Masterpieces of the sea. William T. Richards; a brief outline of his life and art

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WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

T. RICHARDS IN HIS STUDIO AT "GRAY CUFF" (ABOUT 188S)
BT ANNA M. RICHARDS, HIS DADGHTER, NOW UBS. W. T. BBEWSTEB

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE
AND ART

HARRISON S. MORRIS

DNITBD STATES COMUIgSIONEB GENEBAL TO THE BOMAN ART
EXPOSITION OF l»n. ETC„ ETC.

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1912

COPYRIGHT, I912, BT J. B. LIPPINCOTT COICPANT

PUBLISHED OCTOBER, I912

PRINTED BT J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

176684

JUL 30 1913
\\\0

N\^3 ILLUSTRATIONS

PAOS

William T. Richards in His Studio at "Gray Clitf"

(about 1895) Frontispiece

" Where Tumbling Billows Mark the Coast with Surg-
ing Foam " 8

Storm at Point Judith, R. 1 10

Guernsey Cliffs, Channel Islands 12

Tantallon Castle, near Berwick, Scotland 16

Breakers 20

Mid-Ocean 22

William T. Richards 26

Mrs. William T. Richards (Anna Matlack Richards) . . 26

February 30

Breakers near The Dumplings, Conanicut, R. 1 36

A Reef near Newport, R. 1 36

Cathedral Rocks, Achill Island, West Coast of

Ireland 40

Breakers at Beaver Tail, Conanicut Island, R, 1 44

Sachubst Beach, Newport, R. 1 50

" When the Flowing Tide Comes In " 50

The Yellow Carn, Kynance Cove, Cornwall, Wales. . 54

On the Coast of New Jersey 58

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

I

I have passed so many pleasant hours in the company

of Mr. Richards that the sweet and strong personality
has almost replaced in my memory the claims of the dis-
tinguished artist. He used to come in to see me for a
chat of half an hour or more, and he would discourse on
so much that was delightful, yet outside the pale of his
art, that I sometimes forgot, and still forget, that the
kindly, intellectual gentleman was also a masterful
painter.

He would enter almost shyly, so modest and quiet
was he — a short, slight frame, little in keeping with the
great forces he evoked in his work. He was clad in
demurest colors and often wore a soft black hat dented
at the top, which crowned his benign white hair as an

artist likes. There was nothing of the pose of his craft

7

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

about him, no eccentric hue or fashion ; and yet his man-
ner, the cast of keen observation in his face, and the
easy grace of his carriage, denoted the man of original
thought and unconstrained opinion^ the artist who sees
a little deeper into objective life than most people, and
whose instincts are, therefore, less confined to
convention.

No tame acceptance of authority was his ; he thought
for himself in his gently self-reliant fashion, and he had
evolved a tranquil philosophy that was drawn both
from just perception and wide reading.

And the face below the hat — ^what sweet serenity of
expression ; what goodness, that would laugh at prudery
but sympathize with its limitations ; what tolerance and
friendliness and acceptance; what iavitation to inter-
course, and what understanding of human needs 1 And
yet, however much the feelings and heart may have
been moved, within that face there was no grief and bit-
terness ; no vain impulses hurried it ; no ambition ruffled

8

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

its surface; only love, that was manly and unassertive,
and human kindness and intellect that ran into smiles
and quiet laughter, or into clear receptiveness. Rarely
have I seen so sweet a masculine countenance in the ma-

turity of white-haired age, as was his.

And yet he was a shrewd and careful manager of
his own fortunes. He had an unconunon grip on those
affairs in his career which brought his elder years into
competence and substantial comfort. He well knew
the worth of his canvases, while always denying them
the too great qualities assigned by others. He always
modestly put praise aside with an apt estimate of
his own talents. He knew he could draw matchlessly,
and yet there were elements in the portrayal of a break-
ing wave that he had never achieved to his own satis-
faction. If you pressed him with commendation on the
side of drawing he would shield his modesty behind his
struggles with that miracle of color under the curving

wave. He had studied this for years. His son tells us

9

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

that " he stood for hours in the early days of Atlantic
City or Cape May, with folded arms, studying the mo-
tion of the sea, — until people thought him insane. After
days of gazing, he made pencil notes of the action of
the water. He even stood for hours in a bathing suit
among the waves, trying to analyse the motion." He
could paint the action and color of the water more faith-
fully than most artists, and his rendition of it was an
inspiration to untrained eyes ; but he believed that there
was a level of truth above his execution, and he kept
his youth alive to the end in following this ideal.

His alertness in the business of art was not incom-
patible with the most unflinching adherence to his
standards of perfection. His old friend, Mr. W. H.
WiUcox, tells an anecdote of a one-time celebrated
picture by Mr. Richards which illustrates this. '' He
painted," says Mr. Willcox, "a blackberry bush in
the open air, which almost everybody conversant with

art in Philadelphia at that period still remembers. Mr.

10

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

J. R. Lambdin made a sketch at the same time, not far

from where Richards was working. A boy, looking at

Lambdin's picture, said: ' Mister, how long did it take

you to make that? ' Lambdin mentioned a few days,

when the boy said, * Good for you; that fellow up there

has been all simmier over his.' " In further illustration

of the trait in question, Mr. Willcox tells us that " the

pictiu*e was not more than twenty inches long, but it

made a marked impression in art circles, and sold for

six hundred dollars. Subsequently the owner became

financially embarrassed, and asked Richards to sell it

for him. Richards repUed by promptly taking it off

his hands at the same price. Richards probably knew

that he never would do that kind of thing again, and

wished to retain it. But it finally cracked, though the

faithful work on it is still visible."

