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WILLARD LEROY METCALF
(American, 1858-1925)
Giverny, 1887
Oil on canvas
26 x 32 1/8”
Bequest of Addison M. Metcalf 1984.19.10

American painter and illustrator Willard Metcalf was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and he received very little formal artistic training. At the age of seventeen he served as an apprentice for the Boston painter George Loring Brown, and several years later he was admitted on scholarship to the art school sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston. During the 1880s, an increasing awareness of Impressionism drew many American artists, including Childe Hassam, to French academies. In the fall of 1883, Metcalf traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian. He remained in France for five years, and he frequently painted in the artists’ colonies of Grèz and Pont-Aven. His most formative experiences occurred during his visits in 1886 to Giverny and the home of Claude Monet, where he participated in the daily life of the Monet household: he hiked and sketched with Monet’s step-daughters and often accompanied the artist’s son on walks. From Monet, Metcalf learned the key elements of Impressionism—high-keyed color, division of light into its component hues, and broken brushwork. He incorporated the French style of landscape painting into his existing tonalist approach, which included a preference for muted earth colors and the depiction of space as shallow planes. In Giverny, which was painted around the time of the artist’s interaction with Monet, Metcalf investigated the properties of light and the effect on patterned shadow. This painting is a quintessential Giverny scene as painted by the first generation of Americans there, whose favorite subjects consisted of informal scenes along the Epte River, often depicted with views of village homes and farm buildings seen through the trees. Here, the sun-dappled grass and foliage are awash with warm, fleeting sunlight, but the painting gives the impression that the shade will soon encroach upon the scene, changing its color and appearance altogether.