Old Jail Art Center

Lucien AbramsA N I M P R E S S I O N I S T F R O M T E X A S


An exhibition organized by The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas

LUCIEN ABRAMSCover (DETAIL) Untitled [City Waterfront], n.d. & Frontispiece Oil on canvas, 18.25 x 21.25 inches

Private Collection


THE OLD JAIL ART CENTER • ALBANY, TEXASJune 1 – September 1, 2013

PANHANDLE-PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM • CANYON, TEXASSeptember 14, 2013 – February 14, 2014

FLORENCE GRISWOLD MUSEUM • OLD LYME, CONNECTICUTMarch 21 – June 1, 2014

Michael R. Grauer, Guest Curator

PANHANDLE-PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM2503 4th Avenue • Canyon, Texas 79015panhandleplains.org • 806.651.2244

FLORENCE GRISWOLD MUSEUM96 Lyme Street • Old Lyme, Connecticut 06371flogris.org • 860.434.5542

THE OLD JAIL ART CENTER201 S. 2nd • Albany, Texas 76430theoldjailartcenter.org • 325.762.2269

The catalogue and exhibition have been generously sponsored by:

Cynthia and Bill GaydenJimmy MusselmanSally Blanton PorterExhibition Fund of The Old Jail Art Center

Russ and Liz Fleischer

We also wish to thank the trustees and staff of our partner museums in this project:

Florence Griswold MuseumPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction 6by Margaret Blagg

Lucien Abrams: An Impressionist from Texas 9by Michael R. Grauer

Color Plates 19

Exhibition Checklist 34

Lenders to the Exhibition and Credits 40

6

Introductionb y M a r g a r e t B l a g g , I N T E R I M D I R E C TO R , T H E O L D JA I L A RT C E N T E R

THE OLD JAIL ART CENTER, SITUATED IN RURAL WEST TEXAS, may seem

an unlikely museum to organize an exhibition of the work of such an urbane artist

as Lucien Abrams, who was at home in Connecticut, Dallas, San Antonio, New York

City, Paris, and North Africa. He, however, would have appreciated the collection

of the Old Jail, which comprises Asian and Pre-Columbian art and artifacts as well as

European and American art. His own art sits easily with the museum’s Fantin-Latour

still life, Renoir nude, Caillebotte landscape, and Boudin harbor scene—works by

artists whom he no doubt admired, most of whom were still alive and painting when

he arrived in France in 1894.

This is not the first group of Abrams’s work to be shown at the museum. In 2001,

we mounted a small exhibition of the charming Christmas cards he and members

of the second generation of American Impressionists in Connecticut’s Old Lyme

Colony made and exchanged annually. That glimpse into his work and career piqued

my interest when I was director and I subsequently proposed the idea of an Abrams

show to the Exhibitions Committee, knowing that it would take a fairly long lead

time to research and present.

Years later, the exhibition finally made it onto the schedule, with the welcome

addition of Michael Grauer as guest curator. Grauer, who had just completed

curating Texas Impressionism, was eager to learn more about Abrams, most of whose

work remains in private hands. He requested that the exhibition travel to the

museum where he is curator—the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon,

Texas—after it closed in Albany. We enthusiastically agreed and he began his research.

It is impossible to look at Abrams’s work without delving into the Old Lyme

Colony. From 1900 through the 1930s, Old Lyme was the site of an active art colony,

attracting scores of artists each summer, some of whom, like Abrams, eventually settled

in the area. In the earliest years, American Impressionists such as Childe Hassam and

Willard Metcalf made Old Lyme their summer retreat, attracted to the quaint New

England town and its varied coastal landscape. Situated on the Connecticut River

where it empties into Long Island Sound, the Old Lyme area offers beach and bluff,

marsh, meadow, and forest—a wealth of subjects for outdoor sketching and painting.

7

Florence Griswold (1850-1937), who turned her family home in Old Lyme into

an inn, was the guiding light of the art colony. She encouraged “her boys,” as she

called her artist friends, by exhibiting and selling their work in her hallway gallery

and generously extending credit to them when they needed it. Miss Florence, who

understood public taste and had a practiced and critical eye, was invaluable to the

local and seasonal artists of Old Lyme. Her obituary in The New York Times stated,

“the memory of this gracious and generous spirit survives; and not in the Griswold

House alone, but as part of no inconsiderable chapter in the history of our native

art.” Her home is now the Florence Griswold Museum, a thriving repository and

legacy of Old Lyme Colony work. Grauer contacted the museum in the course of

his research and began discussions with Jeff Andersen about taking the Abrams

exhibition following its run in Texas.

