Harrison’s vast studio in Paris breathes of the sea. The painter is an ardent yachtsman, and traces of his recreation are numerous. Here are to be found dozens of canvases, rolled up, piled in bundles, hung haphazard against the walls, each one telling some different story of the waters. These studies, probably worked upon in the neighbourhoods of Pould’hu or Begmiel, are often actually salted and sanded by contact with the elements which dash against the wild but lovely Breton shores. No modern man paints seascapes like Harrison. He produces effects which are evidently the results of patient vigil and watching, as well as a vigorous power of brushwork. They are transcripts of the ocean, which can only be seen as the sun rises out of the east over the waters, pale lilac tints, softly fading into citron, or gaining added strength in vermilion or deep orange reflected from the passing clouds, whilst sweeping ripples (one can almost hear their rhythmic cadence) are gently lost across the expanse of ethereal, glistening sand.
SUNLIGHT ON THE LAKE · CHILDE HASSAM
In other pictures we see the tide at full flood; nature is in a fairer mood, and the universe glows with an exquisite green. The waves, of a glassy transparency, are for the moment held in check by a supreme power. Such passing phases of Nature Mr. Harrison seizes with unerring touch. Another branch of his work, already referred to in speaking of the picture In Arcady, are the paintings of the nude amidst the actual surrounding of the fields. Part of their success may be ascribed to the fact that they have been painted in each case in the open air. From the photographs, which Mr. Harrison has allowed us to reproduce, both sides of his beautiful talent may be judged. Like most Impressionists, his art breathes of a love and joy with Nature as seen by a temperament refined, distinguished, one may add—aristocratic.
In the days when Florida was a primæval wilderness Mr. Harrison as a very young man entered the United States Coast Survey. Whistler, it may be remembered, commenced his career under the auspices of the same department. Florida was just the place for an adventurous youth, and Harrison was interested in his work. His enthusiasm, coupled with his ability, resulted in being intrusted with most of the difficult and sometimes dangerous “reconnaissance” engineering scout work that called for lonely jaunts and camping out amongst the swamps and lagoons.
After four years on the Florida coast the party moved on to Puget Sound. The young men connected with the survey had been dabbling for some time in the use of water-colours, and Harrison found that the artist in him was winning ascendency over the surveyor. An argument with the head of the survey settled the matter. Mr. Harrison went to San Francisco, and then travelled to Paris, and studied under Gérôme. He was in his twenty-sixth year, and conscious that his career was midway between success and failure. He exhibited at the Salon a picture Châteaux en Espagne, a boy stretched on his back in the sand of a warm, dry beach, wrapt in the spell of a day-dream. “It was rather symbolic,” said the artist once as he gazed at the photograph, “of my own state of mind at that time.”
During the next ten years he was engaged in painting nudes in the open air. His chief source of inspiration was his friend Bastien-Lepage, with whom he travelled to Brittany. Harrison’s first success was In Arcady, now in the Luxembourg. A recent journalistic interview elicited many interesting facts about Mr. Harrison’s method of work. The writer concludes: “Mr. Harrison’s usual haunt in Brittany is Begmiel. Here there is a sandy peninsula jutting into the sea, whence you can watch the sun go down on the one horizon, and the moon come up from the other. He does not carry his paint-box about with him taking notes. Memory and imagination, knowledge and power of visualisation, take psychic photographs. It is not to be gathered from this that Mr. Harrison is unerring. He has scraped out as many yards of painted canvas as any man. But where his strength undeniably exists is in this subjective, rather than objective, genius for instantaneous notation. When he comes to put the picture on the canvas—now mark the importance of early influences—he becomes the young surveyor again engaged in reconnaissance. He takes his embryonic map (a small canvas) and puts down his known points. He knows just what spot of colour was here, what broken line there. The more he puts down the more he sees, and presently the little map is finished. The first map finished a larger size is made, and, if all goes well, perhaps one larger still, and we have a great picture like any one of those exhibited by the artist at the Salon of the Société Nationale.”
It is hardly necessary to add that this artist is an officer of the Legion of Honour, and has received numerous medals and other awards. Of the Franco-American school of painting he is one of the recognised heads, and this has been acknowledged by his election to the chief art societies of Paris, New York, Berlin, and Munich, whilst he is represented in the permanent collections of the Luxembourg, the Royal Gallery, Dresden, the Museum at Quimper, and the American galleries of Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco.
CHILDREN · CHILDE HASSAM