Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art presents
ROOM
with a
VIEW
Bermuda
4 SAIL
HARTLEY
GLEIZES
Canada
Eh?
DEMUTH 100
JAN 5 — SEPT 30
2017
This exhibition was made possible by…
American Friends of Masterworks, Inc.
The Bank of Bermuda Foundation
Butterfield & Vallis
Brendalyn & Ernest E. Stempel
Foundation
Colonial Insurance Limited
Robert & Sue Cawthorn
John & Lorraine Charman
Global Indemnity Limited
The Christian Humann Foundation
Lindos Group of Companies
William & Laura Williams
Sharon Vesey
Anonymous
Mary Ball
Denise Belvin
Toni Besselaar
Susan Black
Robin Blackburne
Hazel Brown
John & Debbie Burville
Tom & Gill Butterfield
Jim & Debbie Butterfield
Robert Chandler
Joseph & Marlene Christopher
Margot Cox
Lothar & Alexia Crofton
Judith Davidson
Eugenia Dean
Nicholas & Bitten Dill
Peter & Veronica Dunkerley
Steve & Suzanne Dunkerley
Meredith Ebbin
Andrew & Sylvie Elliott
Edwin & Kathy Faries
Keith & Suzette Fisher
Lully Gibbons
Sheila Gray
G. Stanley & Jeannette Greenslade
Nancy Hannam
Margot Harvey
Eva Hodgson
Faith Humann
Elizabeth Hutchings
John Johnston & Tawnya White
Michael & Lauren Judd
Anne Kast
Pamela Kempe
Lars & Kitty Knudsen
Stephen Lake & Sheila Nicoll
Ghislaine Lemay
Robert & Mary Lindo
Janine Lines
Margaret Lloyd
Gail MacNeil
Brendan & Kenane McDonagh
Joy Mitchell
Gillian Outerbridge
Brian & Maureen Peckett
Olga Rankin
Roderick Raynor
Astrid Robinson
Sheila Simons-Johnson
Carol Sims
Tina Stevenson
William & Maureen Stewart
Robin Stubbs
Susan Titus
Wendy Tribley
Claudia Wardman
Carol West
Nea Willits
ROOM
with a
VIEW
Celebrating 30 years
of collecting
George C. Ault, Bermuda Park, 1922
A message from our Patron, HRH Prince Charles
4
MASTERWORKS
Contents
Our Art is for All ............................ 6
Bermuda 4 Sail ............................... 8
Canada, Eh? ..................................... 11
NY Centenary ................................ 14
Masterworks at 30 .................... 17
Marsden Hartley, Sunken Treasure, 1935
ROOM WITH A VIEW
5
Our Art is for All
IN 1987, based on an exhibition from the previous year,
which highlighted Andrew Wyeth’s “Royal Palms,” we purchased
12 paintings, affectionately referred to as the 12 Apostles.
Soon we were awash in artwork and ideas—the original
thinking that the collection would be finite. Driven by the
knowledge of Georgia O’Keeffe, Winslow Homer and Andrew
Wyeth, we were moving at a frenzied pace to acquire artwork
while we were building credence in the community. Unknown
names (and this is where the work began) such as Ambrose
Webster, Will Howe Foote, Reynolds and Gifford Beal, Clark
Voorhees and Charles Hawthorne added to the roster.
It wasn’t long into this quest that the names of three illustrious
Modernist artists—Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth and
Albert Gleizes—emerged, but they were not “household” names,
and aside from a few art world academics, largely unfamiliar to
most. We took the risk of going into greater debt and then set
about the rationale of the importance of each painting to the
Collection and to the public. The O’Keeffe was a somewhat
easier sell—although to some Board members, its relevance was
challenged, as it was not “pretty,” or at least not decorative.
Overcoming the obstacle of debt was our single greatest
impediment, along with trying to justify and educate a very
skeptical public. What was becoming apparent was that the
muse, the inspiration and interpretation were well beyond the
traditional landscapes or seascapes so often associated with
Bermuda in a parochial environment.
Early in our collecting, we returned to Bermuda’s shores the
abstract work of Charles Hawthorne. No doubt due to the fact
that one could not “see” Bermuda in these works, two issues
arose—explaining that all artists in all art forms approach a
singular subject in many different ways—and being able to
point out identifiable motifs which the viewer could become
comfortable with. It was never the intent, as work was surfacing,
to acquire works that were purely pleasing: rather, we sought
work that challenged and gave greater depth, variety and scope
to the legacy of the Collection.
We always wanted to make the idea “Inspired by Bermuda” as
accessible as possible, so while we were nomadic for the first 21
years, once we had something to show we took the core of the
collection overseas to New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, Boston,
London and Charleston. We have been able to add depth and
variety by exhibiting artists of many mediums: the artistic hunter
gatherers inspired by the artists who found such beauty in
Bermuda. It is this that continues today and is one reason we
initiated the Artists-in-Residence programme. The primary
objective of the programme was in keeping with the very
philosophy that the beauty of the island is something worthy of
visiting artists recording their Bermuda experience.