Thus is Abrams’s work now being shown in two states he called home. Visitors

to our three museums will discover a “native son” of sorts, claiming him for Texas

or Connecticut at will. The work of this Texas/American Impressionist will no longer

be unknown.

I am particularly grateful to the family of Lucien Abrams for sharing precious work

with us for the exhibition. Michael Grauer, working on time borrowed undoubtedly

from his sleep bank, was an invaluable partner who tracked down countless research

leads to reconstruct and present a talent almost lost to the public. Jeff Andersen

and his Florence Griswold Museum staff completed the circle with unfailing support.

Cynthia and Bill Gayden and Sally Blanton Porter underwrote the catalogue, ensuring

documentation for this groundbreaking exhibition. Other generous sponsors include

Jimmy Musselman and Russ and Liz Fleischer. Patrick Kelly, OJAC Curator of

Exhibitions, shepherded the project on our end, with the assistance of Registrar Amy

Kelly, and designed and installed the exhibition in Albany. The Old Jail Board of

Trustees is proud to have supported a project that highlights a name too long dimmed

on the art history rolls.

8

ARCHIVAL PHOTOLucien AbramsCourtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

TEXAS ROOTS

9

PERHAPS THE ONLY TEXAS ARTIST TO BE CLEARLY IDENTIFIED WITH

AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM DURING ITS ZENITH WAS LUCIEN ABRAMS

(1870-1941). A landscape, figure, and still life painter as well as a trained architect,

Abrams became a member of the art colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1914. This

is significant for Abrams because by this time “the artistic identification of Old Lyme

[had] turned to Impressionism,” and Old Lyme became the “American Giverny.”1

Born at Lawrence, Kansas, Abrams moved to Texas with his family in 1874, first to

Marshall, Texas, then to Dallas by 1883. Lucien’s father, William Henry Abrams (1843-

1926), a Civil War veteran and land commissioner for the Kansas Pacific Railway, took

a position in Marshall with the Texas and Pacific Railway from 1873 to 1875. W. H.

Abrams later worked for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway in extending their lines

from Fort Worth to El Paso and from Marshall to New Orleans. As land agent for the

Texas & Pacific Land Trust, he sold some four million acres of Texas lands in West

and East Texas, given by the State of Texas for railroad rights of way. He later leased

thousands of acres for oil and gas development in the Permian Basin and in East Texas.

His Abrams No. 1 oil well established the West Columbia oil field in Brazoria County,

Texas. A prominent Dallas citizen, W. H. helped found the Dallas Club and supported

other civic organizations in Dallas.

Lucien’s mother, Ella Murray Harris Abrams (1845-1918), a Virginian, was the

daughter of William A. Harris, U.S. Minister to Argentina and a U.S. Congressman. She

and William had two other sons, Clarence (1873-1902) and Harold (1885-1938).2 Ella

Abrams maintained grand homes, first in Lawrence, Kansas and later at 2628 Maple

Avenue in Dallas. The Dallas home where Lucien grew up had ornately carved

woodwork and was furnished with fine furniture and carpets, decorative arts, fine art

reproductions, and original paintings. Ella Abrams helped organize and was first

president of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Club in 1901 and helped found the Dallas

Art Association in 1903. Coincidentally, the first work of art purchased by the fledgling

Dallas Art Association was Childe Hassam’s September Moonrise (1900).3 Hassam

(1859-1935) was a major figure in American Impressionism and especially at Old

Lyme, where he and Abrams later knew each other.

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texasby Michael R . Grauer , A S S O C I AT E D I R E C TO R F O R C U R ATO R I A L A F FA I R S

C U R ATO R O F A RT, PA N H A N D L E - P L A I N S H I STO R I C A L M U S E U M

TEXAS ROOTS

ACADÉMI ES 10

After completing studies at Dallas schools, Lucien Abrams attended Beloit College

(Wisconsin), where his father had matriculated, then transferred to and graduated from

Princeton University in 1892 with a degree in architecture. Intent on becoming a painter,

Abrams then studied at the Art Students League (ASL) in New York from October 1892

to May 1894. His instructors at the ASL included J. H. Twachtman, William Merritt

Chase, Frank Vincent DuMond, Kenyon Cox, J. Carroll Beckwith, and probably, J. Alden

Weir.4 Twachtman, Chase, DuMond, and Weir are today considered core American

Impressionists. Abrams took four classes under DuMond, including two sketch classes

and two “antique” classes. He also studied painting under Chase and Weir.