His eldest daughter, Mrs. William F. Price, also

has in mind his unfailing standards when she says:

"" Concerning this time he used to tell a story of his

11

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

young friends and fellow artists. Mocking and jeering
at his industrious ways, they would come in on pleasant
summer afternoons when he was either working busily
to finish a picture or preparing to go out sketching, and
beg him to go with them on some pleasure trip. He
was an old fossil, they declared, and would never get
anywhere in the world if he stuck so fanatically to his
work. * To succeed you must be a man of the world,'
said one, who was later, alas ! a tragic and pathetic fail-
ure. Of the others none in any way approached his
success, but for all of them he kept an unabated and
loyal friendship/'

Perhaps the trait of self-preservation which is so
often omitted from the equipment of artists, and which
in the early days of Mr. Richards' youth was conspic-
uously so, may be of kin with the capacity to see justly,
which Mr. Richards had in a marked degree, and which
so many of our earlier painters lacked. He could see
the details of the blackberry bush with unerring power,

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

and he could, even early in life, take note of opportu-
nity with foresight and courage that yielded him the
freedom his art required. He knew his strength very
justly, and he shrewdly relied on it. Mr. Willcox says:
" He amazed me by getting married and resigning his
position as designer in order to devote himself entirely
to his art. I don*t remember which event took place
first, but I thought the latter extremely unwise — ^and
so it would have been with anyone else, but timidity had
no place in his nature."

All this denotes a touch of life beyond the monopo-
lizing palette, and in the same vein lie the wide sym-
pathies with other intellectual currents which made Mr.
Richards' company so alluring. He was apt in all the
pleasant devices of conversation, full of humor and
quiet laughter, full of diverting stories from his travels
and his contact with life in many countries, and full
of that large acquaintance with books that furnishes a

ripe mind with overflowing talk. His household was

IS

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

always strewed with books and his memory was strewed
with their varied contents. But his favorite subject,
with me, at least, was poetry, and among poets, of
Wordsworth. He would quote short passages — ^I re-
member, of the " River Duddon " sonnets — and other
beautiful and tranquil things, and talk on and on, ly-
ing back easily in his chair in the fullest enjoyment of
the subject, until this would lead him to, perhaps, re-
ligion and creed and dogma, when he would utter those
independent views of his in well-chosen fluency and
show the fuller deeps of that ripe and original mind
which had found so many secrets of the land and sea.

Even in youth this sympathy with every form of
intellectual thought and work was evident. Thus he
became one of the active members of " The Forensic
and Literary Institute,'' formed of young debaters, sev-
eral of whom afterwards made fame. One was Frank
B. Stockton, the humorist and story-teller who invented
The Lady or the Tiger " ; another was his brother^

«

14

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

John D. Stockton, of the New York Herald staff;
Judge James T. Mitchell, of the Pennsylvania Su-
preme Court, was a member; and Professor George
Stewart, of Haverford College; the Rev. J. Spencer
Kennard, and Judge Ashman, of the Philadelphia Or-
phans' Court, were others.

In the fullness of time, the independence of judg-
ment with which the eager young artist had started out
was shown in the blessed choice of a wife, and in the
events which brought f ulfihnent and made a home never
to be forgotten by those who knew it. We are told that
Dr. Matlack, the father of Mrs. Richards, was not
easUy reconcUed to the marriage of his daughter with
an obscure young artist, whose career might lead to
trials and severities. But the yoimg man was resolute
and met the elder with a firm front and a determina-
tion which, while not melting the stem old Quaker, who
perhaps looked upon art as an immorality, was not to

be put aside. The marriage took place in spite of the

15

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

interview, and a long career of brilliant success justi-
fied the step and reconciled opposing views. It was,
perhaps, this self-reliance and quiet courage of attitude

toward daily life which gave the slender frame, the un-
adventiu*ous cast of mind, a bias for painting the most

savage seas and the most overpowering cliffs. It was
always a problem to me why this small, quiet gentle-
man should have found his joy along the wildest of
coasts. We associate the big muscular man with such
employment. But Mr. Richards, light and delicate of
mould, was fascinated by the grim scenery of Tintagel
and Staffa and loved the cliffs he found in Maine and
Hhode Island.

Indeed, it was he who first built a house on the
bare granite front of Conanicut Island opposite New-
port, and it is told of him that he was one day paint-
ing on this rugged shore when a tidal wave rolled
in and almost carried him back with it. I do not re-
member to have seen him swim in the salt, though he

16

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

may have done so when he was younger, and I am told
that he knew how to swim and taught his children
to do so, but he never learned to sail a boat, and rowed
only in a most improf essional way.

His love for the sea was not of the physical order.
He had no desire to overcome its force, but he could
subdue it to his brush, and it was perhaps a sense of
this which stimulated his passion. He felt his mastery
and he loved its object.

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

II.

William T. Richards (the middle initial standing
for Trost) was born in Philadelphia on November 14,
1888. I know little about his early education, nor about
the family traits that may have inclined him to art in
an arid and improfitable day. But Miss Fidelia
Bridges, a pupil and life-long friend, tells of the unusual
skill of his grandfather Trost, a Dutch goldsmith, from
whom he may have inherited his manual dexterity and
his phenomenal patience.

Sully was about fifty when Richards was born, and

Stuart had died five years earlier, leaving the field to

•Neagle and Otis and Inman and the younger Peales;

but by the time yoimg Richards took up his brush these

had passed, and their successors were mostly the " idle

singers of an empty day." Thus he emerged upon a

barren horizon, and he made for himself those opportu-

18

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

nities for study and association which are needful aids to
talent.