This particular focus highlights the wealth of great treasure
found within the Collection. When we started out, we called
ourselves “Masterworks,” and the title was a little misunderstood,
if not misleading. Homer, O’Keeffe and Wyeth were our leading
sources of inspiration. Little did we realise that for our 30th
birthday these works would be exhibited together for the first
time since they have all happily been returned to our shores.
Our growth potential is endless as the support for the museum
continues to grow. Our single greatest challenge is creating more
room in order to have more exhibition space, storage areas and
education rooms.
Way back in 1986, at the outset, it was clear that among our
objectives were the Three As:
A is for Art.
A is for Access.
(and in the Bermudian vernacular…)
A is for Arrybuddy!
— Tom Butterfield —
Founder & Creative Director
6
MASTERWORKS
The Masterworks 12
The 12 Apostles (clockwise from top left): Thomas Pollack Anshutz, View of Bermuda, South Shore, 1910; George C. Ault, View of St.
George’s, Bermuda Cottages and Bermuda, all 1922; Frank Carson, Late Afternoon and Hamilton, Bermuda, both 1932; Edmund Greacen,
Bermuda Dock, 1911; Emma Fordyce MacRae, St. George’s, 1952; Ogden Minton Pleissner, Shinbone Alley, St. George’s, c. 1950; Prosper
Louis Senat, Bermuda, Harbour View, 1909 and Bermuda, 1916; Ross Sterling Turner, Fairylands, 1885
ROOM WITH A VIEW
7
Bermuda 4 Sail
Unknown artist, Dinghy Racing, c. 1900
THE TOWERING hi-tech rig of America’s Cup race
boats battling in the Great Sound this year may seem light years
from Bermuda’s humble colonial beginnings. But these modern
wonders are the dazzling end product of a world-changing
innovation created 400 years ago in these very waters: the fabled
Bermuda Rig.
Indeed, almost every modern sailboat, from day sailer to race
leviathan, shares the genes painstakingly developed in Bermuda
—and captured time and again by artists, local and visitor.
Imagine getting around the breezy, scattered Bermuda
archipelago after England’s first official colonists arrived in the
lumbering Plough in 1612. As settlements spread, Bermudians
needed to transport produce and supplies throughout the islands.
But there were no roads, and sparse tracks beaten by wild hogs
were rare and mostly useless among dense cedar forestation.
But there was the sea—a limitless highway, albeit strewn with
coral reefs ready to ensnare the unwary mariner. Sailboats
seemed the obvious way to travel, but there was an additional
barrier for those first Bermudians in their small gigs and
shallops: a prevailing southwesterly wind. Much of the time,
they had to row, painstakingly.
If, only, they must have imagined, there was some way to sail
to windward… As luck would have it, help arrived in the form of
a carpenter wrecked in a Dutch frigate on Bermuda’s northerly
reefs shortly before Governor Nathaniel Butler took charge in
1619. The Dutchman, Jacob Jacobsen, is credited with beginning
the gradual trial and error approach of developing the Bermuda
Rig—raked masts carrying oversized tri-cornered sails. The new
rig was remarkably fast compared to its predecessors, particularly
when close hauled. More importantly, it could sail to windward.
8
Now the locals could travel easily and quickly from point to
point.
The Bermuda boats swiftly gained praise. John Hardy, a
visitor on a Bermuda Company magazine ship in 1671, described
them in a poem:
With tripple corner’d Sayls they always float
About the Islands, in the world there are
None in all points that may with them compare.
Surprisingly, other countries and islands were slow to pick up
on the Bermuda Rig’s importance, despite the eventual appearance
of fast Bermuda trading sloops and sloops-of-war around the
globe. Even in Bermuda, the rig was not applied to recreational
racing until the advent of “fitted dinghies”—originally work
boats specially fitted for competition. Such dinghies, with their
huge sails, still race each summer in thrilling displays.
By the early 1900s, with the advent of the Bermuda Race
from Newport, visiting sail enthusiasts were reporting what they
had seen on the island. News reached the ears of the great boat
designer Captain Nathanael Herreshoff, who spent the summers
of 1910–16 in Bermuda, studying hulls and rigging. By the
1920s, he had dispensed with the standard racing gaff rig in
favour of the Bermuda Rig in commissioned race boats for
wealthy clients. It was not long before the Bermuda Rig became
standard on almost all serious competitive yachts worldwide.
The rig has been much developed and adapted, but what we
see in the contests of today harks back to the ingenuity of a small
community overcoming unusual weather conditions on an island
far from the rest of humanity.