Some of his ASL instructors had connections to rural Connecticut. In 1902,

DuMond (1865-1951) began directing the Lyme Summer School of Art. Whereas

the school moved from Old Lyme, Connecticut, to Woodstock, New York in 1906,

DuMond purchased a home at Old Lyme that same year. Weir began painting in

the Connecticut countryside in 1888 and painted Impressionist landscapes for 40

summers on his Branchville and Windham, Connecticut, farms. Twachtman (1853-

1902) acquired his own Connecticut farm in 1889, and the surrounding area became

his Impressionist muse. Chase (1849-1916) spent summers at Shinnecock on Long

Island from 1891 to 1902. He directed the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art,

a school devoted to plein air painting.

ARCHIVAL PHOTO1 Example of Abrams’s ornate furnishings

Studio – Paris, 1910Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas

11 ACADÉMI ES

Following in the footsteps of his instructors at the Art Students League, Lucien

Abrams in 1894 traveled to France to study. Due to its nearly insurmountably rigorous

entrance requirements, the official École des Beaux-Arts rarely accepted non-French

students. Private ateliers in Paris offered courses of study preparatory to applying to the

École, taught by academic juste milieu instructors at the École who

steered a middle course between more avant-garde art movements

and styles acceptable to the École and the public.

Beginning in August 1894, Abrams studied at the Académie

Julian, one of the most successful—and most popular, especially

with Americans—of Paris’s petits ateliers, run by Rodolphe Julian

(1839-1907).5 Julian’s spaces scattered in several arrondissements

around Paris were crowded with international students jostling

for room to draw and paint from the human figure and to receive

criticisms from instructors who appeared periodically. Arguments

were common; fisticuffs were not rare; teasing was constant.

Abrams studied at the Académie Julian with Jean-Paul Laurens

(1838-1921) and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902).

Laurens, a disciple of the French academic tradition, painted murals

and was one of France’s last great history painters. Benjamin-

Constant, a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts, began his career

as an Orientaliste who depicted exotic scenes and figures from the

Near and Middle East, but who turned to mural painting and portraits while Abrams

studied with him.

Abrams also studied at the Académie Colarossi, founded by the Italian sculptor

Filippo Colarossi, where he received criticisms from Louis-Joseph-Raphael Collin

(1850-1916). Another academic painter and muralist, Collin began to incorporate

Impressionist techniques into his work by the 1890s. Collin also mentored at the

Académie Colarossi the first group of Japanese painters to study in Paris, just before

Abrams arrived there. Japanese painting, in turn, influenced Collin’s own work.

Abrams studied briefly at J.M.W. Whistler’s short-lived Académie Carmen in Paris.

Founded in October 1898 and run by its namesake, Whistler’s model Carmen Rossi,

the Académie Carmen offered separate classes for men and women. Inez Addams was the

massiere (student supervisor), with Whistler (1834-1903) contributing occasionally. The

Académie Carmen closed in April 1901.6

Living in Europe from 1894 to 1914, Abrams returned to the United States for a

few months at a time each year from 1899 to 1903. For example, in 1900 he lived in Fort

ARCHIVAL PHOTO2 Image labeled by Abrams

My studio windows, Belgium, 1904Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

Worth, Texas, for six months. Abrams spent 1907 painting at Mystic, Connecticut;

New York City; Monhegan Island, Maine; and Rockport, Massachusetts. His painting

Untitled [Beach with Three Women] was likely done on Monhegan and echoes the

paintings of such other Monhegan painters as Winslow Homer and Frederick Waugh.

Maintaining a studio in Paris, he painted in several parts of Europe and

in North Africa for months at a time. He painted in Italy for several months in

1896; Belgium and The Netherlands in 1900 and 1902; Spain in 1901 (where he

studied Velásquez); in France, at Brittany, Pouldu, Normandy, and Pont Aven

in 1902, 1905, and 1912; and Algeria for four months in 1905. From 1908 on,

Abrams painted mostly in France’s Provence region, primarily near Cassis, Martigues,

and Marseille. During

his extensive travels

throughout Europe

until about 1914, he

studied the Old Masters

and de veloped a keen

sense of connoisseur-

ship. For instance,

Abrams copied paintings

in the Opera della Metro-

politana in Siena (1896),

the Louvre (1897), and

the Alhambra in Granada,

Spain (1901).