I can do no better, from this stage of Mr. Richards'
career, than give the outline of his early years furnished
me. ^th characteristic kindness, by his friend and f el-
low painter, Mr. W. H. Willcox, of Germantown,
Philadelphia. Mr. Willcox has thus, genially, set down
his remembrances:

" My acquaintance with Mr. Richards began in the
early fifties of the last century. At that time he filled
a position in the firm of Archer, Warner & Miskey,
manufacturers of gas fixtures and other ornamental
work. Previous to this he was a boy in an Eighth Street
store, and seeing an advertisement for a designer for
the above firm he applied for the position. Some de-
signs were given him to copy, which he did so weU that
he was awarded the situation, and when I first knew
him, or soon after, he was receiving a salary of $1500

a year. His labors for the firm occupied nearly all his

19

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

daylight, but he followed the bent of his ambition by
drawing on wood at night. I had seen some crude pict-
ures which he exhibited at the Art Union Galleries,
which adjoined the building subsequently occupied by
the Earles, but was not favorably impressed. My pre-
ceptor, Mr. Isaac L. Williams, had made his acquaint-
ance, and invited me to call with him, which I did. He
was then living with his parents in the lower part of the
city — about Bainbridge Street, I think. I had not
formed a very high opinion of his ability; but his draw-
ings quite astonished me, and I recognized his talent.
There were few young men who aspired to paint in those
days, and oiu* mutual interest drew us together and de-
veloped into an abiding friendship. We went sketch-
ing together, and I counted much upon his criticism of
my work. I remember our making studies of some fine ^^

old chestnut trees at what is now known as Belmont,
but then as Judge Peters' farm, and each thought his

own picture the best. He was almost as ambitious as

20

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

a litterateur as he was a painter in those days, and with
some chosen spirits established a club which they named
* Forensic and Literary Institute/ I had nothing to
do with this. Long years after we made a trip to New
York together and lay awake far into the night talking
over our boyish experiences,

" After his marriage he removed his family to the
coimtry and I lost sight of him for a while. Later he
occupied a studio in the Art Union building with Alex-
ander Lawrie. Paul Weber was the most successful
landscape painter in Philadelphia at the time and repre-
sented the Germanesque side of the art, and Richards
was reported to have received instruction from him, but
I have no knowledge of it, and never thought to ask
him if it was true. There was, however, no indication
of it in his manner of painting. Turner and English
art were in the ascendancy, and Richards became an imi-
tator of the former with large ambitious canvases of

which the chief merit lay in the skilful drawing. This,

21

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

however, did not continue very long. One day I met
him on Chestnut Street, and he told me that he had
placed a picture in the studio of Mr. Hugh Davids, on
Fourth Street, which he wanted me to see. I went and
met Edmimd D. Lewis there. To say that I was both
surprised and delighted would express my feelings
mildly. All the previous absurd Turneresque imitating
had been thrown aside, and he had painted his subject
directly and most elaborately from nature, spending
months in its production. It was a complete revolution,
and was the beginning of his future success. From that
time on he ignored all fads and adhered to his own
individuality.

" He had come to live in Germantown before this,
first in Greene Street, then at the northeast corner of
Mill Street and Market Square, from which he removed
to Penn Street, near what is now Wakefield, where
he lived many years, and painted some of his most re-
markable pictures. I passed many very happy hours

in this last house.

22

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

" During this time he had become acquainted with
Mr. George Whitney, who became a most enthusiastic
patron, and for whom he did some of his very best land-
scape work. Nothing can exceed the wonderful paint-
ing of tree trunks in some of his wood pictures.

" During all this time I have no recollection of his
painting the sea. His first efforts in this direction were
remarkable for differing from the usual method of
painting it but were indifferent in quality when com-
pared with his later work, but he gradually gave his
attention to it more and more, until the sea and coast
occupied nearly all his time, his very best work being
among his latest.

" Mr. Richards' removal to Newport in the seventies
was for the express purpose of studying the sea and
shore at home, and his wise choice was manifest both
in his work and in his investment, for in addition to his
talents as a painter, he was remarkably shrewd as a
business man. He was also an indefatigable and pro-
lific worker, which was rendered possible by his uniform

£3

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

good health. He was intellectual in his tastes, affable
in disposition, and though not particularly social in his
habits, was a firm and true friend, whose loss will long
be felt by those who enjoyed his intimacy."

There seems to be little doubt that the yoimg
fellow of fifteen or so, received instruction from Paul
Weber, and it is probable that this able follower of the

grand style in landscape was his first teacher. But as
his powers grew and his knowledge of art and life ex-
panded, it became necessary to add experience to teach-
ing, and in 1858, Richards left the designing-room of
the Archer & Warner firm and devoted himself ex-
clusively to his art.

Thus he went on with such self -training and local
aids as were available until he became of age. He then
resolved to see more of the world and its stores of art
than were afforded by the narrow vistas of Philadelphia,
and with his accustomed pluck he set forth for Europe.
This was no holiday adventure as now, when the big

24

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

steamers furnish a six-day ferry across the sea. It was
a serious undertaking, especially if funds were limited,
as was the lot of young Richards.

But, with a stout heart and confidence in his own
talent, he sailed away from home, and visited Paris,
Florence and Rome, where he spent a good deal of
time with no express effect upon his painting; though
contact with the work of the contemporary French and
Italian schools was a vastly excellent discipline for a
youth who had hitherto been influenced only by the
lesser followers of those great men. He never spoke of
receiving any ideas from such masters, but it was his aim
to see at first hand what they were producing; and to
an imaginative lad with ambition to succeed in painting,
their methods and designs must have been deeply stimu-
lating. Nor did his art show any effect from a closer
knowledge of the great works of the Renaissance and
antiquity. Yet the mental discipline must have been
quietly powerful and as his drawing grew in precision

25

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

with his maturing talents it is not an extreme presmnp-
tion to say that his native gift received, at this impres-
sionable period of his life, its largest force from the
knowledge of such perfection. We know how such a
trip affected Benjamin West, his fellow-townsman of
an earlier day ; how it colored all his after career and
biased him for what was called " historical painting "
and made him a leader of his day in the land of Rey-
nolds and Gainsborough and Constable and Lawrence.
But this voyage of discovery was, perhaps, the out-
growth of other instincts than those of art, for the eter-
nal masculine had, before this, met the eternal femi-
nine and in seeking his fortunes up and down the
world he was to learn how to lay the foundations of a
home as well as to find a broad base for his artistic

career.

