from the door by evening work on designs for chandeliers for the always friendly firm of Archer & Warner. The busy artist did not return to the designing room, and still kept the precious hours of daylight for his own work out-of-doors; but the evening labor gave essential help in tiding over critical months.

For about a year after this the family lived in Philadelphia, where their eldest son, named for the friendly Mr. Archer, was born on April 30, 1857, and a little later they moved to Germantown, probably by May or June, 1857, and lived in Church Lane, near Mill Street, for nearly two years.

It was not until the latter part of 1857 or 1858 that the work on gas fixtures was wholly abandoned, and the self-reliant young art student pushed out for himself. Hardly can we conceive in our period, when native art receives some patronage, the boldness of such a step in the Philadelphia of 1858. The early seventies developed in young men a restlessness for other ideals than those of trade or the professions. The exodus to Europe began on the heels of William Hunt's return to Boston from France and was inspired by the stimulating essays of Earl Shinn. But this was a dozen years later, and that dozen years was as hopeless as the Valley of the Dead Sea. The city of the Quakers was drab and grim and tasteless and respectable and the chance for a brave youngster who took his fate in his own hands was as one against thousands.

The English tradition prevailed without the English motive. Dunlap has told us in his "History of the Arts of Design" that the English of an earlier day looked upon Art as beneath an aristocrat; in the Quaker town, painting was an unhallowed thing fit only for the non-elect.

But Mr. Richards had stuff in him that would have overcome even greater discouragements. He was born for achievement and, without the physical power for overcoming natural obstacles, he had the grit and the genius for surmounting those of convention. He was a character, and if equipped and called, he would have gone his independent way, as Mungo Park did, into unknown Africa, or he was prepared to break down barriers of narrow habit nearer home.

On June 7, 1858, a second son, Charles Matlack Richards, was born, and in that same spring the family

FEBRUARY

moved into the Mehl Cottage in Germantown. In spite of growing responsibilities and the total lack of capital, the young painter kept alive the courage of his convictions and painted that summer only one picture—"The Tulip Poplar Trees." It was a wonderfully detailed study, as all his work was of this period, and that he valued afterwards what he then produced was shown by his buying back this canvas as well as the earlier "Blackberry-bush." Both pictures still belong to his family.

These were the years when he laid the foundation for his unerring draughtsmanship, and the risks he took to acquire it were richly justified by the event.

Afterwards, if any aspiring young artist asked him, "How shall I learn to paint?" his answer always was, "Learn to draw! "Unlike some advisers, he took his own advice; and the number of his careful drawings which are still preserved is little short of marvellous.

Concerning this time, Miss Bridges writes: "In the year 1860 I went to Philadelphia to study art. Mr. Richards, who was ever ready to render help, especially to women, kindly proposed my coming to paint in his studio, where there were then some half-dozen pupils—the younger Lambdin; Bispham, the animal painter; Arthur Parton, and two or three ladies. It is from that time that my friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Richards began. The summer of 1860, which I spent with them in a cottage in Bethlehem, Pa., was a very hard one for them. In the terrible excitement of the first year of the war there was no demand for art. He was painting out-of-doors the largest canvas he had ever painted directly from nature and struggling with the difficult problems of it, while he kept an eye on his two little boys, who always accompanied him."

Another close friend of this period—indeed, his chief patron—who has already been mentioned, was Mr. George Whitney. Every man of genius has had his Maecenas. Heaven seems to watch over her chosen children, and no doubt Mr. Richards owed much to the taste and liberality of this greatly prized friend. Thus, in speaking of the pictures which he painted for Mr. Whitney, he wrote: "Most of them were selected from the studies of each year, and it was the pleasantest part of the season to submit to him the results of the summer work. His refined love for nature made his cordial appreciation an incentive and a reward. The drawings became, as it were, the expression of mutual affection, and it was to me truly a labor of love to make sure that he had the best I could do."

The summer of 1860 was marked by the production of the already mentioned "Blackberry-bush," and when the season at Bethlehem was past the family seems to have returned to the Mehl Cottage in Germantown, and in 1861 they moved to a cottage at the corner of Coulter and Greene Streets, where they stayed about two years.

In 1862, the oldest daughter, now Mrs. Eleanor French Price, was born, who possesses not a little of her father's talent, and in 1863 they moved to Market Square and Mill Street—a quiet, odd corner which always seems to me a fitting frame for that old fashioned family. In 1865, they moved to No. 9 Penn Street, a large stone house next to the place of Mrs. Richards' father. This was the first house which the advancing young painter owned and he held it for twenty years.

Now, another daughter was born, who died in infancy, and in the next year—1866—Mr. Richards took his family to Europe, spending the winter mostly at Darmstadt and Dusseldorf. This is a significant date because it denotes that Mr. Richards had heard the call of Europe earlier than his fellow craftsmen and he must have been amongst the very first of the younger men of his time to go. His earlier visit had been one of observation, but now he was intent on the study of new theories. It was a progressive step and an adventurous one at that date, before the allurements of France had begun to act, and when only Chase and Duveneck were contemplating like exodus from other American cities. A flying visit to Italy was also squeezed into the few months of study, and in the middle of December, 1867, they sailed for home on the Fulton, the last trip across the ocean of a paddle-wheel steamer.

