Theodore Earl Butler was an important member of the Anglo-American art colony at Giverny, France, at the turn of the twentieth century. A resident of the village for over three decades, he was one of only a few American painters to have direct contact with Claude Monet. Although light and color played a vital role in his art throughout his career, Butler responded to a number of aesthetic forces. He eventually developed a highly original style, based on a refined synthesis of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist tendencies. In Paris, his landscapes and genre subjects were championed by some of the most progressive dealers of the day, including Ambroise Vollard and Paul Durand-Ruel.
Butlerwas born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1860. He received his first art instruction from a Mr. Fowley (or Foley), a panorama painter, while studying at Marietta College. Intent on pursuing an artistic career, he went to New York in 1882, enrolling in classes at the Art Students League. Three years later he traveled to Paris, accompanied by his friend and fellow artist, Philip Leslie Hale. In the French capital, Butler continued his training at the Académie Julian, the Académie Colarossi and at the Grande Chaumiere. He also studied with Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran, a prominent portraitist. In 1888 he exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time, winning an honorable mention for La Veuve (The Widow). During this period, Butler worked in a traditional academic style, focusing his attention on figure subjects.
Butlermade his first visit to Giverny in the summer of 1888. He returned to New York later in the fall, and remained in the city throughout the following year. During that time, he exhibited La Veuve at the National Academy of Design and contributed several works to the annual exhibition of the Society of American Painters in Pastel. He returned to Giverny in the spring or summer of 1890. There, inspired by the rural landscape, by the clear, northern light of the Seine Valley, and by the example of several of his fellow American painters, such as John L. Breck and Willard Metcalf, Butler began workingen plein air, experimenting with aesthetic precepts associated with Impressionism.
Due to his father's illness, Butler returned to the United States in the fall of 1890. He remained in America for a year, dividing his time between New York City and Columbus. However he returned to France in the autumn of 1891. After a brief stop in Paris, he went on to Giverny, taking up residence at the Hotel Baudy, an inn which catered almost exclusively to the Anglo-American art community. He continued to live there until his marriage to Claude Monet's stepdaughter, Suzanne Hoschedé, on the 20th of July 1892. The couple them moved into a small cottage, the "Maison Baptiste," on property adjacent to Monet's estate.
During these years, Butler began to paint his first Impressionist landscapes, capturing the effects of the bright Normandy sunshine by means of a high-keyed palette and broken brushwork. A familiar figure in the village, he could often be seen hiking around the countryside, setting up his collapsible easel in the midst of a freshly reaped field, at a quiet spot along the banks of the River Epte, or in one of the numerous gardens or orchards that populated the area.
However, in the mid 1890s, following the birth of his son James in 1893, and his daughter Lili two years later, Butler shifted his focus from the landscape to the figure. Signaling his artistic independence from his famous father-in-law, Butler turned his attention to intimate genre scenes, using his wife and children as models. While his choice of subject matter paralleled similar concepts being explored by the French painters Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, Butler's approach differed in its continued emphasis on light and color. He subsequently developed a highly original style, characterized by a brilliant, high-keyed palette and expressionist brushwork. Much of this new work was debuted at Butler's first solo exhibition, held at Galerie Vollard in Paris in 1897.
Butler's wife, Suzanne, died in 1899, following a lengthy illness. Later in that same year, he returned to America, accompanied by his sister-in-law, Marthe, who looked after his two young children. In 1900, Butler had an important one-man show at the Durand-Ruel Galleries in New York. He returned to Giverny with his family during the summer of that year, marrying Marthe Hoschede in late October. In the ensuing years, Butler had solo exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, and Rouen. During this period, Butler's home on the Rue du Columbier remained a gathering place for the numerous artists who continued to visit Giverny, such as Frederick MacMonnies and his wife, Mary Fairchild, as well as Frederick Frieseke. Butler was also involved in the publication of an informal magazine known as Le Courrier Innocent, which was geared specifically to the Giverny art colony. Its contributors included the painters Dawson Dawson-Watson, Thomas B. Meteyard, and Bertrand Goodhue, and the poets Bliss Carmen and Richard Hovey.
Butlerreturned to New York City in 1913, in order to supervise the installation of a series of mural panels he had designed for the William A. Paine Mansion, near White Plains, New York. During that same year, he participated in the famous Armory Show International Exhibition of Modern Art and contributed work to the annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He also had a solo exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris.
Although Butler had intended to return to Giverny in the summer of 1914, the European conflict presented such a potential danger to his family that he decided to remain in America indefinitely. In the years ahead, he continued to receive important mural commissions, executing projects for the Vanderbilt Mansion in New York and for the summer home of Solomon R. Guggenheim in Long Branch, New Jersey. He also painted many views of New York, including the harbor and Fifth Avenue. Butler also played a lively role in New York art life, largely through his participation, with John Sloan, in the founding of the Society of Independent Artists in 1918. He also contributed work to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915) and the Ohio Painters Exhibition, held in Columbus (1915). Butler returned to Giverny in 1921, remaining there for the rest of his life.
Following his death in 1936, Butler's accomplishments were largely forgotten by historians of American art, due, in large part, to his expatriate lifestyle. However, with the current scholarly interest in the tradition of American Impressionism and the activities of American artists in France, his reputation has since been revived. In addition to being included in the numerous surveys and exhibitions devoted to native Impressionism, Butler was also the subject of a major monograph, published in 1985.1
Examples of Butler's work can be found in many public collections throughout the United States and France, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, and the Musée Claude Monet in Giverny. Butler is also represented in many prominent private collections, including those of members of the family of former president George Bush, whose father was a nephew of Butler’s.
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1 See Richard H. Love, Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence From Monet's Shadow (Chicago: Haase-Mumm, l985).
