Hovsep Pushman (1877-1966)

Born in 1877 in Tigranakert, a part of historical Armenia then known as Turkish Ermenistan, Hovsep Pushman began his study of art at age eleven when he received a scholarship to attend The Imperial School of Fine Arts in Constantinople.  Forced to emigrate to America when he was seventeen due to political unrest in his country, he settled with his family in Chicago, where his father sold Oriental carpets.  After arriving in Chicago, Pushman pursued further art instruction at the Art Institute of Chicago and created dark-toned, heavily impastoed works.  At the young age of seventeen Pushman created a sensation by teaching a class at the Academy.  His next stop was Paris in 1905.  There he studied with Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Tony Robert-Fleury, and Adolphe Déchenaud.  It was under Déchenaud, a portrait painter known for his use of brilliant color, that Pushman was first challenged to incorporate his memories of life in Armenia into his art.  Drawing on his recollection of images he had seen as a child in books and art, Pushman depicted romantic subjects such as Nubian princesses, Kurdistanian hillsmen, and Spanish gypsies.  With the encouragement of Déchenaud, Pushman filled these works with strong, vivid color relationships that recall the patterns in the carpets that his father sold. 

In 1915, Pushman returned to Chicago, where he became a naturalized American citizen.  That year, the Art Institute of Chicago held an exhibition of Pushman’s portraits, which were praised for their intriguing subjects and symbolic use of color.  A critic for the Fine Arts Journal commented:  “In the Pushman portraits the intricate color harmonies possessed the appeal of an almost passionate beauty.  The age long beauty lore of the Orient, its ultra refinement of the color sense vibrated in symphonies of tone. . . . Mr. Pushman feels . . .that there is a universal symbolism of language of color everywhere instinctively recognized whether it be fundamental or from association.”¹   After the show closed, Pushman returned to Paris, where he maintained a studio throughout his life. 

From 1917-1919, Pushman lived in Riverside, California, and exhibited at the California Art Club.  A solo exhibition of his work was held in 1918 at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art.  In 1919, an exhibition of his paintings was shown at the Milwaukee Art Institute.  By the mid-1920s, Pushman had settled in New York, where he became an Artist Member at the Grand Central Art Galleries and established a studio at Carnegie Hall.  Although he continued to create portraits and figural studies, in New York, his interest gradually shifted to still life painting.  Instead of traditional fruit or flower subjects, Pushman chose to paint antique objects from the Near and Far East, which he had begun to collect avidly.  Among the objects he acquired were rare, old tapestries and textiles; Syrian glass bowls; lacquered chests; small, Medieval carved figures of saints; Chinese figurines in the Tang style; statues of Buddha and Genghis Khan; Chinese Ming figures; Kano style screens; and bronze statuettes.  He painted these objects with an impeccable technique, capturing the iridescent qualities of their glazes and their well-worn surfaces.  Carefully arranging just a few objects within his works, Pushman demonstrated an intuitive sense of composition and a delight in subtle rather than obvious bonds between forms that has led to comparisons between his art and that of the eighteenth-century French still life painter Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin.  The mysterious and delicate glow that infuses Pushman’s works also suggests a connection with Chardin.  Although Pushman painted rare antiques rather than the commonplace kitchen motifs depicted by Chardin, like the French painter, Pushman bathed objects in warm, varied light that brought out the spiritual qualities in manmade forms and conveyed the communion between the physical and transcendent realms.  Like Chardin, Pushman observed objects in soft candlelight and painted with so many thin layers of pigment that color seems to rise gradually up to the surface.  Pushman’s interest in atmospheric effects and color harmonies has also led to comparisons between his images and those of James McNeill Whistler.  Aware of the evocative qualities of his images, Pushman often wrote poems to accompany his still lifes.  Adding to the decorative richness of his canvases, he frequently placed his works in original Italian Renaissance frames or in copies of these frames which he created.

In 1926, a show of Pushman’s work was held at the prestigious Paris gallery, Bernheim Jeune.  In the next decade, his still life production reached its peak, and his works readily found buyers.  When a show of sixteen of his paintings was held at Grand Central Galleries in 1932, all of the works sold. This triumph caused a sensation in the New York  art scene not only because it occurred during the Great Depression, but also because Pushman’s works were extremely high in price.  Critics were quick to notice the strength and elegance of Pushman’s images.  The Art News reported: 

Mr. Pushman continues to develop his chosen formula of delicate figurine or other object of vertu set against a background of shimmering textiles and touched off with a faded rose or sprig of berries.  He may introduce an old book with gilded inscription running across its ivoried pages, or else set down for study a rare plate of ancient facture as a variation of the general glorification of the gilded deities.  But it all comes to the same end--the hymning of shimmer of silk and glint of gold and pearl wrought into persuasive intimacy of mood and pattern.²

The international art magazine Connoisseur reported: 

At [Pushman’s] recent exhibition in New York such was the eagerness to secure examples of his work that every single picture was sold on the opening day . . . One canvas was purchased for a very high sum by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, and cash paid down on the nail, one of the very few occasions when such a thing has taken place . . . from what we have seen of the work, the surprising element is that painting of such sound workmanship and excellent quality should have met with immediate and unequivocal success.  It may be that the spiritual intention behind the actual painting appealed very strongly to an American public (these pictures are allegories with a mystic significance).³

The New York Times also took note of the show, commenting: 

It is a most unusual and impressive experience to go about the room in which the pictures are displayed and to see beneath each canvas a little “sold” wafer.  But when quality alone is considered one is not surprised.  Hovsep Pushman goes on . . . painting his exquisite still lifes, involving always much the same material by way of subject matter, and yet stencil would be the last word one would use in describing the result.  Fresh charm invests each new venture of the brush.  The artist’s craftsmanship is most extraordinary.  He works with the sort of precision and care that we associate with the Renaissance Italian masters, who, on the craft side, dedicated their lives to the attaining of perfection.   Mr. Pushman’s little Oriental figures and precious bits of pottery and glass are as beautifully wrought in paint as we suppose the objects themselves to be in their various materials.⁴

In other reviews, Pushman’s works were acclaimed for their subtle, harmonious arrangements, rich illuminated colors, and refined brushwork. 

In 1942, Pushman filed a lawsuit against the New York Graphic Society when it reproduced one of his works which had been purchased by the University of Illinois.  The landmark suit, which was brought before the New York Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, resulted in a loss for Pushman.  He only failed to win, however, because he had neither forbidden nor authorized the reproduction of his work at the time of the sale.  The result of the case would have an impact on the commercial prospects of New York artists in the years to come.

In the period following the court case, Pushman continued to live in his home-studio at Carnegie Hall, where he surrounded himself with his favorite possessions.  His became ill in 1964, and died two years later at the age of 89. 

Pushman’s works are represented in many important private and public collections including the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Milwaukee Art Institute; the Minneapolis Art Museum; the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; the Norfolk Art Association, Virginia; the Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Rockford Art Guild, Illinois; the San Diego Fine Arts Society; and the Seattle Art Museum, Washington.

 

LNP

 

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