One of the children describes this voyage vividly:

"They had from the first a very severe voyage, and as they approached New York, after nearly two weeks at sea, such a terrific snow storm came up that they had to put to sea again, without coal and leaking badly. To make matters worse the decks were coated thickly with ice and one paddle box was smashed. The wreckage was cleared away so as to allow the paddle wheel to revolve only with the greatest difficulty. Everyone on board, including the captain, almost gave up hope, but the ship pulled through safely and staggered into New York after a voyage of seventeen days." Among the fellow voyagers on this exciting trip were Mr. Samuel P. Avery, the New York picture dealer, and his family and the congenial friendship made at that time with this generous and intelligent man was a source of pleasure and encouragement through all the rest of Mr. Richards' career. In yet another way this remarkable voyage greatly influenced his subsequent life. It was then for the first time that his mind fully realized the majesty, power and beauty of the sea, and this impression, deepening with the years, led to the memorable pictures we all know so well.

A month after this, on January thirtieth, the son who was destined to attain the most notable distinction, was born. This was Theodore William Richards, who is now Professor of Chemistry in Harvard College, a great discoverer in physical science and recently exchange professor at Berlin. His birth took place in the house of his grandfather, Dr. Charles F. Matlack, because Mr. Richards' house, next door, was still rented.

From now till 1878 the winters were spent in the

BREAKERS NEAR THE DUMPLINGS, CONANICUT, R. I.

 

A REEF NEAR NEWPORT, R. I

Germantown house with excursions in the summer to various places, and after this period began the visits to the seaside, at first to Cape May and then to Atlantic City, which have left so deep a vein in the work of the painter of the ocean.

During these years Mr. Richards devoted much time to the study of the technique of water-color, using both transparent and opaque color, and both white and colored paper. Charming and delicate drawings were made in great number, many of them having been purchased by his beloved old friend, Dr. Magoun, who upon his death presented a large collection of them to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In the course of this work he evolved a somewhat original technique of painting large landscapes after the manner of Turner's "Rivers of France," in body water-color on the coarse, gray paper used at that time for lining carpets, which cost but a few cents a yard—and he was fond of saying that he got his paper so cheap that he could afford to use more water! One of his colleagues tells us that: "they were very difficult to execute, and their excellence depended entirely upon his knowledge of the nature of the changes which drying produced in his colors, for they looked entirely different wet and dry. But many of them were remarkable pictures." Afterwards he returned almost wholly to the use of transparent color on white paper, and gradually developed unusual facility in the vigorous and sympathetic handling of this fascinating medium.

It was not until 1874 that the family rented a house in Newport, R. I. But in the next year Mr. Richards bought a place there, on Gibbs Avenue, which he kept for seven years. Meantime, in 1870, the daughter named Anna Mary was born—now Mrs. William Tenney Brewster—whose talent for design is a conspicuous token of the hereditary trait, and whose successes in England are remembered by those who knew her in the circle of Watts; and in 1871, Herbert Maule Richards, now a professor at Columbia College, was born.

In 1878, the family spent two years in England, laying foundations on those coastwise cliffs which led to the impressive canvases of rocks and surf of later days. There was a brief stay in Paris, too; but cheerful winters were spent in London, and the summers passed at various villages on the south and southwest coast of England, and Professor Theodore Richards says that during these years his father learnt much about rocks, and the complex wave motion caused by a broken shore.

In October, 1880, the family came back to the Germantown house; and the next year saw the building of the house on the cliffs at Conanicut Island in Rhode Island, which was called: "Gray Cliff." This was meant only for the summer, when it is possible to paint outdoors on that wild coast. But the needs of the incessant student of nature induced the exchange of the Germantown house for a large farm six miles from Coatesville, in the Chester Valley, Pennsylvania, where landscape could be overtaken in its more surly moods of autumn and winter. For some reason Mr. Richards was curious about Mt. Tacoma, and in 1885 he took a trip to the Pacific coast to see it. If two or three large paintings of the mountain are excepted, no visible results to his art seem to have followed, as he went on in his accustomed pathways, holding his homes intact in Chester Valley and Conanicut until March, 1890, when he bought a cosy, homely house at an angle of one of those pretty Newport streets that go nowhere but to your own front door. This he alternated with "Gray Cliff" and with seasons in Europe between 1885 and 1890. He would disappear for a time to come back laden with canvases and a smiling and genial vitality which made his welcome glad and warm. He rarely spoke of his absence, sometimes to point an anecdote or explain a picture; and I remember, once, how he brought back a series of bewitching water-colors trellised all over with roses, of a country house in England and its lovely court-yard, where he had been staying.

CATHEDRAL ROCKS, ACHILL ISLAND, WEST COAST OF IRELAND

He was usually reticent until animated by some lurking memory or the wish to make plain a conviction.

Among the summer journeys there were two rather adventurous ones with his wife, the first to the wild western coast of Ireland, when they drove over four hundred miles in jaunting cars, and another to the extreme north of Scotland, including the Orkney and the Shetland Islands. He found many subjects and much inspiration in both places. During the Scotch trip they journeyed for a while with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie.