At the house of Robert Pearsall Smith and his wife,

Hannah Whitall Smith, in Germantown, a suburb of

Philadelphia, young Richards had met Anna Matlack,

26

i

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

an ardent, intellectual Quaker girl, who even then had
written dramas and published verses. The young peo-

4

pie were a part of the group, literary and artistic, that
the Pearsall Smiths attracted to their hospitable house,
and it was out of the association thus formed that
they came to know each other better and to prize each
other for likable traits.

Thus, before the young painter went to Europe,
they were engaged to be married, though they had
agreed to withhold the news from their friends, and
concerning this romantic episode Miss Bridges says:
" It was their mutual interest in Browning and Tenny-
son, and all the poets of that day, which drew them to-
gether " — a fine start for a household of ideals such
as found embodiment in the tranquil home to be.

Its beginning was not long delayed — for on June
80, 1856, very soon after Mr. Richards' return, they
were married by Quaker ceremony; not in the home
of the bride, because the distaste for artists stiQ pre-

27

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

vailed under the austere roof tree of Dr. Charles French
Matlack, but in the house of the painter's loyal friend,
Ellis Archer, in Philadelphia.

The honeymoon was spent in the Wyoming Valley,
Pennsylvania, and one of their labors of love during
those first months of happiness was the composition and
illustration of a manuscript volume of poems for their
friend, Hannah Whitall Smith, who had brought them
together.

But these were hard times; there was little or no
demand for pictures because of the great panic of 1856,
and the wolf had to be kept from the door by evening
work on designs for chandeliers for the always friendly
firm of Archer & Warner. The busy artist did not re-
turn to the designing room, and stiU kept the precious
hours of daylight for his own work out-of-doors; but
the evening labor gave essential help in tiding over criti-
cal months.

For about a year after this the family lived in Phila-

28

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

delphia, where their eldest son, named for the friendly

Mr. Archer, was born on April 80, 1857, and a little
later they moved to Germantown, probably by May
or June, 1857, and lived in Church Lane, near Mill
Street, for nearly two years. .

It was not until the latter part of 1857 or 1858 that
the work on gas fixtures was wholly abandoned, and
the self-reliant young art student pushed out for him-
self. Hardly can we conceive in our period, when na-
tive art receives some patronage, the boldness of such
a step in the Philadelphia of 1858. The early seventies
developed in young men a restlessness for other ideals
than those of trade or the professions. The exodus to
Europe began on the heels of William Hunt's return to
Boston from France and was inspired by the stimulating
essays of Earl Shinn. But this was a dozen years later,
and that dozen years was as hopeless as the Valley of
the Dead Sea. The city of the Quakers was drab and

grim and tasteless and respectable and the chance for

29

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

a brave youngster who took his fate in his own hands was
as one against thousands.

The English tradition prevailed without the English
motive. Dunlap has told us in his "History of the
Arts of Design" that the English of an earlier day
looked upon Art as beneath an aristocrat; in the Quaker
town, painting was an unhallowed thing fit only for
the non-elect.

But Mr. Richards had stuff in him that would have
overcome even greater discouragements. He was bom
for achievement and, without the physical power for
overcoming natural obstacles, he had the grit and the
genius for surmounting those of convention. He was a
character, and if equipped and called, he would have
gone his independent way, as Mimgo Park did, into un-
known Africa, or he was prepared to break down bar-
riers of narrow habit nearer home.

On June 7, 1858, a second son, Charles Matlack

Richards, was born, and in that same spring the family

80

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

moved into the Mehl Cottage in Germantown. In
spite of growing responsibilities and the total lack of
capital, the young painter kept alive the courage of his
convictions and painted that summer only one picture —
" The Tulip Poplar Trees/' It was a wonderfully de-
tailed study, as all his work was of this period, and
that he valued afterwards what he then produced was
shown by his buying back this canvas as well as the
earlier " Blackberry-bush." Both pictures still belong
to his family.

These were the years when he laid the f oimdation
for his unerring draughtsmanship, and the risks he took
to acquire it were richly justified by the event.

Afterwards, if any aspiring young artist asked him.

How shall I learn to paint? '' his answer always was.

Learn to drawl " Unlike some advisers, he took his

own advice; and the nimiber of his careful drawings

which are still preserved is little short of marvellous.

Concerning this time. Miss Bridges writes : " In the

SI

«

a

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

year 1860 I went to 'Philadelphia to study art. Mr.
Richards, who was ever ready to render help, especially
to women, kindly proposed my coming to paint in his
studio, where there were then some half-dozen pupils
— ^the younger Lambdin; Bispham, the animal painter;
Arthur Parton, and two or three ladies. It is from
that time that my friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Rich-
ards began. The summer of 1860, which I spent with
them in a cottage in Bethlehem, Pa., was a very hard
one for them. In the terrible excitement of the first
year of the war there was no demand for art. He was
painting out-of-doors the largest canvas he had ever
painted directly from nature and struggling with the
difficult problems of it, while he kept an eye on his two
little boys, who always accompanied him.''

Another close friend of this period — ^indeed, his chief
patron — ^who has already been mentioned, was Mr.
George Whitney. Every man of genius has had his

Maecenas. Heaven seems to watch over her chosen

32

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

children, and no doubt Mr. Richards owed much to the
taste and liberality of this greatly prized friend. Thus,
in speaking of the pictures which he painted for Mr.
Whitney, he wrote: " Most of them were selected from
the studies of each year, and it was the pleasantest part
of the season to submit to him the results of the sum-
mer work. His refined love for nature made his cordial
appreciation an incentive and a reward. The drawings
became, as it were, the expression of mutual affection,
and it was to me truly a labor of love to make sure that
he had the best I could do."

