Afternoon, Grez

Edward Wilbur Dean Hamilton’s Afternoon, Grez offers a confined glimpse of a luxuriant garden behind a sprawling French country house under a clear summer sky. The foreground is dominated by a tangle of foliage sporting deep-red and pink blossoms.  A white-clad woman moves down the garden path that bisects the composition on a diagonal echoed in the complex angles of the dwelling’s varied roofline. Hamilton applied his strong hues in vivid dashes of paint to suggest the transient spectacle captured at summer’s climax of brilliant light and joyful color.

Afternoon, Grez is a product of Hamilton’s stay in Grez-sur-Loing, a rural French village not far from Paris, in the summer of 1889 (he may have returned there in 1890). For several years, British, Irish, Scandinavian, and American artists had been drawn to the picturesque locale, making a practice of painting its quaint buildings, gardens, and inhabitants en plein air—outdoors and by the immediate application of paint to canvas, rather than in the studio from drawings made on site. By the time Hamilton arrived at Grez, its most famous artist-visitors had moved on, but painter Robert Vonnoh, a friend and fellow Bostonian, remained. Vonnoh undoubtedly encouraged Hamilton’s engagement with the modern aesthetic of impressionism, in which bright pure colors are applied quickly and broadly to capture the world outdoors under strong natural light. In addition, Vonnoh’s studies of poppy fields near Grez, such as Poppies in France, (TF 1987.9), may have inspired the younger artist to emphasize the floral theme in this work by placing the richly colored blossoms in the foreground. While Afternoon, Grez demonstrates Hamilton’s continuing reliance on contrasts of tone to suggest spatial depth, its vibrant colors, rapid brushwork, and garden setting all indicate his conversion to the impressionist mode that would dominate his landscape painting for the rest of his career.

Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915 (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 1–November 1, 1992; April 1–October 31, 1993; April 1–October 30, 1994; April 1–October 31, 1995. [exh. cat.]

En plein air: personnages dans un paysage (En Plein Air: Figures in a Landscape), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2004.

Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, April 1–October 31, 2005. [exh. brochure]

Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, April 1–October 29, 2006. [exh. brochure]

Le Temps des loisirs : peintures américaines (At Leisure: American Paintings"), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2008.

The American Impressionists in the Garden, Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee (organiser). Venues: Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee, March 13–September 6, 2010; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida, September 24, 2010–January 3, 2011; Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, February 18–May 15, 2011. [exh. cat.]