The Art of George Ames Aldrich

A Biography

3 A BIOGR APH Y Wendy Gr eenhouse With Michael Wr iGht For an artist who made innumerable sales of his artworks, won prizes, belonged to artists’ organizations, circulated socially among his potential patrons, and assiduously cultivated press attention, George Ames Aldrich remains a somewhat elusive figure. Much of what we think we know about the artist, especially regarding his training, early career, and travels, is uncertain or disputed. Ironically, Aldrich ’s life is relatively well documented. Although almost none of his correspondence or sketches survive, a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and other ephemera compiled by his wifeEstafacilitatesreconstructionofmanyofhisprofessional activities at least for the years he was most active in the Midwest , between 1919 and the mid-1930s. Aldrich listed himself in several editions of the American Art Directory, occasionally wrote for publication, and actively sought venues for the exhibition and sale of his paintings. Twice married, he was by all accountsnoreclusebutacharming,gregariousindividual.Yet research reveals numerous contradictions and apparent outrightfictionsintherecordofhiscareer .Histypicallyromantic paintings, rarely dated or datable from their subject matter, provide few further clues. The account presented here greatly expands on and corrects previous ones, but it also suggests that much remains to be learned about Aldrich’s life. What does emerge is a picture of an artist drawn to self-invention and to creative fictionalizing of a piece with his characteristic romantic images. The very year of Aldrich’s birth is uncertain: he supplied either 1871 or 1872 on different occasions, although 1871 is evidently correct.1 He was born George Eugene Aldrich in Worcester, Massachusetts, the elder son of George Wellington Aldrich, a dry goods merchant, and Caroline Richmond Ames Aldrich, a dressmaker.2 Aldrich attended Dean Academy , a college preparatory school in Franklin, Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1889.3 He was widely reported to have studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , although that institution has no record of him. In the autumn of 1891, Aldrich enrolled in New York’s Art Students League, where his teachers may have included William Merritt Chase, Henry Siddons Mowbray, and John Twachtman.4 His contact with any of them was necessarily brief, however, 4 t h e a rt o f G eo r G e a M e s a l d r i ch as he remained in the school barely six months. The following summer, a Worcester newspaper noted that Aldrich had received praise for skill in pen-and-ink drawing, which would soon lead him into a career as an illustrator.5 He was said to beplanningtoexhibitoilpaintingsinanupcomingexhibition at the Boston Art Club, but there is no record that he did so.6 In 1894, a magazine on illustration reproduced a photographic figure study by Aldrich (Figure 1.1), suggesting that he was experimenting with a new medium.7 Yet his fine art ambitions evidently remained: later that year he departed for Europe for an anticipated three-year stay that stretched to 1900.8 In Paris, he followed the usual course for American art students, enrolling in the Académie Julian and the Acad émie Colarossi; he also attended “private classes of some well-known artists.”9 His teachers included academic painter Raphaël Collin, Symbolist artist Edmond Aman-Jean, and as many as four others, suggesting that he flitted somewhat from one studio and academy to another.10 All were primarily figural artists, but very few examples of Aldrich’s figure paintingsurvive.11HealsoclaimedtohavestudiedwithJames McNeill Whistler, although this too cannot be substantiated. Nominally the proprietor of the short-lived Académie Carmen in Paris, the famous American expatriate artist had little direct interaction with the students there; nor is Aldrich known to have been among the numerous etchers who came into contact with him in his role as a master printmaker.12 To have been Whistler’s student was a coveted credential that Aldrich may have invented on the basis of an actual if fleeting connection–or none at all.13 Regardless, his interest both in etching and in the shadowy tones and nocturnal settings of Tonalism, a widely influential mode in the years he began to paint landscapes, reflects the general influence of Whistler, who remained a towering figure in the international art world at the turn of the twentieth century. Aldrich’s charcoal self-portrait (Plate 1) may date to his years in France. Showing the artist as a rather romantic figure ,withshaggyhair,droopingmustache,andupturnedgaze, it demonstrates his facility as a draftsman and command of portraiture. Aldrich put these skills to work in...