The simMner of 1860 was marked by the production
of the already mentioned " Blackberry-bush,*' and when
the season at Bethlehem was past the family seems to
have returned to the Mehl Cottage in Germantown, and
in 1861 they moved to a cottage at the corner of Coulter
and Greene Streets, where they stayed about two years.

In 1862, the oldest daughter, now Mrs. Eleanor

French Price, was bom, who possesses not a little of

88

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

her father's talent, and in 1868 they moved to Market
Square and Mill Street — a quiet, odd comer which
always seems to me a fitting frame for that old fashioned
family. In 1865, they moved to No. 9 Penn Street, a
large stone house next to the place of Mrs. Richards'
father. This was the first house which the advancing
young painter owned and he held it for twenty years.

Now, another daughter was bom, who died in in-
fancy, and in the next year — 1866 — ^Mr. Richards took
his family to Europe, spending the winter mostly at
Darmstadt and Dusseldorf . This is a significant date
because it denotes that Mr. Richards had heard the call
of Europe earlier than his fellow craftsmen and he
must have been amongst the very first of the yoimger
men of his time to go. His earlier visit had been one
of observation, but now he was intent on the study of
new theories. It was a progressive step and an adven-
turous one at that date, before the allurements of

France had begun to act, and when only Chase and

34

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

Duveneck were contemplating like exodus from other

American cities. A flying visit to Italy was also

squeezed into the few months of study, and in the middle

of December, 1867, they sailed for home on the Fulton,

the last trip across the ocean of a paddle-wheel

steamer.

One of the children describes this voyage vividly:

" They had from the first a very severe voyage, and

as they approached New York, after nearly two weeks

at sea, such a terrific snow storm came up that they had

to put to sea again, without coal and leaking badly. To

make matters worse the decks were coated thickly with

ice and one paddle box was smashed. The wreckage was

cleared away so as to allow the paddle wheel to revolve

only with the greatest difficulty. Everyone on board,

including the captain, almost gave up hope, but the

ship pulled through safely and staggered into New

York after a voyage of seventeen days.'' Among the

fellow voyagers on this exciting trip were Mr. Samuel

85

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

P. Avery, the New York picture dealer, and his family
and the congenial friendship made at that time with
this generous and intelligent man was a source of pleas-
ure and encouragement through all the rest of Mr.
Richards' career. In yet another way this remark-
able voyage greatly influenced his subsequent life. It
was then for the first time that his mind fully realized
the majesty, power and beauty of the sea, and this im-
pression, deepening with the years, led to the memorable
pictures we all know so well.

A month after this, on January thirtieth, the son
who was destined to attain the most notable distinction,
was bom. This was Theodore William Richards, who
is now Professor of Chemistry in Harvard College, a
great discoverer in physical science and recently ex-
change professor at Berlin. His birth took place in
the house of his grandfather. Dr. Charles F. Matlack,
because Mr. Richards' house, next door, was still rented.

From now till 1878 the winters were spent in the

86

BREAKERS NEAR THE DUMPUNGS, CONASICLT, R. I

\ BEEF NEAR NEWPORT, R. I

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

Gennantown house with excursions in the summer to
various places, and after this period began the visits to
the seaside, at first to Cape May and then to Atlantic
City, which have left so deep a vein in the work of the
painter of the ocean.

During these years Mr. Richards devoted much
time to the study of the technique of water-color, using
both transparent and opaque color, and both white and
colored paper. Charming and delicate drawings were
made in great number, many of them having been pur-
chased by his beloved old friend. Dr. Magoun, who upon
his death presented a large collection of them to the
Metropolitan Museum in New York. In the course
of this work he evolved a somewhat original technique
of painting large landscapes after the manner of Tur-
ner's " Rivers of France," in body water-color on the
coarse, gray paper used at that time for lining carpets,
which cost but a few cents a yard — and he was fond of

saying that he got his paper so cheap that he could af-

87

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

ford to use more water ! One of his colleagues tells us
that : " they were very difficult to execute, and their ex-
cellence depended entirely upon his knowledge of the
nature of the changes which drying produced in his
colors, for they looked entirely different wet and dry.
But many of them were remarkable pictures." After-
wards he returned almost wholly to the use of trans-
parent color on white paper, and gradually developed
unusual facility in the vigorous and sympathetic hand-
ling of this fascinating medium.

It was not until 1874 that the family rented a house
in Newport, R. I. But in the next year Mr. Richards
bought a place there, on Gibbs Avenue, which he kept
for seven years. Meantime, in 1870, the daughter
named Anna Mary was born — ^now Mrs. William
Tenney Brewster — ^whose talent for design is a conspic-
uous token of the hereditary trait, and whose successes
in England are remembered by those who knew her in
the circle of Watts; and in 1871, Herbert Maule Rich-
ards, now a professor at Columbia College, was bom.

88

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

In 1878, the family spent two years in England,
laying foundations on those coastwise cliffs which led
to the impressive canvases of rocks and surf of later
days. There was a brief stay in Paris, too ; but cheer-
ful winters were spent in London, and the summers
passed at various villages on the south and southwest
coast of England, and Professor Theodore Richards
says that during these years his father learnt much about
rocks, and the complex wave motion caused by a broken
shore.

In October, 1880, the family came back to the Ger-
mantown house; and the next year saw the building
of the house on the cliffs at Conanicut Island in Rhode
Island, which was called: " Gray Cliff.'' This was meant
only for the summer, when it is possible to paint out-
doors on that wild coast. But the needs of the inces-
sant student of nature induced the exchange of the Ger-
mantown house for a large farm six miles from Coates-
ville, in the Chester Valley, Pennsylvania, where land-
scape could be overtaken in its more surly moods of

39

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

autumn and winter. For some reason Mr. Richards
was curious about Mt. Tacoma, and in 1885 he took a
trip to the Pacific coast to see it. If two or three large
paintings of the mountain are excepted, no visible re-
sults to his art seem to have followed, as he went on
in his accustomed pathways, holding his homes intact
in Chester Valley and Conanicut until March, 1890,
when he bought a cosy, homely house at an angle of
one of those pretty Newport streets that go nowhere
but to your own front door. This he alternated with
" Gray Cliff '* and with seasons in Europe between 1885
and 1890. He would disappear for a time to come back
laden w;ith canvases and a smiling and genial vitality
which made his welcome glad and warm. He rarely
spoke of his absence, sometimes to point an anecdote
or explain a picture; and I remember, once, how he
brought back a series of bewitching water-colors trel-
lised all over with roses, of a country house in England

and its lovely court-yard, where he had been staying.

