Willard Metcalf's poetic depiction of seasonal New England was enthusiastically received by critics of the early 1900s. Their warm reception and that of the general public have survived nearly a century. Interest in the Ten American Painters, a group founded in part by Metcalf and including a number of successful American impressionists, has hardly waned.
They initially offered impressionistic visions of coastal communities such as Old Lyme, Conn. and Glaucester, Mass., and in the early 1900s traveled northward to include Vermont and New Hampshire.
Several years ago, the Hood Museum purchased Metcalf's "The First Thaw," a winter scene created at the Cornish Artists' Colony in Cornish, N.H., a gathering place for artists and writers.
Barbara MacAdam, the curator of American art at the Hood and author of the catalogue for the exhibit, hopes that "A Winter's Promise" both enhances the viewer's understanding of the cultural context in which this recent addition to the permanent collection was created and reflects a long-standing interest in presenting art produced locally.
Metcalf created his sublime vision of rural New England in a time of great social change and evolution of lifestyle associated with the modernization of America.
While many artists and writers of the time period summered at the Cornish Artists' Colony, Metcalf chose instead to make it his winter retreat, escaping the confines of Manhattan in favor of its alternative tranquillity.
His embracing of winter was in part representative of the broader cultural context in which the works were created. Industrialization and social change pushed an increasingly romantic vision of the region, and a fascination with the ruggedness of New England winters.
MacAdam writes, "New England came to symbolize stability and endurance for an entire nation coping with sweeping societal change."
Reflecting the prominence of this symbol, winter themes were popular with Metcalf's contemporaries -- painters, photographers and printmakers alike toyed with various means of representing the season.
While Metcalf, who was influenced by Monet on informal sketching excursions to his home of Giverny, masterfully translated this contemporary trend of rural adoration, the exhibit suggests that he was also working with grander, transcendental themes.
He rarely chose to depict the monumental vision of Mount Ascutney, which by virtue of his location in and around Cornish, N.H., must have been an integral part of the landscape. Rather, he depicted intimate, anonymous scenes in which the actual season is the subject of the work.
While human activity is rarely evidenced in the landscapes, there is a sure sense of human presence in the contemplative nature of the scenes, which are dominated by a cool white infused with subtle hints of color.
Nature's thawing process is a recurrent theme and suggests a relationship between the life that emerges at the end of the great melt and the psychological and intellectual rejuvenation experienced by Metcalf and others in the refuge of the New England winter.
"The First Thaw," depicting a stretch of Blow-Me-Down Brook as it reasserts itself as a moving body of water, evokes, as quoted in the exhibit, "an unequivocal sense of place."
The same can be said for Metcalf's entire body of work. That he felt deeply connected to the landscape of Cornish is at the heart of his subject.
Metcalf depicted a physical landscape in which he found refuge from the pace of modern life and spiritual and intellectual renewal. In the process he provided viewers of his work, past and present, the opportunity to do the same.
