Hare and Hunting Boots, 1926

Walt Kuhn maintained an interest in the genre of still life painting throughout his career. He began with fruit and flower subjects, and in 1925 he expanded his repertoire to game pieces with Still Life—Ducks (Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts) and Hare (location unknown). The following year he painted Hare and Hunting Boots and Mallards (Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan). Kuhn and his wife, Vera, kept meticulous records, and they identified the subject of the National Gallery’s still life as a Canadian hare that he bought at A. Silz,[1]  [1]
The Kuhns’ files refer to the store as “Silz and Co.” Patent office records show the company as A. Silz, Inc. See Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office 284 (March 1921): cxxvii. a poultry, game, and meat supplier near the artist’s studio at 23 East 14th Street.[2]  [2]
The Kuhns’ files describe that the work was “painted direct from model in one sitting due to fact that rabbit collapses soon after being taken out of cold storage.” The files for Hare and Hare and Hunting Boots also note that the two paintings used the same hare, but the paintings are dated (on the canvases) 1925 and 1926 respectively. Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, box 12, folder 1, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/slideshowViewer.htm?damspath=/CollectionsOnline/kuhnwalt/Box_0012/Folder_001. In the book that he wrote with Paul Bird in 1940, Kuhn described Hare and Hunting Boots lyrically: “Out of Dutch painting, Chardin, and the woods of America comes this quiet, masculine still life. No theatrics—just a limp rabbit and muddy boots thrown in the corner. But the painting of the soft fur is whipped into a convincing simulation of the actual subject. The picture has that strange loneliness of men without women.”[3]  [3]
Paul Bird, Fifty Paintings by Walt Kuhn (New York and London, 1940), cat. 2. Philip Rhys Adams noted that the commentaries on the paintings from this source “are Paul Bird’s, but their content is original Walt Kuhn.” Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work (Columbus, OH, 1978), 102.

This stark, desolate image is one of Kuhn’s most important early paintings, and it exhibits the expressive power characteristic of his mature work. The color palette is restricted to tans and browns, a dark vertical edge on the far left balancing the brown of the boots on the far right. The arrangement is humble, the earthy boots signaling practicality rather than affluence. Both the hare and the boots slump to one side, lifeless and abandoned, though one shoelace is curiously animated and snakes sideways in an S curve.

It is likely that Kuhn’s painting is a deliberate quotation of Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 - 1890), who painted five still lifes with boots while in Paris in the late 1880s [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Vincent van Gogh, A Pair of Boots, 1887, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, 1950.302.[4]  [4]
The other four paintings are listed in J.-B. de la Faille, The Works of Vincent Van Gogh: His Paintings and Drawings, rev. ed., 4 vols. (New York, 1970), F255, F331, F332, and F332a. Kuhn assisted in selecting the European works of art for the 1913 Armory Show in New York, which exhibited 18 paintings by Van Gogh, including a still life of shoes. While en route to the United States by ship after an Armory Show scouting expedition, Kuhn also worked on a translation of Van Gogh’s letters with Arthur B. Davies (American, 1862 - 1928).[5]  [5]
The Van Gogh painting of shoes in the Armory Show was Nature morte. Souliers de bois, now titled A Pair of Leather Clogs (1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). For the unpublished manuscript of the Van Gogh letters Kuhn dictated to Davies in November 1912, see Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, box 2, folder 17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/slideshowViewer.htm?damspath=/CollectionsOnline/kuhnwalt/Box_0002/Folder_017.

Kuhn’s still life subjects of this period respond to a northern European tradition of game and trophy subjects, such as Still Life with Dead Game (1661) by Willem van Aelst (Dutch, 1627 - 1683) in the National Gallery’s collection. An exhibition of works by the 18th-century painter Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699 - 1779), celebrated for his still lifes and genre scenes, was held at Wildenstein and Company, New York, in 1926 and may have reinforced Kuhn’s interest in this type of still life. Two compositions with dead hares were part of the exhibition, including Still Life with a Hare [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Jean Siméon Chardin, Still Life with a Hare, c. 1730, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Henry P. McIlhenny, 1958.[6]  [6]
See Exhibition of Paintings by J.-B.-S. Chardin (New York, 1926), illus. VIII, Le Lapin et la Gibecière, and IX, La Lièvre. La Lièvre is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as Still Life with a Hare. Similar to this Chardin still life, Kuhn’s painting does not relish in the triumph of the hunt, nor does it tantalize the viewer with an opulent setting. Instead the work evokes a quiet pathos.

The Kuhns’ files record that Hare and Hunting Boots “received much favorable comment” when it was exhibited at the Marie Harriman Gallery in 1930 and that the gallery “said they could have sold it, if cheaper, but it is too complete a picture to let go cheap.” Evidently the gallery held firm. The Kuhns noted that on July 12, 1938, Helen Adair, secretary to poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, requested the painting’s value, “stating that the picture was a great favorite of [Millay’s] and that she would like to have it if she could afford the price,” but nothing came of the matter.[7]  [7]
Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, box 12, folder 1, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/slideshowViewer.htm?damspath=/CollectionsOnline/kuhnwalt/Box_0012/Folder_001. The painting remained in the artist’s collection for the rest of his life.

Robert Torchia

July 24, 2024