Boston Public Garden

Edward Emerson Simmons’s Boston Public Garden is a wintertime view looking east over the intersection of Boston’s Arlington and Newbury Streets toward the park. The view is taken from a second-story window of the St. Botolph Club, a genteel meeting place for artists, authors, and their supporters to which Simmons himself belonged. A heavy layer of fresh snow blankets streets and wooded parkland alike, leaving only a fence to distinguish them. This peaceful scene shows the city muted by nature’s effects, but the horse-drawn street traffic (including a sled) and a line of pedestrians entering the park signal the ceaseless activity of modern urban life.

  Twenty-four acres in breadth, the Public Garden was created in the early 1860s from what had been a marshy eyesore adjacent to Boston Common. Its transformation into a genteel park was part of the development of the fashionable new residential quarter known as Back Bay. Simmons, however, focuses the view toward the old city of Boston. The red brick architecture of Beacon Hill, long the city’s most aristocratic neighborhood, is only hinted at by the pinkish tones that penetrate the denuded branches of the park’s many trees, but the gold dome of the Massachusetts state house rises above them in the center distance.

The specificity of the view, the rather loose, casual application of paint, and the cropping of the figures of pedestrians and horses, at lower left, to suggest fleeting actuality, all contribute to the image’s spirit of prosaic reportage, and are hallmarks of the then-emerging aesthetic known as impressionism. In the early 1890s, impressionism was a popular mode among American artists seeking new ways to join artistic expression to contemporary life. As an accessible vehicle for picturing the city, the urban park was a subject that attracted several of Simmons’s contemporaries, notably his friend Childe Hassam. The year before Simmons created his Boston Public Garden, Hassam painted a nearby spot in Back Bay in his Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, (TF 1992.39) also in the Terra Foundation’s collection, using the same high viewpoint, line of trees, and loose impressionist brushwork to screen the monotonous rigor of urban architecture. Both artists were deeply influenced by the aesthetics of Japanese prints, reflected in Simmons’s painting particularly in the asymmetrical composition and the contrasts of crowded and empty spaces.

 Simmons painted this work during the year of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The experience of making mural paintings for one of the fair’s buildings convinced the artist to direct his efforts toward that field. Boston Public Garden, however, was one of his best-received easel paintings. When he exhibited it in 1912 as a member of the group of impressionist artists known as Ten American Painters, a critic mourned Simmons’s decision to abandon landscape painting.

Fifteenth Annual Exhibition of the Society of American Artists, American Fine Arts Society, New York, New York, April 17–May 13, 1893, no. 120 (as Boston Common).

Fifteenth Annual Exhibition: The Ten American Painters, Montross Gallery, New York, New York, March 15–April 6, 1912, no. 22 (as Boston Common).

Masterworks in American Art from the Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, April 27–September 12, 1985.

The Bostonians: Painters of an Elegant Age, 1870–1930, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts (organizer). Venues: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, June 11–September 14, 1986; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, October 25, 1986–January 18, 1987; Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, March 10–May 10, 1987. [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.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Americans at Home and Abroad, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 6–29, 1987.

Ten American Painters, Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York (organizer). Venue: Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York, May 8–June 9, 1990. [exh. cat.]

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York and Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (organizer). Venues: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, May 2–July 24, 1994; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, August 22–October 30, 1994; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, November 28, 1994–February 5, 1995; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, March 6–May 14, 1995.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1999–May 7, 2000 (in modified form). [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–July 1, 2001.

Artistic Independence in 1898: The Ten American Painters, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 4–July 21, 2002.

Impressionismus: Amerika-Frankreich-Russland (Impressionism: America-France-Russia), Kunstforum Wien, Vienna, Austria (organizer). Venue: Kunstforum Wien, Vienna, Austria, October 25, 2002–February 23, 2003. [exh. cat.]

American Classics from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 14–June 15, 2003.

A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 13–October 31, 2004.

La Scène américaine, 1860–1930 (Americans at Home, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, July 10–October 30, 2005.

La Scène américaine, 1860–1930 (Americans at Home, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, April 1–October 29, 2006.
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]

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"The 'Ten Americans.'" The Evening Mail (March 20, 1912): 8. Text p. 8.

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Paintings from the Collection of Taggart & Jorgensen Gallery. Washington, D.C.: Taggart & Jorgensen, 1988. No. 7, p. 6.

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Cartwright, Derrick R. The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text p. 26 (checklist); ill. p. 38 (color).

Cartwright, Derrick R. Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text p. 26 (checklist); ill. p. 38 (color).

Crane, Summer and Susan Lehman. "Edward Emerson Simmons' The Light Bearer: Anatomy of a Stained Glass Window." Stained Glass (Spring 1999): 24–31, 61–63. Text p. 24.

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