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The Tile Club
Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2000 by Ronald G. Pisano
The charm and atmosphere of Port Jefferson were aptly captured in F. Hopkinson Smith's painting The House of the Reckless Landlord. (Pl, VIII), which was used as an illustration in "The Title Club Ashore," a combined account of the club's trips of 1880 and 1881 that appeared in the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine in February 1882. [19]
Early in 1882 members of the Tile Club began working on what would be their most influential publication to date--Harper's Christmas issue, a special deluxe edition of Harper's New Monthly Magazine published in December 1882 and issued both in the United States and England. The American artist Eliha Vedder, recently returned on a visit to New York City from Italy, and a newly made member of the club, collaborated with Parsons on a cover design for the magazine (see P1. VII). Illustration by other members complemented stories, poems, and songs by popular writers including Mark Twain (1835-1910). The venture was extremely successful, attracting the attention of Vincent van Gogh (1835-1890) who, when he saw the English edition, wrote favorably of the Tile Club and particularly the work of Abbey and Boughton. [20]
Abbey and Parsons returned to London in May of 1882, having handed in their work on the special issue. [21] In the summer of 1883 Vedder returned to Rome, and Millet departed for England, where he spent the summer painting in Warwickshire with Abbey and Parsons. They stayed at the White Lion Inn in Bidford-on-Avon, which is purported to be the setting for Millet's lovely painting. The Window Seat (Pl. XIV). [22] All three artists liked painting scenes set in seventeenth-century England, and the villages in the English countryside provided ample material on which to base their work. That fall, while still at the White Lion Inn, Millet wrote Vedder that the Tile Club was beginning to "peter out". [23] Although new members continuously replaced those who had departed, the group lost its original focus and other art organizations and social clubs were being formed. The Tile Clubs headquarters at 58 1/2 West Tenth Street was rarely used, even though it was Abbey's studio, which he had left to the club when he ret urned to England. It had been refurbished by Stanford White (1853-1906), a recently inducted member.
Abbey, Parsons, Millet, and Boughton kept in touch with their colleagues in the United States, but they had formed their own group, the kinsmen, which consisted exclusively of Anglo-American painters, writers, and actors. [24] In 1884 the American writer Laurence Hutton (1843-1904), one of the Kinsmen, introduced Millet and his wife, Lily, to the hamlet of Broadway in Worcestershire, about fifteen miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. [25] They were so charmed by this quaint village that they made it their home, settling first at Farnham House, a Jacobean structure that was the perfect setting for Millet's domestic paintings and where they were joined by Abbey and Parsons. In March 1886, Millet and Abbey took a seven-year lease on the more commodious Russell House, and not long afterward Broadway became an Anglo-American art colony. [26]
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