40

CATBEDEAL ROCKS, ACBILL ISLAND, WEST COAST OF IRELAND

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

He was usually reticent until animated by some lurking
memory or the wish to make plain a conviction.

Among the summer journeys there were two rather
adventurous ones with his wife, the first to the wild west-
em coast of Ireland, when they drove over four hundred
miles in jaunting cars, and another to the extreme north
of Scotland, including the Orkney and the Shetland Is-
lands. He found many subjects and much inspiration
in both places. During the Scotch trip they journeyed
for a while with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie.

Then, the winters spent in the Channel Islands, es-
pecially on Guernsey, were also full of fruitful results
in his art, but he always came back to Newport with a
feeling of happiness in his own home which no foreign
excitements or " Reiselust " ever dispelled.

But, in 1899, the tranquil flow of Mr. Richards' ideal

family life at Newport was interrupted by the loss of

" Gray Cliff." The United States Government wanted

the commanding site for a fort, and there was no appeal.

41

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

It stood — ^a long, shingled house with a roof that
tucked it snugly in, with porches overlooking the sea,
and walks around about on the rocks, with the rich ver-
dure of that coast running to the friendly threshold, and
with its little detached gray studio in hailing distance
as you approached it — ^it stood on a cliff made con-
spicuous from land and sea by a jagged white streak
of quartz running up through the gray rock to the door-
way. It looked out on the changeless blue horizon, on
the curving granite coast, and on the dune-like " Dump-
lings,** where an older generation had set the ancient
fort of that name, now, alas, gone with " Gray Cliff."
How well I recollect the somewhat rueful fun of Mr.
Richards as he pointed to the adjoining "Marbella,"
where his old friend Joseph Wharton had built a mas-
sive wall in which great boulders were stuck at inter-
vals. The artist's love of unhindered nature gave edge
to his remark: " Wharton's Teeth."

Indoors there was comfort and the invitation to en-

42

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

joy plenteous books and talk. Mrs. Richards was over-
flowing with humor, and her original opinions were ut-
tered in a quick, resonant, almost masculine voice, and
with a delightful duck of the head and glance of the
black eyes. She was of medium height, stout, and busy,
and hospitable, and gave but little evidence in casual
intercourse of the tremendous character and the fund
of erudition within. She had previously educated those
sons for college who have entered learned professions,
and one of whom is celebrated the world-round for his
discoveries in chemical and physical science; and she
had not only presided over a household and reared tal-
ented children, but she was an unremitting force in her
husband's career. Well can I still hear her amusing
rally about the difference said to exist between the free,
richly colored sketches and the finished pictures :

" I throw tables and chairs at William to make him
paint broadly " — and then a laugh contagious and un-

forgetable.

48

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

But besides all her housewifely duties, she was
busy with her well-furnished mind, and those who
have had the fortune to possess the volume of her son-
nets, called " Letter and Spirit," must acknowledge the
existence of an original talent for poetry and an inde-
pendence of thought and belief above the level of her
day. Sonnet XVIII marks the poetic type, and her
deeply religious, but quietly individual, point of view.

Alone in this dim summer light, — ^the air

Of ocean in the long sea-grass, and flight

Of shining mist above me, what delight

To seem a part of nature's self, and dare

For these brief moments to forget my share

In life's great tragedy of Wrong and Right

Before the listening heavens. On what clear height

Far from the inward voices, from despair.

Above the irretrievable years, thou reignst,

O Nature, fair as in the dawn of Earth!

Nor storms nor sunbeams ever reach thy soul;

And I, forever conquered, fight against

The inexorable limits of my birth.

And learn no wisdom from thy self-control.

44

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

And turning from these introspective sonnets, what
a contrast to open the pages of her buoyant and self-
forgetful fun, which was not so much an imitation of
the " Alice " books as a continuation of them. She had
absorbed and given out to her children all that " Alice "
held; and, wanting more, she made it — ^made it with an
invention and gaiety which ought to have won the
heart of "Lewis Carroll" himself. The illustrations
by her daughter, Anna, are another evidence of the gifts
the mother fostered in that busy and happy household.

Indeed, Mrs. Richards is so much of a part of the
intellectual career of Mr. Richards, so inwoven in his
fibre, that to describe her is further to personify him.

But even so rare a flower, so beautiful and difficult
of growth, as a home like his and hers, must fade. It
seems a waste of nature to rear such associations, such
delicate and fragile ties, mingled of high aims and af-
fectionate hopes, fair counsels and firm convictions, and
then let them dissolve. How can a delicate creation

like that arise again in a world which opposes simplicity

45

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

and makes light a moderation? Nature, I repeat, seems
prodigal of her best fruits when she allows a hallowed
and tranquil fireside to fade into forgetfulness.

Mrs. Richards died at Newport in November, 1900,
and from this separation Mr. Richards never quite re-
covered. He painted and travelled, even to the bleak
north coast of Norway, but his home on the rocks was
gone and she was gone who had embodied its spirit in
herself. He was lonely and growing old, and though
his household was made cheerful by grandchildren, and
his daughter, Mrs. Price, watdied over him tenderly,
he seemed, as I remember him then, to ebb into pathetic
old age.

