Le Dejeuner

The artist’s daughter Alice Butler, known as Lili, is absorbed in stirring her food in Theodore Earl Butler’s Le Dejeuner (“lunch”). Seen from the side and from an adult’s height, the toddler’s face, except for the childish round curve of her cheek, is hidden under its fringe of loose, tousled hair. By downplaying her features, Butler focused attention on her activity, suggested by the somewhat blurred representation of her hands, the tines of her fork, and the circular brushstrokes used to depict the food in her bowl. Lili sits forward in a wooden chair at a small white table set before an open fireplace: its edges frame her head, haloed by the glowing light from the unseen fire. At left, the curved back of an upholstered chair obtrudes into the scene. These objects are cut off by the edges of the image, creating an immediacy underscored by the rough, active brushwork. Butler rendered the whites of the table, Lili’s clothing, and the painted mantelpiece with its classical details through juxtaposed strokes of pastel shades of pink, aqua green, pale gold, and lavender.

Butler absorbed techniques of impressionism, the late-nineteenth-century movement to paint contemporary life in terms of its optical effects, from French painter Claude Monet (1840–1926) after 1888, when he began working in the rural village of Giverny, in Normandy, France, where Monet had settled. Butler became the most permanent of the many American artist-visitors who made Giverny an international colony of impressionist painting in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, for in 1892 he married Suzanne Hoschedé, one of Monet’s four stepdaughters, an event commemorated in the painting The Wedding March (TF1999.127), by Butler’s friend Theodore Robinson. The Butlers settled close to Monet, building a home of their own into which they moved in the winter of 1895. With the births of their children James and Lili in 1893 and 1894 respectively and Suzanne’s increasing invalidism, Butler turned from outdoor landscape painting to interior scenes of domestic life, as demonstrated in other paintings in the Terra Foundation’s collection. The children remained important models for the artist: in 1908 Lili posed again for her father for Lili Butler Reading at the Butler House, Giverny (TF1993.8), which echoes Le Dejeuner in pose, setting, and composition.

In this work Butler has moved away from the techniques of Monet to include bright, almost strident colors and very loose, expressive brushwork. Around the time he painted Le Dejeuner, he was given a solo exhibition at the Paris gallery of the influential dealer Ambroise Vollard, who also championed the work of an emerging group of young French artists known as Les Nabis (“the prophets”). Butler shared their preoccupation with the cluttered informality of private life.

Claude Monet and the Giverny Artists, Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, New York, New York, March 22–April 23, 1960. [exh. cat.]

Monet and the Giverny Group, American Federation of Arts, New York, New York, January 1961–February 1962.

T. E. Butler, 1860-1936, Hammer Galleries, New York, New York, April 23–May 11, 1963. [exh. cat.]

Americans in Brittany and Normandy, 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 16, 1982–February 6, 1983; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, March 18–May 1, 1983; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., June 10–August 14, 1983. [exh. cat.]

Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet's Shadow, R. H. Love Galleries, Inc., Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: R. H. Love Galleries, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, January 13–February 16, 1984; Fine Arts Museum of the South at Mobile, Alabama, February 15–March 25, 1984; Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, Florida, April 6–May 6, 1984; Museum of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, Florida, June 3–July 15, 1984; Westmoreland County Museum of Art, Greensberg, Pennsylvania, September 8–October 11, 1984; Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, November 4–December 2, 1984; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, January 6–February 17, 1985; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, March 3–April 14, 1985; Oklahoma Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 9–August 25, 1985; University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, Wyoming, September 15–November 30, 1985; Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri, December 22, 1985–February 2, 1986; Louisiana Museum of Arts and Sciences, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, May 4–July 13, 1986; Paine Art Center, Osh Kosh, Wisconsin, November 23, 1986–January 4, 1987; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee, January 20–February 22, 1987; Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland, March 1–April 26, 1987. [exh. cat.]

Un regard américain sur Paris (An American Glance at Paris), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 11–October 31, 1997.

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.

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 partial extended run: September 13–November 30, 2002).

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.

Claude Monet and the Giverny Artists. (exh. cat., Charles E. Slatkin Galleries). New York: Charles E. Slatkin Galleries, 1960. Ill. no. 13.

T. E. Butler, 1860–1936. (exh. cat., Hammer Galleries). New York: Hammer Galleries, 1963. Ill. no. 34.

Sellin, David. Americans in Brittany and Normandy. (exh. cat., Phoenix Art Museum). Phoenix, Arizona: Phoenix Art Museum, 1982. Ill. no. 91, p. 206 (black & white).

Love, Richard H. Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet's Shadow. Chicago, Illinois: Haase-Mumm Publishing Company, Inc., 1985. Text pp. 180–83, 197; pl. 35 (color detail), pl. 36 (color detail), pl. 37 (color).