12


ARCHIVAL PHOTO3 Unidentified individuals

Cassis – Southern FranceCourtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

ARCHIVAL PHOTO4 Abrams with pet dog

Marseille, 1907Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

TICKET5 Abrams’s 1897 Louvre Museum

permission receipt to copy a Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco painting.Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

NORTH AFR ICA AN D EU ROPE

13 NORTH AFR ICA AN D EU ROPE

North Africa was a magnet for European artists during the nineteenth century,

especially for French artists. Having embraced a French lifestyle and study and painting

habits, Abrams’s time in Algeria is con sistent with this French focus on the “Orient,”

as it was then called. In fact, a group of French painters known today as Les Orien-

talistes were drawn to the exoticism of North Africa and made it their primary source

of inspiration. Perhaps one-time Orientaliste Benjamin-Constant encouraged young

Abrams to travel to Algeria in 1905 to paint, resulting in such works as Bou Saada,

Algeria and Kabyle Woman (plate 1), both consistent with the Orientaliste focus on

North African women. However, with its sun-drenched light, plunging perspectives,

and shallow compositional

space, his Untitled [Stucco Street

Corner] (plate 2) speaks directly

to the lessons he learned from

the French Impressionists and

Post-Impressionists.

While Abrams was in Europe,

the art world—especially in

France—was at fever pitch as one

movement succeeded the next

in rapid succession in the devel-

opment of Modernism. Just eight

years before Abrams arrived in

Paris, the last French Impressionist

exhibition was held in 1886.

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and

Paul Signac (1863-1935) exhibited in the last Impressionist exhibition and spawned a

movement called Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism, adherents to which held a final

exhibition in 1893, the year before Abrams appeared. These fin-de-siecle currents were

still fresh for the newly arrived art student in Paris.

Paul Serusier (1864-1927), Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Maurice Denis (1870-

1943), and Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) banded together as Les Nabis (prophets in

Hebrew) from 1888 to 1899, to throw off the shackles of academic painting. Serusier’s

1888 Le Talisman, painted under the supervision of Paul Gauguin (who also named the

group), became the touchstone for Les Nabis. After 1899, Bonnard’s and Vuillard’s

paintings evolved into an Intimiste style in which they depicted figures in small

domestic interiors, abandoning linear perspective and modeling in favor of rich surface

ARCHIVAL PHOTO6 Abrams’s photograph from Algeria labeled as

Here they sell…clothesCourtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

textures while eliminating the distinction between figure and background.

By the early 1880s, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) had re-settled in Provence hoping

to lend structure to Impressionist paintings. His work ultimately gave rise to Cubism.

In his still lifes of the late 1870s, he had abandoned Albertian linear perspective,

allowing each object to exist individually in the painted space. Cézanne’s landscape

paintings of Provence and his series of figure paintings begun in the early 1890s were

featured in a solo exhibition in Paris in 1895. Posthumous exhibitions in Paris in 1907

solidified him as a master of Post-Impressionism while Lucien Abrams was there.

In 1891, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was recognized as the leader of the Symbolist

movement, although the antecedents for Symbolism had begun in the

1870s. Gauguin’s use of flat areas of color and symbolic color—begun

after his move to Pont Aven in 1886—greatly affected a large number of

avant-garde painters in France. He painted briefly at Arles with Vincent

Van Gogh (1853-1890) in 1888. Van Gogh’s mature style of intense active

brushwork using saturated complementary colors eventually gave rise

to the Fauves movement, led by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Andre

Derain (1880-1954), which held sway from about 1904 to 1908.

In this French art maelstrom, Abrams lived and worked for 20 years.

From 1902 to 1914, he exhibited annually in Paris at the Salon d’Automne

and the Salon des Independants, and his work showed the influences

of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Fauvism.7 Yet years later

Abrams would note, “My art was developed, not in the schools, but by

independent study before nature, not trying to copy, but to interpret, to

find order in chaos, and put it in plastic form.”

Nevertheless, Abrams noticeably absorbed the lessons learned from

the various French masters whose work he saw and experienced. Moreover, he

carried these lessons with him to the United States and to Texas especially. The influence

of the French Impressionists, Les Intimistes, and even Whistler, shows unmistakably in

Lucien Abrams’s paintings, such as Dejeuner en Provence (plate 3).

The female figure posed in an outdoor, yet still close setting, was a favorite

Impressionist device, used particularly by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). An admirer

of Renoir, Abrams pays homage to him through the use of a small female model in a

casual patio setting in Dejeuner en Provence. Combined with short brushstrokes, a high-

keyed palette and a diagonal composition coalesce into an Impressionist painting.

On the other hand, this painting carries the Intimist message as well. Although an

outdoor scene, Dejeuner is quite familiar and homey. Moreover, allowing the figure to

14


CONTEMPORAR I ES

ARCHIVAL PHOTO7 Posed photograph of Abrams in France

(possibly studio). Labeled 1910.Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

15 CONTEMPORAR I ES

dissolve into the rich surface textures, while still providing the anchors of the chair

and the hat, is consistent with Intimist paintings by Vuillard and Bonnard.

