Artwork of the Week: July 27
Born in Ohio, Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1937) embarked on an illustrious career training at the best French academies before visiting Claude Monet’s picturesque home in Giverny, France. There, he fell in love with the pastoral countryside, the style of the Impressionists, and Monet’s stepdaughter, Suzanne Hoschedé, whom he married in 1892.
The synthetic oil paints used here allow arbitrary colors to be blended by the viewers’ eye into the palette of the natural world as it was seen in this moment, right as the late afternoon sun began to set upon the hills. Butler’s similarities to his father-in-law's style come through in loose brushwork, expressive colors, and dynamic scenes, but rather than embracing the expanses of sky and water like Monet, he chose to emphasize hills and villages, highlighting both the natural and manmade terrain.
After the death of his wife in 1899, he almost exclusively made landscape paintings, and as the climate in Europe spiraled towards the First World War, he continued to show the natural beauty of the world in his bucolic depictions. Even while stranded in America for the entirety of the war and finding a foreign art scene upon his return to France, Butler never stopped highlighting his vision of the earth’s goodness.
“Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet’s Shadow.” R. H. Love Galleries, Inc., Chicago, 1985. https://www.wilkes.edu/about-wilkes/arts/sordoni-art-gallery/past-exhibitions/_assets/_pdf_archives/1985-Theodore-Earl-Butler.pdf
Love, Richard H. Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet’s Shadow. Chicago: Haase-Mumm Pub. Co. : Distributed by the Amart Book and Catalog Distributing Co, 1985.