MASTERWORKS
Above: Unknown artist, Regatta, 1862
ROOM WITH A VIEW
Below: Isabel McLaughlin, Taut Sails, 1961
9
Above: Jonah Jones, Stakeboat, 2000
10
Below: Unknown British Naval Lieutenant, Sailing in the Bermudas, c. 1850
MASTERWORKS
Canada, Eh?
Paterson Ewen, Whale Sighting, 1999
WHAT LINKS two places, one tiny and temperate, the
other vast and extreme? In 2017, the anniversary spirit is a natural
bond as Bermuda and Canada celebrate together. Masterworks’
30th year also marks Canada’s 150th and offers a chance to reflect
on the geographic, cultural and artistic connections between 21
square miles of subtropical islands and 3.9 million square miles
of continent reaching farther north than the Arctic Circle. Just
800 miles apart, Bermuda is closer to Canada than the Caribbean.
This distance has been traversed in both directions for generations
offering three possibilities to inhabitants of both places: escape
(from climate to opportunity), exchange (often without quest for
material gain), and expansion of horizons and palettes.
Escape: Since the more recent dawn of the age of tourism,
Bermuda’s climate has lured many Canadian artists into escaping
south, seeking fresh eyes and landscapes where colour and life
could be found in months when the North was white, frozen
and asleep. In return, many Bermudians have sought university
education and employment in a bigger country offering greater
opportunities. Thus routes had been established between Canada
and Bermuda across the Atlantic by boat and later, airplane. The
best example of escape comes from the art in the Masterworks
Museum. Paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures are
found in many houses and galleries in Canada acting as windows
to warmth and softness during the months of harsh cold.
Exchange: Art has the unique ability to blur national borders
and to give views and perspectives that are the product of more
than one place. The many works in the Masterworks Collection
by Canadians depicting Bermuda are creations of at least two
places. Artists must adapt their techniques and give something of
ROOM WITH A VIEW
themselves in order that they might learn, observe and understand
enough about a foreign land to portray it recognisably.
There is an anti-nationalist subtext to painting a flattering
portrait of an adopted place. The Canadian Group of Painters,
the successor movement to the highly influential Group of Seven
from 1933, exemplifies this. Although this collective of artists
lived and worked “to foster closer cooperation between Canadian
artists and to encourage and cultivate Canadian artistic expression,”
a number of its members chose to cultivate their talents outside
Canada, such as Jack Bush, Isabel McLaughlin, Yvonne McKague
Housser, John Lyman and André Biéler. They all visited
Bermuda and created a shared heritage and art history through
their paintings of water, rocks, sand, boats and people.
Expansion: The strongest connection between pieces by
Canadian artists and the rest of the Collection is the concept
of Bermuda as muse. Bermuda gets under the skin of these
Canadian artists, just as they work to comprehend Bermuda: to
decipher the colours of shadows; to do justice to the vibrancy of
plants and people; and to depict in one static image the organic
passage of time that made an architectural style shaped by the
island’s bedrock and climate. Immersion in Bermuda, despite its
minute size, elicits enlarged palettes and expanded horizons.
The first 30 years of Masterworks’ mission to enrich the
community through art and education have not only enriched
the island, but have enriched Canada too, and that is worthy of
celebration. Happy birthday to Canada and Masterworks, a
gallery that is the keeper of many important links between two
very different yet very connected places.
— Harriet Wennberg —
11
Above: André Biéler, Front Street,
1922
Left: John Lyman, St. George’s,
Bermuda (Century Plant), c. 1920
12
MASTERWORKS
Above: Yvonne
McKague Housser,
Pink Cottage, 1937
Right: Charles Fraser
Comfort, Third Hole,
Mid Ocean Club, 1978
ROOM WITH A VIEW
13
NY Centenary
THIS exhibition is a centennial celebration of
the artistic collaboration and Cubist experimentation
by two giants of American Modernism—Marsden
Hartley and Charles Demuth—and the role
played by French Cubist Albert Gleizes, who
joined them in Bermuda in early 1917.
Demuth and Hartley had enjoyed a productive
summer in Providence, MA in 1916, exploring
shared subjects such as boats, seascapes, landscapes,
buildings and flowers interpreted in two very
different ways. Both flirted with the tenets of
Cubism—Hartley embracing the overlapping
planes of Synthetic Cubism’s collage phenomenon
and Demuth working with delicately tinted, lightfilled watercolours based on direct observation,
energised by the dynamic fracture lines adopted
from Analytical Cubism and Italian Futurism.