Finally, Lucien Abrams’s monogram in the lower left is a visual cypher to his

time—albeit brief—under the tutelage of at least a Whistler protégée. Whistler’s own

“intimist” paintings of female figures posed in rich domestic settings are referenced

in Dejeuner. Furthermore, the brushstrokes and daubs of pure color on a two-dimen-

sional surface that comprise Dejeuner harken back to Whistler’s “art for art’s sake”

argument a half century earlier.

As a devoted still life painter, Abrams clearly emulated Cézanne in some of his

own paintings such as Untitled [Still Life with Bananas] and especially Fruit and Feather

Flowers (plate 4). Abrams also channeled Gauguin’s use of flat planes of unmodulated

color—as well as Gauguin’s Symbolist leanings—in uncluttered paintings such as Still

Life of Tulips; Irises (plate 5); and Roses. Moreover, some of Abrams’s landscapes

reverberate with the influence of Cézanne’s paintings of Provence, as in Abrams’s

Untitled [Trees in Autumn] and Untitled [French Landscape with Olive Trees] (plate 6).

Abrams’s many paintings of female models seated in chairs, usually of his own

Madame Abrams and/or their daughter, invite comparisons to Cézanne’s myriad

portraits of Madame Cézanne. While rich and powerful, Abrams’s Woman in Blue

(plate 7) clearly echoes Cézanne, but stops short of Cézanne’s fracturing of planes, the

very device that later gave rise to Cubism. Les Fauves also found purchase with many

of Abrams’s female sitters. His Femme au Grande Chapeau reminds one of Matisse’s

Woman with a Hat, for example. While we do see Abrams’s use of more expressive

brushwork, we do not see him heading toward the arbitrary use of color as in Matisse’s

Green Stripe. Lucien Abrams could only get so wild.

Maintaining his American and Texas roots, Abrams was surely aware of art

movements in his native land. In 1897, a group of ten American artists broke away from

the Society of American Artists in protest over the direction of the Society’s annual

exhibitions, particularly the devaluation of Impressionist paintings. Childe Hassam,

J. Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, Robert Reid, Willard Metcalf, Frank Weston

Benson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Joseph DeCamp, and

Edward Simmons comprised “The Ten.” When Twachtman died in 1902, William

Merritt Chase joined “The Ten” in his place. The group exhibited together for twenty

years. Lucien Abrams had studied at the Art Students League under five of “The Ten.”

Contemporaneous with exhibitions of “The Ten,” another group called “The Eight”

helped establish the so-called “Ash Can School” of painting in the United States.

Responding to their rejection by the jury for the National Academy of Design annual

in 1907, eight American painters held their own exhibition at MacBeth Galleries in New

York in 1908. Led by Robert Henri (1865-1929), this group sought to break away from

academic restrictions. Using a largely German- and Dutch-influenced palette of browns

and greys and bravura brushwork, these artists also took their cues from Dutch genre

paintings of the 17th century, focusing on the seamier sides of American life hitherto

considered unacceptable subjects for “official” American art. Only occasionally did

Lucien Abrams depart from his Impressionist palette, but he certainly used the

expressive brushwork of the Ash Can School painters from time to time. The social

realism practiced by “The Eight,” however, did not interest Abrams.

Exhibiting in the American annuals, Abrams could not have avoided knowing

of the exhibitions and efforts of “The Ten” and “The Eight.” He exhibited at the Art

Institute of Chicago annual in 1899; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

annuals of 1903 and 1911; and the National Academy of Design annual in 1908.

By establishing his home at Old Lyme in 1914, he was at the epicenter of Ameri-

can Impressionism before the movement began to fade in the United States by about

1920. He exhibited with the Lyme Art Association annually from 1916 through 1938.8

Ironically, while the French Impressionists clearly influenced Abrams while he was

still in France [see Au Parc Borely (plate 8), Untitled [City Waterfront] (frontispiece) or

Femme au Grande Chapeau, for example], he seems to have fully embraced the

Impressionist strategies he witnessed first-hand in France only after he settled at the

“American Giverny.” In particular with his numerous seated female figure paintings,

using his wife or daughter as models, he echoes especially the works of Mary Cassatt

in his Girl Sewing (plate 9) and particularly Berthe Morisot in paintings such as

Untitled [Young Woman Reading in Bed] (plate 10). His “American Impressionist”

leanings found affirmation and encouragement at Old Lyme. Abrams’s paintings such

as In the Garden (plate 11) echo paintings by the other members of the Old Lyme

colony, chiefly Childe Hassam.