Of those days there lingers in my vision one char-
acteristic glimpse: of the dark slouch hat covering the
silvery hair; the black-coated, slight figure; a wind-
blown umbrella and the quick insistent step as he left
me from a trolley-car and pushed on into the rain. He

was thinly clad for that tempest and I urged him to

46

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

stay with me. We were returning from a journey
East, but he had a sister in Philadelphia whom he wanted
to visit and his decisive mind was made up. He disap-
peared through the narrow brick street and I had no
other sight of him for months. Then, he was old and
weary and sad.

He died in the Newport house on November 8, 1905,
and was buried at Laurel Hill, in Philadelphia.

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

III.

What was there in the sea pictures of Mr. Richards
that picked them out from all others for remembrance;
that made it easy for the most critical layman to say
with conviction: " That's a Richards "?

In the first place they were frankly true. He
painted what he saw. He made no effort to put into
the picture what was not in nature.

No sensational composition; no strained effects of
light and shade; no affected accent of any sort were in
his mind. He wanted the observer to see what he had
seen and he set it down with the sense of proportion and
the eye to justness which were his central traits of
character.

Perhaps it was this recognition of simplicity as the

touchstone of the artist that gave Mr. Richards his bias

for Wordsworth. Those who know Wordsworth's

epochal preface to the " Lyrical Ballads " will under-

48

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

stand the affinity. The great English poet and seer laid
down the law that for over. two generations has gov-
erned English poetry. There was to be no more arti-
ficiality, no more theatrical appeal, no more rhetoric
and antithesis and imnatural posing. The mellow Eng-
lish speech was to return to the nursery and it was to
tell tales of plain life, unvarnished natvu-e, simple reality.
This was the preference of Mr. Richards as an
artist. He looked out at nature in a reverent spirit. He
had instincts to copy and to interpret. He never felt
the need to add adornments of his own or to force his
personality into the transcript. His was not the fame
at stake, but nature's. He never thought of himself.
He was not a high priest in theatric robes ; but an hum-
ble worshipper. Why should he be supplying additions
or trimmings to a sight already so overpowering in its
beauty and mystery? If he could get the facts stated
in a language every eye could recognize — ^that was a

great thing, that was the duty nature was fulfilling

49

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

through him. He was to see justly and report accu-
rately and the soul within him would make pictures if
he only kept his head level and his eye alert and bent
to his task.

Without a soul to respond to something larger in
nature than the detail, this faithful copying would, of
course, result only in an accurate photograph. There
would be a transcript, with the spirit omitted, as in the
case with so much that is called art — a semblance of
form without its moving principle.

But it was Mr. Richards' high merit as a man and as
an artist that he brought to this task, so devotedly and
lovingly performed, a soul that infused life into the
work ; that he lent it his own devout and tender love of
beauty and his veneration of nature's living impulse.
He copied what he saw with minute fidelity; he was
led to copy because he loved what he saw and recog-
nized the divine light shining through its surfaces; but

if he had not also brought to the worship of nature the

50

WACHUKST BEACH, NEWPORT. R. I.

■WHEN THE FLOWING TIDE COMES IN"

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

soul which stood for him, and him alone — ^his penetrat-
ing individuality — ^he would not have made works which
all his contemporaries acknowledge as embodiments of
truth and beauty when they say: " That is a Richards."
And this suffusion of his art into himself was shown
as weU in his color. He was not at the beginning a
rich or great colorist. If he had shortcomings in his
talent, color was the principal of them. He had indi-
viduality and personal traits in his color as he had in
all he did. This was another manifestation of the
spirit's influence which made a unit of his work. All
that he did stood for something distinctly emanating
from himself. But color was not his strong point, as
were fidelity and drawing and composition and selec-
tion. He was nearly always unerring in these, but in
color he was sometimes perfect in detail, as often with
that diflScult under-side of a wave curving to a fall
where the sudzy white mingles with the ineffable green ;

and again he would fail to give the freshness

51

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

and floating depth to a sky full of clouds, or the silvery
gray of a long vista of New Jersey beach. He knew
nature so well, was so much in her secrets, that he was
alive to all her myriad beauties of tint and changing
hue; but his paint did not always take on the magic of
his model, tho' in pictures like that memorable one of
the bare tracery of the trees against a winter's sunset
his brush was dipped into tones that were not far from
nature's own.

It was, indeed, characteristic that Mr. Richards
should restrain himself in the use of color. His whole
life was one of salutary restraint. He was half -Quaker
in his treatment of the alternatives which life presented
to him. He liked simple clothes, and plain surround-
ings; why should he not see nature in her simpler
colors; or, when confronted with a choice, cleave to the
subdued and quiet and imsensational? He had his own
wise ways and he followed them whether they led from

convention or not. He would no doubt have admired

52

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

Lumenaise or Ryder for glorious and precious color;
no doubt he enjoyed the varied fashions in dress of
France and Italy; but he did not adopt the one nor
covet the other — ^he went, like the single-hearted gentle-
man he was, after his own leading and independently in-
terpreted his own mind.

We are told that sometimes in speaking of his earlier
work, he would call it monochromatic, and this was, in
the main, a just criticism from a self -analysing spirit;
but those also who have seen many of his last canvases
must recognize a veritable " sea-change " in his variety
and richness of color — ^not constant but occasional, and
indeed sometimes implying that he too, like Thomas
Hovenden and Alexander Harrison, had instinctively
taken what was best, by compromise and adaptation, from
the Impressionists. Indeed, he was glad to express his
obligation to this modem school for help when he felt
that he could well accept it; although he abhorred the

prevalent neglect of careful drawing and inattention to

5S

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

form and modelling. His always progressive mind

was thus alert for what could add to his equipment even

when he had passed into the sixties.

It was in drawing that Mr. Richards was a master.