The Americans first met in Europe in 1914
and travelled in the same social circles in New
York with the avant-garde artists associated with
Gallery 291 owner Alfred Stieglitz and art
collectors Walter and Louise Arenberg. Hartley
travelled to Bermuda first in December 1916 with
the sponsorship of Stieglitz. He wrote to his
mentor from the Brunswick Street Guest House:
“Everyone greets with ‘good morning’ if only out
of respect to himself.” Hartley soon extended an
invitation to Demuth to join him so they could
continue the productive, creative collaboration
they had been enjoying earlier in the year. The two
moved to the St. George Hotel and were joined
by Gleizes and his wife Juliette Roche, who had
followed them after arriving in New York. The
French artist no doubt influenced Demuth
and Hartley’s artistic decisions in Bermuda and
allowed them the scope to establish a body of
work. Hartley created some 35 oils on board,
denser and more symbolically abstract, and
Demuth around 70 watercolours on paper, based
on direct observation. They were deeply influenced by the
architecture of Bermuda and the textural surfaces of the coral
stone buildings, which were painted with an organic wash.
Bermuda proved to be a watershed for both artists. Hartley
marked the final chapter of his abstract work, which was considered
among the most advanced art being produced by any American
at that time. Demuth found Bermuda to be the beginning of a
more mature style that was further developed in his Cubist
watercolours and Precisionist paintings of factories and machinery,
which reflected his interest in Bermuda’s vernacular architecture.
The 22 oils and watercolours that Gleizes produced in Bermuda
14
Marsden Hartley, Movement, Bermuda, 1917
have been described as a step back to an earlier style, although he
saw them as advancement “into something more universal,
something more synthetic.” This would fit in with his espousal
of Synthetic Cubism, which he explored in his book written with
Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme.
The time these artists spent in Bermuda was short, intense
and incredibly creative. It has been said the work which came out
of this period set the course of American Modernism. The blend
of the European sensibilities of Gleizes and the forthright, purely
American approach of Demuth and Hartley produced a unique
body of work which is recognised as significant by art historians.
MASTERWORKS
Albert Gleizes, Portrait de Juliette Roche, 1917
ROOM WITH A VIEW
15
Above: Charles Demuth, Trees
and Houses, 1917
Left: Albert Gleizes, Maison
aux Bermudes, 1917
16
MASTERWORKS
Masterworks at 30
THE PAST 30 years have heralded many changes in
Bermuda—in government, in the economy, in the fabric of our
island life and in how we have become global citizens through
communications and the Internet.
During this time, Masterworks has flourished from a kernel
of an idea to a “state-of-the-art” museum which is the caretaker
of a collection worthy of international attention.
When Tom Butterfield introduced the notion of an art
collection consisting of A-list artists in 1987, it was greeted at
first with skepticism, but gradually the public warmed to the
idea and eventually it was embraced by locals and visitors. To
regard Bermuda as the muse for such artists as Winslow Homer,
Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley became an appealing
way to not only understand our heritage but to understand the
diversity of interpretations of the many facets of the island.
Whether it be the architecture, atmosphere, landscape, coastline
or the people themselves, there was something to offer all artists
who came to our shores.
Masterworks started with a dozen artworks, lovingly referred
to as the 12 Apostles, which were purchased with a $60,000 loan.
Bermudians were at first curious to see these paintings and how
the island was depicted by overseas artists. Soon, the locals took
ownership of the collection. It became a source of pride when
they travelled abroad and saw the esteem in which the very
artists who painted their island were held. Masterworks captured
the imagination of the Bermudian public and soon became a
household name and a local institution. Once word spread, the
roster of artists grew to include those from America, Europe, the
Caribbean, Canada and points around the world.
As Masterworks grew, so did its programmes. It was always
the Foundation’s goal to use the collection as a learning tool, as so
many stories about Bermuda can be gleaned from its inventory.
For instance, Jack Bush’s watercolour St. George’s, Bermuda,
which depicts a woman carrying what appear to be mangoes in a
basket on her head, was interpreted by many as a comment on
the demeaning treatment of black Bermudians. But in truth,
this was the most economical method of moving produce around
before trucks and trains became the norm.
Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art has evolved from a
passionate group of individuals who formed the Masterworks
Foundation 30 years ago to an institution which has proven to
be a point of pride for generations of Bermudians to come.
Jack Bush, St. George’s, Bermuda, 1939
ROOM WITH A VIEW
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Above: Winslow Homer, Inland Water, Bermuda, 1901
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Below: Ogden Minton Pleissner, St. George’s, Bermuda, c. 1950
MASTERWORKS
Frank O. Small, The Welcoming Smile, c. 1900
ROOM WITH A VIEW
19
‘Imagination is the beginning of creation.
You imagine what you desire, you will what
you imagine, and at last, you
create what you will’
— George Bernard Shaw —
SEE… LEARN… ENRICH…
Michael Clinton, Still Life, Bermuda, 1937
PO Box HM 1929, Hamilton HM HX
t. 441-299-4000 • f. 441-235-4402 • e. [email protected]
Opening hours
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Sunday 11am–4:30pm
Closed most public holidays. See website for more info
www.bermudamasterworks.org