In Texas, where Abrams’s work opened a conduit to Old Lyme and France,

Impressionism held on until the early 1930s. Abrams exhibited—as a Texas artist—in

the annual Texas-artist exhibitions in Fort Worth in 1913, 1914, 1916, and 1917; at the

State Fair of Texas in 1908, 1909, and 1923; and at the Texas Centennial Exposition in

1936 with Garden on the Ledge (plate 12). To these “Texas” exhibitions, Abrams sent

primarily Impressionist paintings done in Europe and Old Lyme.

En lieu of true French Impressionist paintings, Texas artists relied on those

submissions by Lucien Abrams to exhibitions exclusive to Texas artists, as well as his

paintings and those of his fellows of the Old Lyme Colony to the State Fair of Texas

16


OLD LYME

17 OLD LYME

ARCHIVAL PHOTO8 Gina and Lucien Abrams in the

arbor of their Old Lyme home.Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

exhibitions. Although filtered through Abrams and Old Lyme, these paintings brought

the Impressionist gospel to Texas. Moreover, Abrams’s habit of painting en plein air

while visiting Texas periodically encouraged Texas artists to see their state with fresh

eyes. Journalists underscored this by reporting that Abrams was “one of many artists

who are discovering the beauty of the [Texas] landscape, in the color of the sky and

clear atmosphere which gives such an opalescent tint to Texas.”9 Moreover, Abrams

even used Impressionist schemes to create a series of paintings of the Alamo and other

Spanish missions in San Antonio, symbols to all Texans [see Mission de la Concepcion,

San Antonio, Texas (plate 13)].

In 1914, when Lucien Abrams returned to the United States, he

brought along his fiancée, parisienne Charlotte Gina Onillon (1886-

1961) (plate 14), a graduate of the Sorbonne. They married in 1915

and built a home at Old Lyme with a fine view of Long Island

Sound. They had one daughter, Elinor F. Abrams. The Abramses

divided their time between his family place in Dallas, a winter

home in San Antonio, and the summer home in Old Lyme. Abrams

also painted in the Deep South, including New Orleans; Pass

Christian, Mississippi; and Charleston, South Carolina. Along with

exhibiting regularly with the Lyme Art Association, Abrams had

one-man shows at the State Fair of Texas (1914); Montross Gallery,

New York (1928); Pabst Galleries in San Antonio, Texas (1930); the

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1934); and at Durand-Ruel Galleries,

New York (1934). Posthumously, his work was featured in the 1978

exhibition “Three American Impressionists: From Paris to Old

Lyme” at A. M. Adler Fine Art, Inc., New York. Abrams was a long-

time member of the American Federation of Artists, the Lyme Art

Association, and the Princeton Club of New York City.

Public collections of Abrams’s work include the Florence Griswold Museum, Old

Lyme, Connecticut; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Panhandle-Plains

Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London,

Connecticut; Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia; and the Dallas Museum of Art.

As a collector, Abrams was particularly interested in the French Impressionists,

acquiring an important collection of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His widow

donated at least one Renoir painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Abrams’s

daughter donated another to the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas and she

and her daughter (Abrams’s granddaughter) helped place one more at the McNay.

Lucien Abrams lived in Europe during one of the richest periods in art history. The

French Impressionists had thrown the gates wide open and new movements ebbed

and flowed around him in France. By the time he came to maturity as an artist, American

Impressionism held a prominent place in American art. As William H. Gerdts writes,

“The period from about 1885 to 1920 constitutes the years of [Impressionism’s]

ascendancy [in the United States] and the achievements and innovations of the

principal American masters of the movement.”10 By about 1920, “Impressionism, once

a vital, modern force in American painting, had become both conventionalized and

conservative in the light of newer developments in American art.”11 Intriguingly,

Abrams wrote in 1925 that he “never cared much for pure realism or impressionism,

but rather prefer[red] a more decorative interpretation of nature.”12

So where is Lucien Abrams’s place in art history? His exhibition record is

impressive, yet his work is very little known largely due to the relatively small number

of his paintings in public collections. The current exhibition, however, drawing almost

exclusively from private collections, allows for a much broader and more qualitative

examination of his place. Considering his schooling, residencies and travel in the

artistically enriching environments of New York, Paris, North Africa, and Old Lyme,

Lucien Abrams should be considered one of the few significant conduits for Impres-

sionism and Post-Impressionism—and therefore Modernism—into Texas in the early

part of the 1900s. Abrams can now surely take his place in the roll call of American

artists. His work, influenced by so many significant late-19th and early-20th century

currents in art, certainly deserves far greater appreciation and objective analyses than

it has been heretofore afforded.

