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Willard Leroy Metcalf Biography

American Impressionist painter
born 1858 - died 1925

Student of: Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger (1824-1888), Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911).

Impressionist painter Willard Leroy Metcalf was born July 1, 1858 in Lowell, MA the son of Greenleaf Willard, a violinist with the Boston Orchestra and Margaret Jan Gallop.

Willard Leroy Metcalf attended the Mass. Normal Art School (Boston), apprenticed as a wood engraver (1874) and studied with George Loring Brown (who taught him to draw accurately truths in nature, and to paint Roman figures, judges and wreathed heads with the same precision) in South Boston and with Munich-trained Ignaz Gaugengigl at the Lowell Institute. The next year Willard Leroy Metcalf artist entered the Museum School (Boston) and studied the Dutch tradition of American paintings with Otto Grundmann. Willard Metcalf became the 1st scholarship recipient of the Museum School (1878) and struggled to survive by American painting illustrations for Harper’s (1882).

That same year, Century magazine commissioned him to travel with Frank Cushing of the Smithsonian Institution and Boston newsman Sylvester Baxter to draw and paint Zuni Indians in Arizona and New Mexico, but the heat nearly killed Metcalf and Willard Leroy Metcalf rapidly returned to Boston to exhibited seventy – five American paintings with Chase Gallery. Because of the show’s success Willard Leroy Metcalf painter traveled to England and joined Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson in Paris.

While abroad, the artist absorbed the major stylistic tendencies of the day -- from the academic through Barbizon and Plein-air to Impressionism -- both in Paris and during summer sojourns at Pont Aven, Grez-sur-Loing and Giverny. Sunset at Grez (1884-85; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.), The Ten Cent Breakfast (1887; the Denver Art Museum, Colorado), and Mid-Summer Twilight, (1888; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), are outstanding Willard Metcalf paintings of this period.

He returned to the Boston area in 1888, where he had a one-man show at the St. Botolph Club. By 1891, Willard Leroy Metcalf was established in New York City supported by illustration assignments, teaching, and some American portrait paintings. In 1896, Willard Leroy Metcalf painter won the coveted Webb Prize at the Society of American Artists' Annual Exhibition with Willard Leroy Metcalf painting, Gloucester Harbor (1895; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts).

Willard Metcalf artist died in New York City in 1925. Willard Metcalf paintings are included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Freer Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, Philadelphia; and many other public and private collections.

By 1874, Metcalf began to produce his first American paintings and attended night classes at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. In 1877, Willard Leroy Metcalf won a scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. In February 1882, the painter organized an auction of Willard Leroy Metcalf art paintings in order to raise money for European travel. The money earned from the auction, along with funds Willard Leroy Metcalf had saved from illustration assignments, enabled the young artist to set sail for Paris in September 1883. Willard Leroy Metcalf artist remained abroad for more than five years, studying at the Academie Julian and traveling extensively throughout Europe and North Africa.

Willard Metcalf managed eventually to get his problems under control, and enjoyed a long, successful career, despite the occasional re-emergence of bouts of financial troubles, romantic conflicts, and heavy drinking. One indication of his reputation during his lifetime was the sale of Benediction for thirteen-thousand dollars, then the highest price ever paid for a American painting by a living American artist.

In 1925, a year after the failure of his second marriage, Metcalf suffered a fatal heart attack.

Willard Leroy Metcalf was born July 1, 1858, in Lowell Massachusetts, the son of Greenleaf Willard Metcalf, a violinist with the Boston Orchestra, and Margaret Jan Gallop, a loom tender.(1) In 1863, the Metcalf family moved to Maine, and eight years later, they moved to Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, where Willard Leroy Metcalf painter attended school. His parents believed in supernatural phenomena, and having been told in a séance that their son would become a famous painter, they encouraged him in that direction. By 1874, Metcalf had produced first Willard Metcalf paintings, and the artist attended night classes at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. From 1875 to 1877, he studied under noted landscapist George Loring Brown in Boston and apprenticed with him as a wood engraver. Willard Leroy Metcalf also studied with Munich-trained Ignaz Gaugengigl at the Lowell Institute. Metcalf won a scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and studied there from 1877 to 1878. Willard Metcalf earned a living by American paintings illustrations for several magazines in Putian oil painting base.

In 1903, Willard Leroy Metcalf artist married Marguerite Beaufort Haile, an aspiring actress from New Orleans who was his model.(3) Their life together was characterized by excessive drinking and socializing. In 1904, Metcalf moved to Clark’s Cove, Maine. There Willard Leroy Metcalf stopped drinking, and he began to concentrate on American painting the northeastern landscape. the painter changed Willard Leroy Metcalf painting style, lightening his palette and adopting the broken brushstrokes characteristic of Impressionism. Metcalf called this period his “Renaissance.”

In 1904, Willard Metcalf returned to New York with twenty-one landscapes, unlike anything he had painted before. Though he maintained a studio in New York City until his death, Metcalf spent much of his time traveling and American paintings in New England from Putian oil painting company. In 1909, Willard Leroy Metcalf painter joined the art colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. He painted at Old Lyme, where he was a prominent member of that artist colony, in the Berkshires, at Chester and Springfield, Vermont, and in Maine, at Casco Bay and the Damariscotta peninsula.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Willard Metcalf was a well-known East Coast Impressionist painter, teacher, and illustrator who also did painting in the Southwest. Willard Leroy Metcalf was heralded in 1925 as the "poet laureate of the New England hills."

He attended Lowell and Newton public schools, apprenticed to a wood engraver, and studied American landscape painting with George Loring Brown. Willard Leroy Metcalf artist attended the Boston Museum of Fine Art and life classes at Lowell Institute. Many Willard Metcalf paintings were done in the Southwest, and as early as 1881, was in Santa Fe. His illustrations of the Zuni Indians for Frank Cushing's ethnological studies appeared in "Century Magazine" in 1882 and 1883, and other Pueblo illustrations were in "Harper's Magazine."

Sales from his illustration art financed his travels in Europe from 1883 to 1889. He studied in Paris at the Julian Academy and was exposed primarily to traditional styles of American painting until Willard Leroy Metcalf painter visited Giverny, the home of Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Metcalf was perhaps the first American to arrive there. However, his word did not show much reflection of this new style until the artist went to Maine in 1903. From then, Willard Leroy Metcalf painting, many of them seasonal landscapes, became more vibrant and atmospheric about American paintings. His interest in Impressionism led him to become one of the founders of The Ten, a group of Boston and New York artists pioneering and promoting that style.

Metcalf attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School in Boston, apprenticed as a wood engraver and studied with George Loring Brown and Ignaz Gaugengigi at the Lowell Institute. The next year Willard Leroy Metcalf entered the Museum School in Boston and studied the Dutch tradition of painting with Otto Grundmann. Willard Metcalf became the first scholarship recipient of the Museum School and struggled to survive by American painting illustrations for Harper's magazine.

In 1901 Metcalf married his model Marguerite Beaufort Haile, an aspiring actress from New Orleans. When his wife ran off with painter Robert Nisbet the following year, Metcalf became an alcoholic, depressed and ill. In 1903 Willard Leroy Metcalf stopped drinking and began to lighten his palette and paint with a looser brush. The artist received rave reviews for Willard Leroy Metcalf painting from critics and finally felt at peace. In 1911 he had married Henriette Alice McCrea and the couple had two children. But it was during a period when he was still drinking and she divorced him in 1921. Willard Metcalf died in New York City on March 9, 1925.