From the first this seems to have been implanted in

him. I do not mean that it came instinctively; no such

trait ever comes without work and thought. But the

germ of correct vision and apt manual dexterity must

have been born with him; and luckily he was gifted with

a mind and a bodily diligence which brought that germ

out and developed it to its limit. His patience and his

diligence were, of course, essential to the full flowering

of this faculty. He could not have drawn so masterfully

if he had not studied unceasingly; but this is only saying

that Mr. Richards WiEis a marked man from the start,

and if I make this clear in a loving attempt to do him

justice I shall have done all I sought to do.

I have seen that other master of drawing, William

54

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

M. Chase, stand before a marine of Mr. Richards' and,
lifting his stovepipe hat, with a low bow, say:

" I take my hat off to him. He's a master of draw-
ing — I take off my hat "

And if any one wanted to test this faculty of Mr,
Richards' artistic equipment, after such authoritative
statement, he need only look at the black and white re-
productions of the varied marines and landscapes and
notice how much they resemble photographs direct from
nature; how true they are to the form, and mass and
relative distance and aerial perspective of the world
about us. This is what is meant by drawing, and only
a draughtsman of genius can draw with paint in that
faultless and fearless manner.

The sister-sense to drawing — ^indeed, the elder sis-
ter — ^is, of course, observation. Without keen insight
and the patience to watch the processes of nature that

abound in beautiful profusion about us, there is no f oun-

65

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

dation for reproducing them enduringly with a brush.
What you don't observe you cannot describe or depict.
We have seen that this trait of unhurried and penetrat-
ing observation was one of those gifts on which Mr.
Richards built his life. He meant to see nature close and
see it whole, and he never faltered from the beginning
in this principle of design and drawing. He needed to
draw the movement and animation of breaking or surg-
ing waves, and he went to the best school in the uni-
verse, the surf itself. He found the picturing of the
sea a tradition established by Claude and continued
by Turner. Vague breadths and reaches of the shores
and the ocean were suggested by color and form, and
deep vistas of sunlight or cloud carried the eye away
from fact into the unreality of visions — ^beautiful, in-
spiring and masterly as dreams; but more in the nature
of " impressions " than those so-called of our time.
This rendition of the facts that Mr. Richards loved

he could not accept. For him, nature was supremely

56

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

beautiful only when it was true, and he resolved, with
the spirit of his age upon him, to give up visions and
seek the miraculous facts.

It is to illustrate this characteristic that I am going
to quote a passage from one of the soundest critics of
art we have had in this country, Dr, Alfred C. Lamb-
din, an old friend of Mr. Richards', whose deeply-based
views never faltered in dealing with the artist's gifts.

" With that power of analysis which always distin-
guishes him he strove to ascertain the laws which gov-
ern the wave forms, and from that time for several
years he devoted all his intelligence to the study of the
sea. To him was given in reward that rare opportunity
which comes to so few men, to do a new thing. No
artist had ever before studied the wave motions in an
exact and scientific manner, so as to understand the re-
lations of one wave to another and of all to the under-
currents and the wind and the tide, and all those va-
ried forces which make the water on one shore, or under

57

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

one sky, so different from the water on another shore
or under another sky. This study was an arduous one.
The facts must all be stored in the memory and the ef-
fect worked out by a mental process. To do this and
at the same time add to the result of an intellectual
process the vigor and robustness which comes from work
done directly in the presence of the thing depicted was
an impossibility all at once, and the earlier attempts
were marked by a thinness and smallness of style, which
gave great offense to the learned art critics. But no
one could deny that the facts were for the first time ac-
curately stated, and the effect upon the other painters
of the sea was immense. It worked a revelation in the
minds of the younger men; and it will never again be
possible to make the world accept the old-fashioned wave
drawing for accurate representation."

It would hardly be possible to estimate the number

of pictures produced by Mr. Richards in his long and

58

is

/

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

busy career. From the eighteen-fif ties to nineteen hun-
dred and five is a wide stretch — ^fifty-five years of cease-
less sowing makes a great harvest. But nobody could
now trace all the work he did. We realize its extent
by the examples known to each of us, prized dearly by
their owners and held in many American cities publicly
and privately.

If the many who own " A Richards " could be led
to tell us of it, the record would roll up a great tribute
to the genius and industry of one independent Ameri-
can man of thought and action in a day of apathy; and
it would prove, some time, of value for the annals
of a period in American art, rich in its formative influ-
ences toward a distinctive national school.

Of this movement, William T. Richards was a be-
ginner and a leader. If we stand now for anjiihing
in art it is for the straightforward conveyance of facts.
This is not the utmost limit of any art. There are

ideals beyond facts and imaginative truths beyond ideals.

59

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS

But no national art has ever begun at the top and grown
backwards. Method must be learnt before the thing to
be expressed and the thing expressed comes before im-
aginative excursions. Through these stages we have
been going, and one of the surest and safest guides in
method and expression was Mr. Richards. He had his
own ideals, his own visions of grandeur in cliff and sea,
he made his own adventurous way in the dizzy places
of higher art, and he has left noble examples, poetic
and upUf ting. But his great merit was his painstaking
application, his impeccable drawing, his humble and
loving observation of nature, and his mastery of his art*

One of the lasting impressions of one's life is that

scene at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,

when it was in its glory and conferred on its old and

honored pupil and Academician the highest award in its

gift: the Gold Medal of Honor. At that dinner, where

all the American artists of the time were grouped

60

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA

amongst their works, he was acclaimed by his peers for
his merits, and his modest emotions are never to be for-
gotten, his pleasure and his deprecating, appealing
acceptance of recognition, so generous and so just.

His had been a long patient journey, traversing
many ways of deprivation and many upward and down-
ward paths. There were honoris enough — ^at the " Cen-
tennial," in 1876, in Paris, and in Philadelphia at an
earlier day; but this was the culminating glory and it
came fitly at the end : a golden crown for his silver locks.

AROSObb?*)?!

b89050667971a

V

KOHLER ART IIBRARY

OCNCO