1William H. Gerdts, The Golden Age of American Impressionism(New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003): 27.

2Harold J. Abrams committed suicide, Dallas Morning News, 9 May 1938.3Dallas artist Frank Reaugh (1860-1945) encouraged the purchase of this painting.4Stephanie Cassidy, Archivist, The Art Students League of New York to Michael R. Grauer, 2 April 2008.5The Académie Julian was also the only atelier to offer study to women artists.6Nigel Thorp, “Carmen Rossi,” in Jill Berk Jiminez ed, Dictionary of Artists’ Models(Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001): 268-269.

7The Salon d’Automne of 1907 featured a posthumous Cézanne exhibition.8My thanks to Hedy Korst, research assistant, Florence Griswold Museum, for researching Abrams’s exhibition record with the Lyme Art Association.

9“Noted Artist Visiting Dallas,” Unknown Dallas newspaper, 3 April 1920, Lucien Abrams scrapbook.10William H. Gerdts, The Golden Age of American Impressionism

(New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003): 42.11Ibid.12Abrams to unknown correspondent, letter, 17 July 1925, Private Collection.

18


C O L O R P L A T E S

20

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 1 Kabyle Woman, c.1906

Oil on wood panel, 13.687 x 10.437 inchesPrivate Collection


21

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 2 Untitled [Stucco Street Corner], n.d.

Oil on canvas, 15.125 x 19.875 inchesPrivate Collection

22

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 3 Dejeuner en Provence, c.1910

Oil on canvas, 24.125 x 19.75 inchesCollection of the McNay Art Museum,Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Chaney


23

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 4 Fruit and Feather Flowers, n.d.


24

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 5 Irises, 1922



25

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 6 Untitled [French Landscape with Olive Trees], 1909


26

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 7 Woman in Blue, 1915



27

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 8 Au Parc Borely, n.d.


28

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 9 Girl Sewing, n.d.

Oil on panel, 18.5 x 15.5 inchesPrivate Collection


29

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 10 Untitled [Young Woman Reading in Bed], n.d.

Oil on canvas panel, 15 x 18 inchesPrivate Collection

30

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 11 In the Garden, n.d.



31

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 12 Garden on the Ledge, n.d.


32

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 13 Mission de la Concepcion, San Antonio, Texas, 1928

Oil on canvas board, 15 x 18.125 inchesPrivate Collection


33

LUCIEN ABRAMSPlate 14 Mrs. Abrams in Paris, c.1912

Oil on panel, 18 x 14 inchesThe Brousseau Family Collection LLC

34

Dejeuner en Provence, c. 1910Oil on canvas24.125 x 19.75 inchesCollection of the McNay Art Museum;Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan ChaneyPlate 3, Page 22

Femme Au Grande

Chapeau, 1910Oil on canvas28.875 x 23.875 inchesPrivate Collection

Ferry at Marseille, n.d.Watercolor on paper9 x 11 inches [sight]Private Collection

Fruit and Feather

Flowers, n.d.Oil on canvas25.25 x 30.25 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 4, Page 23


Exhibition ChecklistAu Parc Borely, n.d.Oil on canvas21.375 x 25.5 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 8, Page 27

Bathers, 1912Oil on canvas panel16 x 13 inchesPrivate Collection

Bou Saada, Algeria,1906Oil on wood panel18 x 14.75 inchesPrivate Collection

Canal Martigues, n.d.Watercolor on paper9 x 11 inches [sight]Private Collection

35

Irises, 1922Oil on canvas30.125 x 25.125 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 5, Page 24

Jardin Normand, c. 1917Oil on canvas23.812 x 28.75 inchesPrivate Collection

Kabyle Woman, c. 1906Oil on wood panel13.687 x 10.437 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 1, Page 20

La Promenade, n.d.Watercolor on paper9 x 11 inches [sight]Private Collection

Garden on the Ledge, n.d.Oil on canvas36.125 x 29.125 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 12, Page 31

Girl Sewing, n.d.Oil on panel18.5 x 15.5 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 9, Page 28

Gorge de Loup, Cagnes, n.d.Oil on canvas25 x 30.125 inchesScott Higginbotham,Dumas, Texas

In the Garden, n.d.Oil on canvas36.125 x 29.125 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 11, Page 30

