The Tile Club

In 1885 Abbey introduced John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) to Broadway, where he began work on his famous painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose of 1885-1886 (Tate Gallery, London). In the fall of that year Henry James (1843-1916) joined the contingent, writing eloquently of its activities, which included visits to the theater in Stratford. The group was especially delighted when the immensely popular American actress Mary Anderson settled in Broadway, at Court Farm, which she bought as a retreat from her adoring public on both sides of the Atlantic. Sarony's photographs of Anderson are among his most famous, and Millet designed costumes for one of her theater productions. In Broadway she posed for her friends, including Abbey, who painted her in An Old Song (Pl. X). [27] That painting, and other works by Tile Club members, were included in the group's last and most enduring effort, A Book of the Tile Club. [28] Other contributions by members show the influence of English art at the time. These include Millet's Handmaiden (Pl. XI), which is indebted to the neo-Grec style made popular by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836--1912), and Vedder's masterpiece The Pleiades (Fig. 4), elements of which are closely related to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833--1898), [29] The deluxe book was designed by Stanford White, and had endpapers by George Willoughby Maynard (1843--1923), both club members.

Despite an inspiring speech by Abbey at a Tile Club dinner given in his honor in New York City in the spring of 1886, [30] the club was clearly in decline. At about this time Millet proposed Sargent for membership, but nothing came of it, [31] for the club finally ceased to exist. Nonetheless, the Anglo-American alliance continued as many members on both sides of the Atlantic became celebrated artists with shared goals and concerns.

A traveling exhibition entitled The Tile Club and The Aesthetic Movement in America (1877--1887) is on view at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, from February 5 until May 7, and at the Frick art Museum in Pittsburgh from May 19 to August 13. The guest curator is Ronald G. Pisano, who also wrote the central essay in the accompanying catalogue.

RONALD G. PISANO is an independent art historian and the author of several books on Long Island landscane painting and the life and works of Williams Merritt Chase.

(1.) For more about the aesthetic movement in the United States, see Doreen Bolger Burke, "Painters and Sculptors in a Decorative Age," in In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rizzoli, New York, 1986), pp.294--339.

(2.) For more about Associated Artists see Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, "Dictionary of Architects, Artisans, and Manufacturers," ibid.. pp. 474-475, 481--483.

(3.) For information about the establishement of the Tile Club, see William Mackay Laffan, "The Tile Club at Work," Scribner's Monthly, vol. 17, no. 3 (January 1879), pp. 401-409. For biographical sketches of the members, see Constance Eleanore Koppelman, Nature in Art and Culture: The Tile Club Artists, 1870--1900 (university Dissertation Services, Arm Arbor, Michigan, 1993).