I was having a conversation with a couple of my neighbors last week and it came up that one of them hadn’t heard the music of a very popular band from long ago until recently. He wasn’t born in the United States, so it was understandable. I said “Isn’t it great that no matter how old you are, it’s never too late to discover new art.”
You’ve heard me say that same thing here many times before, I know. But I’ll keep saying it because it’s encouraging. Never let anyone make you feel bad about not knowing a particular artist.
Only recently have I become familiar with an American painter named Theodore Robinson who was born this week in 1852 in Vermont. When he was young, his family relocated to
Wisconsin, but the year he turned 22 he moved back east to New York City. He started taking art classes at the National Academy of Design and then at the recently founded Art Students League. That school was formed by students who felt the National Academy was too stuck in its ways and resistant to what was new.
Robinson moved on to Paris a couple of years later to study with the famous portrait painter known as Carolus-Duran at his studio on the Left Bank. John Singer Sargent, whose name you may have heard, was also one of Duran’s students. The first time Robinson ever exhibited any of his work was in the Paris Salon show of 1877.
He returned to the U.S. in 1879 and opened his own studio in New York. He also took on students and joined the Society of American Artists, a relatively new group that believed older associations were too restrictive and conservative. He must have felt restless though—felt like he somehow wasn’t done with France—felt like there was some reason he had to go back. So, he returned in 1884.
This time he didn’t stay in Paris but went to a little town called Giverny. That was where famed painter Claude Monet had settled in and was turning out revolutionary canvases that would become known as impressionism.
Within a few years Robinson had become friends with Monet and moved in next door. His own paintings now became much more impressionistic. The two became close and often talked together about each other’s work, offering suggestions and giving advice.
Robinson returned to the United States in 1892, having every intention, however, of going back to Giverny at some point. He quickly got teaching gigs in Brooklyn, Princeton, and Philadelphia, and perhaps unsurprisingly emerged as a leader of American Impressionism.
He also picked up his pen, but that’s a story for another time.
