May Night

1906

Willard Leroy Metcalf

Painter, American, 1858 - 1925

Moonlight bathes a grassy lawn, where a woman walks to a building with columns and a triangular roof in this vertical painting. To our left of center, the building glows white. The rest of the landscape is loosely painted with blended strokes, giving it a soft look and making some details difficult to make out. To our right, the woman has brown hair and wears a long white dress that trails on the shadow-dappled lawn. She approaches the front of the building, which has four steps as wide as the building that lead up to four columns. A form at the base of one of the columns suggests another woman wearing a full, white dress sitting at the top of the stairs. A half-round window, flat across the bottom, is dark in the center of the triangular pediment above. The left side of the building is mostly hidden behind tall bushes and a slender tree like a crape myrtle, which reaches off the top edge of the canvas. A dark orange glow is visible from a side window between the bushes, and soft yellow-white light reflects on the backs of the columns and the seated person at the front of the building. Dark blue-green trees stand beyond the building on the right, where a large flowering horse-chestnut tree there dominates the upper right corner of the painting. The sky is clear ocean blue with a handful of stars that show through. The paint is thinly applied so the texture of the canvas shows through in some areas. The artist signed and dated the painting in black in the lower left corner, “W. L. Metcalf 06.”

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Completed during his second of three summers at the burgeoning artists' colony in picturesque Old Lyme, Connecticut, May Night is Willard Metcalf's homage to the creative ferment he experienced there and to its host, Florence Griswold. The focus of this moonlit nocturne is the late-Georgian-style home of Miss Florence, as she was known, the last surviving member of a prominent local shipbuilding family. Forced to take in boarders to survive financially, Miss Florence welcomed several landscape painters to her home, including Childe Hassam.

Metcalf studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and later in Paris at the Académie Julian, where he frequented French artist colonies, including Giverny where he visited Claude Monet. There, Metcalf's exposure to French Impressionism and the development of his interests in botany and ornithology predisposed him to accept invitations from Miss Florence and his old friend Hassam to visit Old Lyme. Apparently thrilled with the natural beauty, artistic camaraderie, and opportunities to paint outdoors, Metcalf enjoyed a productive first summer in Old Lyme in 1905. He likely conceived May Night before returning the following May, and the ambitious canvas apparently occupied him through the following autumn. His work was aided by inclement weather early that summer; as Hassam wrote to his fellow painter J. Alden Weir, "Metty [Metcalf] is working hard at a moonlight. We are all doing moonlights. The weather has been so bad that we have been forced to it."

May Night shows an ethereally dressed figure that surely represents Miss Florence, for whom Metcalf painted the canvas, crossing the shadow-strewn lawn toward a seated companion. Set beneath a canopy of stars, lush trees frame the scene; the triangular shapes of the dogwood tree, and the white horse-chestnut blossoms echo those of the women's pale gowns. Metcalf enhanced his painted tribute to his host in several ways. He improved on the somewhat dilapidated appearance of the mansion and grounds and rendered the house as otherworldly and nearly templelike, perhaps in reference to its nickname, Holy House. An off-center perspective and the exaggerated height of the Ionic columns emphasize the home's portico (the porch at the entrance), the most classical feature of the house. The only reminder of modern life Metcalf chose to include is the glowing yellow light seen in the doorway and the windows on the left, suggesting lamplight.

Miss Florence was thrilled with Metcalf's painting, saying it "was the best thing he had ever done." When the artist offered her May Night in exchange for room and board, however, she refused to accept it, instead encouraging him to exhibit the work in New York, where it went on to receive critical acclaim. Metcalf's work also inspired other American artists to paint moonlight views, which became something of a trademark in Old Lyme.

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1858-1925]; purchased February 1907 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1906

  • Exhibition of Landscape by Willard L. Metcalf, St. Botolph Club, Boston, 9 - 29 November 1906, no. 14.

1907

  • First Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 7 February - 9 March 1907, no. 166.

  • Annual Exhibition of the Ten, Montross Galleries, New York, May - April 1907.

1908

  • 103rd Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 20 January - 29 February 1908, no. 374.

  • Third Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, Saint Louis Museum of Fine Arts, 15 September - 1 November 1908, no. 91.

  • Third Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 30 April - 30 August 1908, no. 90.

1925

  • Paintings by Willard L. Metcalf, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 3 January - 1 February 1925, no. 14.

  • Memorial Exhibition, Milch Galleries, New York, December 1925.

1940

  • Survey of American Painting, Carnegie institute, Pittsburgh, 24 October - 15 December 1940, no. 243.

1957

  • Twenty-fifth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings (Historical Section) Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Toledo Museum of Art, 1957, no. 1.

  • Fifty Years at the Corcoran, Frye Museum, Seattle; University Museum, Arizona State College, Tempe; Quincy Art Club, (Illinois); J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville; Service League of Port Arthur, Texas; Winston-Salem Public Library (North Carolina); Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, Arkansas; Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist Univserity, Dallas; Miama Beach Art Center; Kent State University Museum, Ohio; Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, 1957-1958, no cat.

1963

  • American Impressionists: Two Generations, Fort Lauderdale Art Center; Memphis Brooks Memorial Art Gallery; Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, Florida; Delaware Art Center, Wilmington; Michigan State University, East Lansing; Evansville Public Museum (Ohio); Roanoke Fine Arts Center (Virginia); Vancouver Art Gallery; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, Canada; Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario; Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; Saint John's, Newfoundland, Canada; London Public Library and Art Museum {Ontario); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia, 1963-1965, no. 20.

1966

  • The Art Colony at Old Lyme: 1900-1935, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut, 1966, no. 73.

  • Past and Present: 250 Years of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, unpublished checklist.

1976

  • Willard L. Metcalf Retrospective, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica; Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, 1976-1977, no. 20.

1979

  • The American Renaissance, 1876-1917, Brooklyn Museum; National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Denver Art Museum, 1979-1980, no. 216 (shown only in Brooklyn and Washington).

1996

  • Echoes and Late Shadows: The Larger World of Southern Impressionism, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, 1996, unnumbered checklist.

1998

  • The Forty-Fifth Biennial: The Corcoran Collects, 1907–1998, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 17 July - 29 September 1998, unnumbered catalogue.

1999

  • Colonies of American Impressionism: Cos Cob, Old Lyme, Shinncock and Laguna Beach, Laguna Art Museum, 1999, no. 40.

  • American Impressionism: Selections from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Strathmore Hall Arts Center, North Bethesda, Maryland, 1999, unnumbered catalogue.

2003

  • The Impressionist Tradition in America, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2003, unpublished checklist.

2005

  • May Night: Willard Metcalf at Old Lyme, Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut, 2005, no. 6.

  • Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, checklist no. 63.

2008

  • The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, unpublished checklist.

2009

  • American Paintings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 6 June-18 October 2009, unpublished checklist.

2013

  • American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013-28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1990

  • Broude, Norma, ed. World Impressionism: The International Movement. New York, 1990; 62.

1991

  • Montgomery, Elizabeth. American Impressionism. Greenwich, CT, 1991: 66.

  • Hiesinger, Ulrich. Impressionism in America: The Ten American Painters. New York: Prestel, 1991, p. 169.

1999

  • Adelson, Warren, Jay E. Cantor, and William H. Gerdts. Childe Hassam Impressionist. New York and Lond, 1999; 50.

2011

  • Cash, Sarah. "Willard Leroy Metcalf, May Night." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Edited by Sarah Cash. Washington, 2011: 34, 192-193, 275-276, repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: W. L. METCALF '06

Wikidata ID

Q6796572

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