36

Lieutenant River

near Old Lyme, n.d.Oil on canvas24.5 x 29.125 inchesPrivate Collection

Mexican Fete at

the Alamo, 1928Oil on canvas board14.875 x 18.125 inchesPrivate Collection

Mission de la Concepcion,

San Antonio, Texas,1928Oil on canvas board15 x 18.125 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 13, Page 32

Mothers Meeting

at the Old Port,

Marseille, n.d.Watercolor on paper9 x 11 inches [sight]Private Collection

Mrs. Abrams in Paris, c. 1912Oil on panel18 x 14 inchesThe Brousseau Family Collection LLCPlate 14, Page 33

On the Spanish Main, n.d.Oil on canvas20.25 x 24.25 inchesPrivate Collection

Parc Borely, n.d.Watercolor on paper9 x 11 inches [sight]Private Collection

Promenade Marseille, n.d.Watercolor on paper9 x 11 inches [sight]Private Collection

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas – Exhibition Checklist

37

Still Life of Tulips, n.d.Oil on canvas26.125 x 22.125 inchesPrivate Collection

Untitled [Beach with

Three Women], n.d.Oil on canvas28.5 x 35.25 inches [sight]Private Collection

Untitled [City

Waterfront], n.d.Oil on canvas18.25 x 21.25 inchesPrivate CollectionFrontispiece

Untitled [Day at

the Beach], n.d.Oil on board6.5 x 8 inchesPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum,Canyon, Texas; Anonymous Gift

Untitled [French

Landscape], n.d.Oil on board10.5 x 13.75 inchesPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum,Canyon, Texas; Anonymous Gift

Untitled [French

Landscape with

Olive Trees], 1909Oil on canvas28.187 x 35.625 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 6, Page 25

Untitled [French

Village], n.d.Oil on board7.25 x 9.5 inchesPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum,Canyon, Texas; Anonymous Gift

Untitled [House

with Green Shutters

and Trees], n.d.Oil on panel12.75 x 16.125 inchesPrivate Collection

38

Untitled [Landscape

with Trees, Pond and

White House], n.d.Oil on canvas18 x 24.062 inchesPrivate Collection

Untitled [Seated

Lady in Hat], n.d.Oil on canvas24 x 18.25 inchesPrivate Collection

Untitled [Still Life

with Bananas], n.d.Oil on canvas30 x 25 inchesPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum,Canyon, Texas; Gift of the Sone Family

Untitled [Still Life

with Roses], n.d.Oil on canvas24.187 x 18.125 inchesPrivate Collection

Untitled [Stucco

Street Corner], n.d.Oil on canvas15.125 x 19.875 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 2, Page 21

Untitled [Trees

in Autumn], n.d.Oil on canvas25 x 20 inchesPrivate Collection

Untitled [Trees on

Hillside Near Water], n.d.Oil on canvas23.625 x 28.687 inchesPrivate Collection

Untitled [Woman

in White], n.d.Oil on canvas18.125 x 14.937 inchesPrivate Collection

LUCIEN ABRAMS An Impressionist from Texas – Exhibition Checklist

39

Untitled [Young Woman

Reading in Bed], n.d.Oil on canvas panel15 x 18 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 10, Page 29

Untitled [Zinnias], 1932Oil on canvas24 x 20.125 inchesPrivate Collection

Villa Rose Ciel, n.d.Oil on panel14.75 x 18 inchesPrivate Collection

Woman in Blue, 1915Oil on canvas30.187 x 24.125 inchesPrivate CollectionPlate 7, Page 26

CreditsThis catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibitionLucien Abrams: An Impressionist from Texas

An exhibition organized by The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texaswww.theoldjailartcenter.org

Exhibition Dates:The Old Jail Art Center, June 1 – September 1, 2013Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, September 14, 2013 – February 14, 2014Florence Griswold Museum, March 21 – June 1, 2014

Archival photographic images from Abrams’s personal photo album. Courtesy of the Family of Lucien Abrams.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in anyform or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording orinformation storage or retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher.

Designed and Published by: WinshipPhillips, Dallas, Texaswww.winshipphillips.com

Copyright©2013ISBN: 978-0-9893719-0-2First edition: 1000 copies

We are grateful to the following lenders, whose generosity in sharingworks from their collections has made the exhibition possible:

The Brousseau Family Collection LLCScott Higginbotham, Dumas, TexasCollection of the McNay Art MuseumPanhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, TexasPrivate Collection

Lenders to the Exhibition

The Old Jail Art Center | 201 South Second | Albany, Texas 76430 | 325.762.2269

Old Jail Art Center

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