Painted in New York during the winter of 1910 and 1911, Family Group is one of William Glackens’s largest and most ambitious compositions. Glackens employed a remarkable variety of techniques to depict upholstery, curtains, rugs, still life details, and the sitters’ attire. The crowded interior space is illuminated and expanded by the sun streaming through a window overlooking Fifth Avenue and the reflections in the mirror.

The intimate, informal group portrait includes, from left to right, the artist’s sister-in-law Irene Dimock (future wife of the Dublin-born journalist and art critic Charles Fitzgerald) sitting in an armchair; his wife, Edith Dimock Glackens, who stands and rests her right arm on the back of her sister’s chair; his son and future biographer, Ira Glackens, who stands in the approximate center of the composition; and Edith’s lifelong friend Grace Dwight Morgan, daughter of a mayor of Hartford, who sits on a settee attentively leaning forward. The setting is the Glackens family’s apartment on the second floor of 23 Fifth Avenue, at the northeast corner of Ninth Street. A painting of the interior without figures, Twenty-Three Fifth Avenue, Interior ^[fig1], is presumably a preparatory study for the painting.

Capturing a rich panoply of color, light, and contrasting textures and patterns, Family Group is a prime example of Glackens’s interest in impressionism. The brilliant palette reflects the strong influence of Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919). It has been suggested that Glackens was specifically inspired by Renoir’s Madame Charpentier and Her Children ^[fig2], which had been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1907 on the recommendation of the English critic Roger Fry. ^[1] The bright colors, use of transparent glazes, and interior setting also suggest the influence of the French intimist painters Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) and Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940). Family Group demonstrated how conversant Glackens was with avant-garde French painting, and shortly after completing it he was hired by the prominent Philadelphia collector Albert Barnes to travel to France in 1912 and act as his agent in purchasing works by Renoir and others.

In addition to its formal aesthetic qualities, the painting alludes to the independent women, progressive politics, and material culture of the Glackens household. Irene Dimock, Edith Dimock Glackens, and Grace Dwight Morgan are all sympathetically portrayed as distinctive individual personalities. The family’s immediate circle of friends included many ardent suffragists. After brief attempts at studying medicine and acting, Dimock served as secretary for the noted women’s suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt. Ira Glackens left a detailed account of how his parents and aunt marched down Fifth Avenue together during a major suffragist parade in 1913. ^[2]

The portrait’s calm, peaceful atmosphere, moreover, speaks to the state of Glackens’s domestic life and his happy marriage to Edith, who the critic Mahonri Sharp Young described as “a witty and strong-minded” student of the American impressionist painter William Merritt Chase (1849–1916). ^[3] Edith had been featured previously in two other large and important paintings, the full-length Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1904, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT) and Shoppers (1908, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA).

In 1971 Ira Glackens still owned the embroidered shirt, candelabra, statuette of Buddha, glass owl, and mirror seen in the painting. ^[4] The upholstered chair in the left background is the same one that appears in The Artist’s Wife and Son ^[fig3]. Ira further recalled Grace Dwight Morgan “returning from Paris with some fashionable clothes—she was a very stylish dresser.” Among them was a stunning creation by Paul Poiret, the leading French couturier of the time, who is credited with freeing women from corsets. Ira explained, “Father liked this brilliant costume and asked Mrs. Morgan to pose in it, and completely reorganized the color scheme of his painting.” ^[5] This change may explain several small studies for Family Group in private collections that differ from the final version.

When Family Group was painted in 1910/1911, the Glackens family was sharing the building with its then owner, General Daniel Sickles, and other tenants who lived below and above their second-floor apartment. The serene atmosphere of the painting is in stark contrast to the chaos surrounding the owner’s family. Ira Glackens described the structure as “a fine old house, the ground floor of which was occupied by . . . Sickles, who had lost a leg at Gettysburg and, had shot his wife’s lover.” Grace Morgan remembered an incident while her family was living on the third floor when the police had to be summoned because the general’s son threatened to kill them so he and his mother could move into their apartment. ^[6] William Glackens purchased the entire structure in 1919. The family remained there for the rest of their lives.

Although Glackens was an accomplished illustrator and draftsman, numerous pentimenti indicate the daunting challenges he faced creating the large-scale, complex composition of Family Group. A critic who saw the work at the 1913 Armory Show praised it as “one of the most radiant, courageous, color paintings America has produced . . . it has grace, humanity and the quality that the artists call painting.” ^[7] Family Group and The Artist’s Wife and Son remained on view in the Glackenses’ living room for many years following the artist’s death in 1938.

The medium-weight, plain-weave fabric support has been lined with a finer-weight fabric. The tacking margins were trimmed, but cusping along the edges indicates that the original dimensions have not been altered. The thinly and uniformly applied white ground consists of lead white that has been commercially prepared. ^[11] Glackens began his painting by sketching in a rough drawing in fluid paint. Even though he made several studies for this painting and sketched in the composition beforehand, numerous alterations still exist in the final version, visible as underlying brushwork unrelated to the present painting. Glackens’s execution relied on a variety of techniques ranging from thick, impastoed passages to areas of thin, wet-in-wet blending without any visible brushwork. Many areas were modified with transparent or semitransparent glazes made by diluting the paint to a liquid consistency. Some of these were dripped down the canvas, while thicker ones were applied with more control. A blunt instrument (presumably the end of a paintbrush) was used to scratch vertical lines on the wall covering in the upper left. Glackens made a number of alterations that are visible in either raking light or infrared examination. The table was originally lower, and after it was raised to its present position, it initially had a round lower shelf; Irene’s hat was wider on the left, and her chair higher and wider in the seat; the framed mirror in the upper right originally reflected a darker mantelpiece; and a second round figurine once stood in the candelabra’s place.

The paint surface is in a very good state of preservation, although some flattening of the impasto and minor weave enhancement occurred during lining. A few minor areas of retouching exist in the necks of both the sitter at the right and the sitter at the left of the painting. There is also some paint loss due to poor adhesion between layers of paint in the framed mirror and in the yellow mantelpiece. The surface is coated with a thin layer of natural resin varnish that is somewhat matte and yellow.

Michael Swicklik

July 24, 2024