Then, the winters spent in the Channel Islands, especially on Guernsey, were also full of fruitful results in his art, but he always came back to Newport with a feeling of happiness in his own home which no foreign excitements or "Reiselust" ever dispelled.

But, in 1899, the tranquil flow of Mr. Richards' ideal family life at Newport was interrupted by the loss of "Gray Cliff." The United States Government wanted the commanding site for a fort, and there was no appeal.

It stood—a long, shingled house with a roof that tucked it snugly in, with porches overlooking the sea, and walks around about on the rocks, with the rich verdure of that coast running to the friendly threshold, and with its little detached gray studio in hailing distance as you approached it—it stood on a cliff made conspicuous from land and sea by a jagged white streak of quartz running up through the gray rock to the doorway. It looked out on the changeless blue horizon, on the curving granite coast, and on the dune-like "Dumplings," where an older generation had set the ancient fort of that name, now, alas, gone with "Gray Cliff." How well I recollect the somewhat rueful fun of Mr. Richards as he pointed to the adjoining "Marbella," where his old friend Joseph Wharton had built a massive wall in which great boulders were stuck at intervals. The artist's love of unhindered nature gave edge to his remark: "Wharton's Teeth."

Indoors there was comfort and the invitation to joy plenteous books and talk. Mrs. Richards was overflowing with humor, and her original opinions were uttered in a quick, resonant, almost masculine voice, and with a delightful duck of the head and glance of the black eyes. She was of medium height, stout, and busy, and hospitable, and gave but little evidence in casual intercourse of the tremendous character and the fund of erudition within. She had previously educated those sons for college who have entered learned professions, and one of whom is celebrated the world-round for his discoveries in chemical and physical science; and she had not only presided over a household and reared talented children, but she was an unremitting force in her husband's career. Well can I still hear her amusing rally about the difference said to exist between the free, richly colored sketches and the finished pictures:

"I throw tables and chairs at William to make him paint broadly"—and then a laugh contagious and unforgetable.

But besides all her housewifely duties, she was busy with her well-furnished mind, and those who have had the fortune to possess the volume of her sonnets, called "Letter and Spirit," must acknowledge the existence of an original talent for poetry and an independence of thought and belief above the level of her day. Sonnet XVIII marks the poetic type, and her deeply religious, but quietly individual, point of view.

Alone in this dim summer light,—the air
Of ocean in the long sea-grass, and flight
Of shining mist above me, what delight
To seem a part of nature's self, and dare
For these brief moments to forget my share
In life's great tragedy of Wrong and Right
Before the listening heavens. On what clear height
Far from the inward voices, from despair,
Above the irretrievable years, thou reignst,
O Nature, fair as in the dawn of Earth!
Nor storms nor sunbeams ever reach thy soul;
And I, forever conquered, fight against
The inexorable limits of my birth,
And learn no wisdom from thy self-control.

BREAKERS AT BEAVER TAIL, CONANICUT ISLAND, R.I

And turning from these introspective sonnets, what a contrast to open the pages of her buoyant and self-forgetful fun, which was not so much an imitation of the "Alice" books as a continuation of them. She had absorbed and given out to her children all that "Alice" held; and, wanting more, she made it—made it with an invention and gaiety which ought to have won the heart of "Lewis Carroll" himself. The illustrations by her daughter, Anna, are another evidence of the gifts the mother fostered in that busy and happy household.

Indeed, Mrs. Richards is so much of a part of the intellectual career of Mr. Richards, so inwoven in his fibre, that to describe her is further to personify him.

But even so rare a flower, so beautiful and difficult of growth, as a home like his and hers, must fade. It seems a waste of nature to rear such associations, such delicate and fragile ties, mingled of high aims and affectionate hopes, fair counsels and firm convictions, and then let them dissolve. How can a delicate creation like that arise again in a world which opposes simplicity and makes light a moderation? Nature, I repeat, seems prodigal of her best fruits when she allows a hallowed and tranquil fireside to fade into forgetfulness.

Mrs. Richards died at Newport in November, 1900, and from this separation Mr. Richards never quite recovered. He painted and travelled, even to the bleak north coast of Norway, but his home on the rocks was gone and she was gone who had embodied its spirit in herself. He was lonely and growing old, and though his household was made cheerful by grandchildren, and his daughter, Mrs. Price, watched over him tenderly, he seemed, as I remember him then, to ebb into pathetic old age.

Of those days there lingers in my vision one characteristic glimpse: of the dark slouch hat covering the silvery hair; the black-coated, slight figure; a wind-blown umbrella and the quick insistent step as he left me from a trolley-car and pushed on into the rain. He was thinly clad for that tempest and I urged him to stay with me. We were returning from a journey East, but he had a sister in Philadelphia whom he wanted to visit and his decisive mind was made up. He disappeared through the narrow brick street and I had no other sight of him for months. Then, he was old and weary and sad.

He died in the Newport house on November 8, 1905, and was buried at Laurel Hill, in Philadelphia.