Our Featured Painting:
Waifs (Haarlem, Holland)
by Charles Frederick Ulrich
The New York-born artist Charles Ulrich belonged to a cosmopolitan generation of American painters, and like countless other artists who came of age in the late nineteenth century, he sought training and experience in Europe. His first sojourn abroad occurred in 1875 when he left New York, where he had been studying at the National Academy of Design and Cooper Union, for Munich. In the Bavarian city, he enrolled at the Royal Academy. There he trained with Ludwig von Löfftz and Wilhelm Lindenschmidt. The former was also the teacher of John H. Twachtman, whom Ulrich befriended. Ulrich also became part of the circle of American artists who associated with the influential American painter Frank Duveneck, and Ulrich painted with the “Duveneck boys” in Munich as well as in the small Bavarian town of Polling.

Ulrich returned to the United States at some point between 1879 and 1881, and joined his compatriots among the young foreign-trained painters who were exploring new stylistic methods. Ulrich adhered to a more traditional realist approach than many of his Munich-trained friends, such as Twachtman and Duveneck, who were then emulating the alla prima bravura approach pioneered in the early 1870s by the German realist Wilhelm Leibl. Ulrich chose a precise method of painting that links his art with the interiors painted by Dutch seventeenth-century painters such as Pieter de Hooch and Jan Vermeer. He was one of the few painters of his time to address a social theme. Painted in 1884, his well-known In the Land of Promise—Castle Garden (1884; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) depicted immigrants arriving in New York City, capturing an important phenomenon overlooked by other painters of the day.

But the United States would not hold Ulrich long, and in the summer of 1884, he returned to Europe. He had probably met the Cincinnati-born painter Robert Blum in New York, and he now joined Blum in Holland, where the two artists rented an apartment together in Haarlem. For the next three years, the two artists were almost always together. During the summer of 1884, Blum painted quiet interiors featuring women knitting, while Ulrich demonstrated his interest in social themes, portraying a scene of an interior of a print shop staffed by youths (1884; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago) and images of a local orphanage. Ulrich devoted several paintings to this subject, including Waifs (Haarlem, Holland), which he exhibited at the National Academy of Design 1885.

Several reviews of the exhibition described the painting. The Art Age reported:

“Waifs” is the sentimental title of an unsentimental, realistic, careful rendering of a scene in the Orphanage of Haarlem, Holland, by Mr. Charles F. Ulrich. The orphans, coarse, honest, everyday types of female youth, in their quaint uniform, are gazing with delight upon an older orphan left in charge of them. It is understood that the technique of this picture, as the work of Mr. Ulrich, is of the first order in the class to which it belongs. What is further noticeable, as a decided advance on the artist’s other works, is the distinctiveness of individualization possessed by each figure—as the result of a certain literary habit of observation, indicating the approach of maturity in the painter’s development.

The New York Times commented:

Mr. C. F. Ulrich shows in the South Gallery a well-painted and lifelike group of orphans and foundlings in the bare interior of the orphanage at Haarlem, Holland. The effect of light falling on this realistic group of young girls is such as to confirm all that has been promised by Mr. Ulrich’s earlier work. The idle play with soap bubbles is neither forced nor pointless; it occupies that agreeable middle line between meaning much and little that is the special province of art; which is not, on the one hand, literary, nor on the other, “art for art’s sake.” It tells a story without trying to insist too much. The Dutch type is strong in the girl seated on the deal table who holds the clay pipe from which a bubble oozes. The interior is nicely treated, neither finicky nor slapdash, while the outlook on the green and sun-flooded bit of garden is capitally given.

True to these descriptions, the painting portrays the scene from midst of a stark room in which the only furnishings are crude wood benches and tables, used probably for work and meals. The walls are bare, and the floor consists of knotted wood planks. In this space, six girls of about ages eight through twelve are seated in a casual fashion, wearing simple, traditional Dutch clothing. They are shown during a moment of leisure, and two sew while three others gaze at a somewhat older girl, turned mostly with her back to us, who blows bubbles. One large bubble at the end of the long pipe glistens in the light, while another floats upward. Each of the figures is carefully realized, so as to depict them as individuals, rather than showing them as generalized types, as in so many genre scenes of the era. The translucent bubbles, rising easily into the air, play up by contrast the constrained nature of the children’s lives, demonstrating the kind of sensitivity and social awareness that Ulrich demonstrated in Castle Garden. Providing a narrative moment without moralizing or storytelling, the painting has pathos without descending to sentiment.

The scene is illuminated by natural light, which enters the room through two windows that look out on a courtyard marked by trees and the rose-colored brick buildings typical of Dutch towns. Yet, in the tradition of such Dutch artists as Jan Vermeer, Ulrich also revealed another unseen light source. Sunlight enters also through a window at the right of the scene, grazing the shoulder of the near figure, illuminates the profile of a seated figure, bounces across the surface of a table and brushes up against the girl at the left side of the scene. This light parallels the movement within the composition. Sunlight also falls on the empty space at the left, balancing the darker forms of the figures, which are enveloped in the soft, diffused light that enters from the courtyard.

The painting exemplifies the qualities for which Ulrich was acclaimed. Waifs (Haarlem, Holland) is rendered in clear and realistic terms, with each of the figures modeled carefully and integrated into the scene’s chiaroscuro. At the same time, the arrangement is sophisticated, with a gentle curve drawing us through the figural grouping and unifying the design. The waving line of the figures is echoed by the placement of the benches and tables, which create an angular counterbalance to the figures. The surfaces of the walls, wainscoting, floors, and tables are treated with attention to the different textures. Throughout, the light plays a prominent role, but its presence, illuminating and revealing aspects of the figures, underscores the scene’s realism, resulting in a work that engages our sympathies without descending into sentimentality.

Unlike most of his compatriots, Ulrich did not eventually return to America after a period of European experimentation. Instead, he remained abroad as an expatriate, perhaps aware that his interest in genre subjects that explored social realities were out of step with the desires of American audiences for evocative images of tonal landscapes or depictions of young women in vibrant gardens. Although he maintained ties with American artist-friends, after 1886, Ulrich’s home was Europe. He lived first in Venice, later in Rome, and finally in Berlin. For this reason, much of his oeuvre is unknown today, and it is only rarely that works such as Waifs (Haarlem, Holland) come to light, making us aware of the strength and distinctiveness of Ulrich’s quiet and exquisitely crafted realist images.

LNP

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