Brook, Giverny

Theodore Wendel’s Brook, Giverny pictures the Epte River or narrow Rû running along the meadows surrounding the village of Giverny, in Normandy, France. With the massed foliage of trees crowding out the distance on the high horizon, the view is dominated by the sketchy foreground expanse of velvety green. The brook itself is an angular ribbon of darker green curving into the background, overshadowed by trees lining its banks. The pollarded willows (cropped to promote dense foliage) grouped in the right distance are a clear mark of the French setting and a motif much favored by American landscapists painting in such picturesque northern provinces as Normandy and Brittany in the late nineteenth century.

Wendel worked in Giverny in 1887 with a small group of American and Canadian artists, the first of many who would transform the rural village into an important international artists’ colony in the years before World War I. Wendel has been credited with being one of the first of the colonists to take up the free brushwork, bright, pure colors, and outdoor subjects and painting methods associated with impressionism, particularly as developed by Claude Monet (1840–1926), Giverny’s most famous resident. Brook, Giverny demonstrates, however, the caution that marked his gradual assimilation of a mode that ran headlong against many of the fundamentals of his academic training. The painting’s illusion of depth is fully conveyed, even underscored by the recession of the stream into the distance. Wendel applied pigment freely and economically, leaving clear evidence of his painting rapidly and on-site; indeed, he deliberately left the canvas unfinished, seemingly drawing attention to the exposed ground near the bottom edge with the flourish of a formal signature—name, place, and date—at lower right. The spontaneity thus captured is countered, however, by the artist’s careful juxtaposition of open foreground and the dense arrangement of more variegated forms in the distance, which results in a balanced, decorative arrangement at odds with impressionism’s privileging of the immediate and the accidental.

Lined with willows and poplars, waterways such as the brook pictured by Wendel were an essential and fully characteristic feature of the scenery surrounding Giverny, and they are the focus of paintings by such visiting Americans as Louis Ritter and Willard Metcalf. Indeed, the latter’s The River Epte, Giverny (TF 1989.6), bears a striking resemblance to Wendel’s Brook, Giverny, painted the same year, and suggests that Metcalf and Wendel may have painted near each other. Deeply attracted to such scenes, many of the artists working in Giverny in the years between 1887 and the mid-1890s gave their attention to the local landscape and its inhabitants and way of life, subjects abandoned by the figural artists who arrived later.

American Impressionism, Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition Service, Washington, D.C. (organizer). Venues: Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, France, March 30–May 30, 1982; National Gallery, East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, June 15–July 25, 1982; Museum Moderner Kunst, Schweizergarten, Vienna, Austria, August 15–September 25, 1982; Art Museum, Socialist Republic Bucharest, Romania, October 24–November 11, 1982; National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria, December 26, 1982–January 31, 1983.

American Painters in France, 1830–1930, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 14–September 3, 1989. [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.]

Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002 (on exhibit extended run: March 30–November 30, 2002).

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.

L’Impressionnisme au fil de la Seine (Impressionism on the Seine), Musée des impressionismes Giverny, Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée des impressionismes Giverny, Giverny, France, April 1–July 18, 2010. [exh. cat.]

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.]

Gallery Installation, Musée de impressionnismes Giverny, France, July 2012–November 2012; March 2013–November 2013; March 2014–November 2014; March 2015–November 2015.

The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910: The Terra Collection in Context (L’atelier de la Nature, 1860-1910. Invitation à la Terra Collection). Terra Foundation for American Art with the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny (organizers). Venue: Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny, France, September 12, 2020–January 3, 2021. [exh. cat. in French]

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 pp. 47, 164; pl. 21, p. 165 (color).

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 pp. 47, 164; pl. 21, p. 165 (color).

Gerdts, William H. Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. Text pp. 49, 64; pl. 53, p. 64 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. et al. Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915. (exh. cat. Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. Text. pp. 35, 76, 212 (checklist); cat. p. 85 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., Shunsuke Kijima and Sanjiro Minamikawa. Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism. (exh. cat. Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, and The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art). Fukuoka, Japan: The Nishinippon Shimbun, 2010. Text cat. no. 26, pp.76 (in Japanese), 182-83 (in English); ill. p. 76 (color).

Bruce, Tobi and Joan Padgett, eds., Into the Light: The Paintings of William Blair Bruce (1859-1906).  (exh. cat., Art Gallery of Hamilton). Ontario: Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2014. Fig 3.5 p. 116 (color), text p. 117.

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 133; ill. p. 133 (color).

Buckley, Laurene. Theodore Wendel: True Notes of American Impressionism. North Adams: The Artist Book Foundation, 2019. Text pp. 37, 46; ill. p. 104 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine and Valerie Reis. The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910: The Terra Collection in Context. (exh. cat, Terra Foundation for American Art with the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny). Paris, France: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2020.  Pl. 51, p. 125 (color).