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In pursuit of a higher truth: the landscape paintings of Charles Morris Young

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2005 by Charles Teaze Clark

In the first decades of the twentieth century Charles Morris Young was considered by many to be a leading member of the Pennsylvania school of landscape painting. (1) By the end of the century, his reputation had all but vanished, owing in part to his not having lived in Bucks County, the locus and wellspring of Pennsylvania impressionism, and in part to the breadth of his subjects, which ultimately made it difficult if not impossible to categorize him as a member of any regional or stylistic school.

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Young was born on September 23, 1869, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to Christopher and Anna Swisher Young. His father had left the United States Department of the Treasury in Washington, D. C., in the early 1860s for a farm near the Cemetery Ridge battlefield, where he struggled to provide for his family. (2) His four children shared the responsibilities of running the farm. Since Christopher Young also taught at a local school, Charles Morris Young's labors were mitigated by an intellectual atmosphere further enriched by his father's interest in art history. A book on the English painter John Constable (1776-1837) in his father's library sparked Young's interest in sketching the farms and countryside around Gettysburg.

In later life Young recalled the folklore and the tourist industry that arose in the area in the wake of the Civil War. As a youth he carved battle scenes on walking sticks for the tourist trade and sold watercolors and drawings of strategic sites such as the headquarters of General George Gordon Meade (1815-1872) through the gallery of a local photographer. (3)

The dual influences of farm life and the Civil War continued to affect Young. But it was his abiding love for the Gettysburg countryside and his urge to capture the fleeting effects of weather, light, and season that shaped him as an artist. Unable to afford college, Young rented a studio in Gettysburg in 1889, where he accepted students, and in his spare time continued to train himself through books and by visiting nearby museums, notably the William Walters collection (the beginnings of what is now the Walters Art Museum) in Baltimore. Income from the sale of Young's Civil War souvenirs and from his teaching proved sufficient to allow him to enroll in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia by 1891. (4)

At the academy Young followed his contemporaries Edward Willis Redfield (1869-1965) and Walter Elmer Schofield (1867-1944), who, along with Daniel Garber (1880-1958), are today recognized as among the most important landscape painters to rise from the school's ranks at this time. Young enrolled in day and night classes, receiving a conventional grounding in drawing from plaster casts and in life drawing. He studied under two influential teachers: Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912), whom Young greatly admired, and Robert William Vonnoh (1858-1933), whose academic impressionism had a transforming effect on many students at the academy, including Young. (5)

Winter Fields, the first of some fifty annual contributions by Young to the academy's annual exhibitions, starting in 1891, as well as Wet Weather and The Harvest of Death: Wheat Field at Gettysburg After the Battle, which hung at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, have yet to be located. (6) However, a cache of his early paintings and drawings has recently come to light. It consists largely of rural scenes of Gettysburg in all seasons and displays a pervading interest in atmosphere and light. (7) A sketch of Wet Weather shows that the composition was a conventional Barbizon influenced grouping of cattle; this and other works of the period suggest that Young had an eye on the bucolic subjects of successful American animalier painters including Henry Singlewood Bisbing (1849-1933), who was awarded the Pennsylvania Academy's Temple Gold Medal in 1892. (8)

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Young received the academy's Charles Toppan Prize for the most promising student work in 1894. He joined the circle of artists who met regularly at the studios of Charles Grafly (1862-1929) and Robert Henri (1865-1929)--experiences he looked back upon with pleasure. On the recommendation of the academy's secretary and managing director, Harrison S. Morris (1856-1948), Young was hired as an instructor at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) in 1896. (9) At the same time he remained a student at the academy through 1897, the year in which he, John Sloan (1871-1951), William Glackens (1870-1938), and other artists were commissioned to paint murals for the academy's lecture room. Young would later repudiate his contribution, which was entitled Concerted Music and depicted a group of classically garbed performers, because he felt it failed to rise to a level of distinction. (10)

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Young went abroad in the fall of 1897. (11) His ultimate destination was Paris, where he enrolled at the Academie Colarossi, but he found his courses unrewarding and took greater pleasure sharing a studio with a group of students who sought informal advice from established painters. The esteemed landscape and figure painter Jean Charles Cazin (1841-1901) visited one day and upon investigating Young's efforts, commented, "Continuez, monsieur, vous avez l'oeil de paysage" (Continue, sir, you have an eye for landscape). (12) L'Hiver a Moret of 1898 (private collection) is a seminal work from this period. It depicts the snow-covered village of Moret-sur-Loing at the edge of the icy river in a tonal palette of pale gray-blues and earth tones, reflecting the influences of Cazin and James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). It was accepted for the 1898 exhibition at the Salon and was later purchased by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). (13)

In pursuit of a higher truth: the landscape paintings of Charles Morris Young

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2005 by Charles Teaze Clark

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