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The Tile Club

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2000 by Ronald G. Pisano

The aesthetic movement in the United States was in part prompted by the lavish display of decorative arts at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, organized by the United States Centennial Commission and held in Philadelphia. Of particular interest was the British exhibit, for the British empire was at its height and prevailing taste was dominated by the standards set by designers such as Christopher Dresser, Charles Locke Eastlake, William Morris, Bruce James Talbert, and Walter Crane. Dresser, in fact, came to see the Centennial Exhibition and stayed on in Philadelphia to lecture about design. [1]

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American artists responded to the British movement in various ways. The artists and designers Louis Comfort Tiffany, Samuel Colman, Lockwood de Forest, and Candace Wheeler founded the decorative arts firm Associated Artists in 1879. [2] Two years earlier another much less formal organization, the Tile Club, was founded by the architect Edward Wimbridge and the painter Walter Paris, two Englishmen living in New York City. The prescribed quota of twelve members was soon filled by ten Americans: the illustrators Edwin Austin Abbey, Charles Stanley Rein-hart, and Francis Hopkinson Smith; the painters Winslow Homer, Julian Alden Weir, Arthur Quartley, and Robert Swain Gifford; the sculptor William Rudolph O'Donovan; and the journalists William Mackay Laffan and Earl Shin. [3] The Tile Club Flourished for the ensuing decade, with those who dropped out being replaced with new recruits carefully selected and unanimously approved.

From the start the Tile Club was intended to be an informal but exclusive social organization and every member was given a nickname. [4] However; the group was also determined to establish an official raison d'etre. Resigned to the fact that the United States had succumbed to the decorative mania, the club members decided to follow this lead, finding inspiration for their aesthetic mission in the British arts and crafts movement. Although only the two founders were actually English. Abbey was a staunch Anglophile, declaring that the Centennial Exhibition in the city of his birth was his "greatest eye-opener" and that the British exhibit of crafts there was "the most interesting and inspiring." [5] Club members debated what line of English-inspired craft they should pursue, with a disciple of William Morris suggesting wallpaper, and a follower of East-lake preferring furniture. [6] It was Wimbridge, however, who came up with the winning idea--tiles, although none of the members are known to have had any prior experience painting tiles.

It was decided that the group would meet each Wednesday evening in the studio of one of the artist members on a rotating basis. They started with eight-inch-square biscuit blanks made by Wedgwood or Minton, Hollins and Company and preferred vitreous paint applied with brushes, palette knives, or their fingers. As no subject was prescribed, the resulting tiles include figure pieces, landscapes, marine scenes, still lifes, and some purely decorative designs. Colors were for the most part limited to shades of black, brown or "Victoria" blue. However, Homer used a broader spectrum of bright colors. [7]

The activities and methods of the Tile Club were first introduced to the public in an article by William Laffan in Scribner's Monthly of January 1879, which was illustrated by some of the artist members. Wimbridge's illustration (Fig.1) clearly shows that the group intended their work to be used in fireplace surrounds. How many surrounds were completed is not known; the two that survive are both by Homer. [8] Of these, Shepherd and Shepherdess or Pastoral (Pl. V) shows one of Homer's favorite subjects at the time. His double tile Resting Shepherdess (Pl. VI) and others were based on sketches and paintings he made at a friend's farm in Mountainville, New York. In their conception they are indebted to the illustrations of Walter Crane in his children's book. The Baby's Opera: A Book of Old Rhymes with New Dresses, published in London and New York in 1877. Crane's illustrations were soon adapted as tile designs and produced by the English manufacturers T. and R. Boote and Minton, Hollins and Company. [9] Altho ugh the similarity of Homer's shepherdesses to Crane's (see Pl. IV) is obvious, the design elements are very different. Crane's image is flat and unmodulated and nearly fills the field, whereas Homer's Resting Shepherdess has form and depth and exhibits subtle effects of light and atmosphere in the ample background. This points up the major difference between American Tile Club painters and their British counterparts. While the English treated their tiles as squares to be filled decoratively, with design the paramount concern, the Americans usually treated their tiles like a canvas or panel on which to create a painting (see Pl. XII). [10]

During the summer of 1878, sponsored by Scribner's Monthly, the Tile Club traveled to East Hampton, Long Island, ostensibly to pay homage to the memory of the actor and playwright John Howard Payne (1791-1852), who was best known for his popular ballad "Home Sweet Home." An account of the trip appeared in an article written and illustrated by the members entitled "The Tile Club at Play," and published in Scribner's Monthly in February 1879. [11] Throughout the article the members made both direct and oblique references to the English heritage on Long Island. They wore "London" walking boots, which made them "footsore from the mere superiority of their "footsore from the mere superiority of their equipment." [12] Their first stop on their way to East Hampton was "Castle Conklin on Captree Island off the South Shore of Long Island. Later they went on to Bridgehampton, where they took a short break while Reinhart purchased a Queen Anne table. Although they had intended to "guy" (an old English term meaning make fun of) Payne, whose popularity was so great in East Hampton that there were at least three houses said to have been the home of his birth, they were soon won over by the charm of the village and its inhabitants. Many local residents still lived in eighteenth-century shingled cottages, used old English phrases, and--most important--were willing to pose for painters. Quartley immortalized one young woman in his tile Girl on Beach, East Hampton (Pl. XII), and Abbey commemorated their visit in the watercolor shown in Plate IX, which was later used as an illustration in the article about the visit. [13] Before returning to New York the travelers paid tribute to "King" David Pharaoh and "Queen" Amelia, who presided over what remained of the once valorous Montauk Indians. To their delight, the members discovered pinned to the wall of King Pharaoh's simple house at Montauk Point a broadside showing figures dressed in English cricketing clothes. [14]

The Tile Club

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2000 by Ronald G. Pisano

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