The Card Players

Theodore Earl Butler’s Card Players portrays a game of cards in progress, seen as if from above and over the shoulders of two of the four figures gathered around a small table. Facing the viewer is American painter William Hart. The three female figures with their backs to the viewer have been identified as members of Butler’s family: his sister-in-law Marthe Hoschedé and his daughter Alice (Lili), born in 1894, frame the image on either side of the artist’s wife, Suzanne, a stepdaughter of French painter Claude Monet (1840–1926). Objects are distorted by the unconventional downward viewpoint and the forms truncated by the edges of the composition. Cropped and foreshortened, the cluttered furniture and billowing yellow window curtain comprise a distorted setting further dematerialized by Butler’s long, swirling strokes of sometimes harsh color, seen particularly in the women’s hair. Butler built up paint for tactile effect and, in places such as Hart’s highlighted forehead, scraped it away. The artist suggested color shifts by juxtaposing contrasting hues. His active brushstrokes echo the flowing lines of hair, drapery, and other forms but are otherwise oddly disconnected from the static nature of the subject, a game of cards quietly absorbing the attention of all four figures.

The Card Players is one of several works in the Terra Foundation’s collection that document Butler’s preoccupation with themes of interior domestic life in the period after the births of his two children, in 1893 and 1894, and before Suzanne’s death in early 1899. In The Card Players, the intimate focus on congenial activity documents the close relationships between the figures. Hart was Butler’s intimate friend and painted his portrait (TF 2003.2), around the time Butler made The Card Players. Suzanne and Lili are paired to underscore their familial bond while Marthe, shown on the left, was the Butler children’s caretaker during Suzanne’s long illness and would marry the bereaved painter in 1900, the year after her sister’s death.

Butler was not only Monet’s son-in-law but one of his artistic disciples. Under his influence, the American began painting in the bright, undiluted color and vigorous brushstrokes characteristic of the mode known as impressionism, of which Monet was a leading figure. By 1896, Butler was also absorbing the example of younger French painters, notably Edouard Vuillard (1868–1940) and Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), who used color and pattern boldly for their intrinsic expressive power. In contrast to impressionism’s emphasis on outdoors subjects painted on the spot in an effort to faithfully record optical experience, Vuillard and Bonnard often focused on intimate, domestic interiors. Sometimes the condensed interior spaces they depicted hint at an experience of family life that could be both physically and emotionally claustrophobic. In this painting, however, Butler affirmed  the warm conviviality of the domestic circle.

Americans in Brittany and Normandy 1860–1910, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona (organizer). Venues: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 24–November 28, 1982; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, December 17, 1982–February 6, 1983; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, March 19–May 1, 1983; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., June 10–August 14, 1983. [exh. cat.]

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

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.]

Giverny: intérieurs, extérieurs (Giverny: Inside and Out) Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000.

The French Experience: American Artists at Giverny, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 27–October 20, 2002.

A Place on the Avenue: Terra Museum of American Art Celebrates 15 Years in Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 16, 2002–February 16, 2003.

Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 1, 2007; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, July 21–October 14, 2007. [exh. cat.]

Impressionist Giverny: The Americans, 1885-1915, Selections from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Florence Griswold Museum of Art, Old Lyme, Connecticut, May 3–July 27, 2008; Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, New York, August 23, 2008–January 4, 2009.

Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan with the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan, October 9–November 28, 2010; The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, December 7, 2010–February 17, 2011; The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan, February 25–April 10, 2011. [exh. cat.]

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Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 172; fig. 125, p. 172 (black & white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 172; fig. 125, p. 172 (black & white).

Joyes, Claire. The Taste of Giverny: At Home with Monet and the American Impressionists. Paris, France: Flammarion, 2000. Ill. p. 85 (color).

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Bourguignon, Katherine M. "Impressionist Giverny: American Painters in France" American Art Review 20.3 (June 2008): 100-113. Ill. p.108 (color).

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