William Glackens’s Luxembourg Gardens revels in the casual moment in its celebration of an everyday, lazy afternoon in a Parisian park. The painting pays homage to Edouard Manet (French, 1832 - 1883) while at the same moment evidencing a vitality and verve that are unique to Glackens. The canvas was painted in 1906, when Glackens and his wife, the artist Edith Dimock Glackens, took a postponed honeymoon to Europe. After a sojourn in Madrid, the couple spent three productive weeks in Paris, where Glackens worked on a series of canvases that took the Luxembourg Gardens as their subject.
Though painted more than thirty years earlier, the work did not enter the Corcoran Gallery of Art collection until 1937, following its appearance there at the Fifteenth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings. Glackens was chairman of the jury of admissions and awards for the biennial that year, and Luxembourg Gardens was one of three works representing him in the exhibition. Although the biennials were celebrations of contemporary art, the jury was permitted to select earlier paintings for inclusion, though such older works were not eligible for awards. Reviewers acknowledged the painting’s age; a critic for the New York Times went so far as to declare it “ancient” but nevertheless referred to it as “one of the most emphatic high spots” of the exhibition. Glackens died a year later, and Luxembourg Gardens was among the works in the memorial exhibition, which traveled to the Corcoran in 1940.
Born in Philadelphia in 1870, Glackens entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1892. Like many of his classmates, Glackens worked as a newspaper illustrator, initially for the Philadelphia Record and Philadelphia Press and later at the New York Herald and McClure’s Magazine. Among his earliest acquaintances was John Sloan (American, 1871 - 1951), who in turn introduced him to Robert Henri (American, 1865 - 1929). Henri’s studio became a site for social and artistic exchange, and the artist exerted considerable influence on Glackens throughout his career. Later, after the group of artists relocated to New York, Glackens participated in the legendary 1908 exhibition of The Eight that Henri organized at the Macbeth Gallery.
Luxembourg Gardens is a deftly observed leisure scene in which women and children predominate. Nursemaids attend to needlework or socialize with one another while children play. A smartly dressed boy sporting a dark hat and knee breeches stands in the center of the canvas, anchoring the scene. His hands are in his pockets and his legs are planted firmly on the ground as he oversees the two girls who play an early form of badminton called battledore. On the left, a couple engaged in intimate conversation bend their heads toward each other. An iron fence and the windows of Luxembourg Palace loom just beyond the trees and shrubs in the background.
Blackish green tree trunks divide the social activity of the gardens while unifying the space through their repetition. Above, branches and background foliage merge into one another in a rapid blur of yellow and green brushwork. The spontaneous application of paint and evidence of wet-into-wet blending suggest the painting was produced in only two or three sessions. The ground is predominantly brown and tan, with patches of highlighting giving the appearance of sunlight filtered through the trees. The subdued palette is brightened by occasional pops of color, noticeable in the red trousers and hat of the standing soldier, the royal blue skirt of the woman seated at left, and the pink frock of the young girl at center. The empty central foreground contributes to the painting’s immediacy by creating a space for the viewer to enter the scene.
The painting owes a considerable debt to Manet’s Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862, National Gallery, London) in subject and handling. William Gerdts notes that Glackens could have seen the Frenchman’s painting in the spring of 1895, when a Manet exhibition was held at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in New York. Both works feature a multifigure composition rendered in a shallow space and depict a leisurely afternoon in a Parisian public garden. There are tonal similarities as well; in each, one finds a dark, understated palette enlivened by spots of red. The points of divergence, however, are telling. Glackens’s figures are more animated and less polished than the still, dignified figures in Manet’s tableau. Glackens’s background in newspaper illustration and his interest in caricature contributed to the lively, sketchy quality of the painting.
Glackens was an admirer of the English illustrators Charles Samuel Keene (British, 1823 - 1891) and Harry Furniss, whose caricatures were distinguished by their use of clear, vivid line and emphasis on gesture, as can be seen in Keene’s work for the humor magazine Punch. From them, the artist learned the importance of rendering a scene with economy and energy. In Luxembourg Gardens, his figures are not individualized. As Rebecca Zurier notes, “Glackens rarely indicated faces of passersby, instead conveying personality through gesture, pose, or the tilt of a hat.” In the Corcoran’s canvas, personality is insinuated through the cocked bowler hat of the young boy presiding authoritatively over the children’s game and the casual body language of the woman at left, who tilts her head toward her companion with her arm resting on the back of the wire garden chair. Her body is oriented toward the man at her side with whom she is talking, yet her gaze is directed outward at the viewer. Here we see Glackens the artist as reporter, capturing the essence of a scene without dwelling on unnecessary particulars. This eye for the telling detail lends the composition a realism and vitality that distinguish it from the lighter and more genteel style of American impressionism favored by earlier artists such as Childe Hassam (American, 1859 - 1935) and Julian Alden Weir (American, 1852 - 1919).
Kerry Roeder
July 24, 2024
