William Lamb Picknell

The landscapes of William Lamb Picknell were never studio conventions; nor were they idealized, romanticized or embellished creations. Picknell painted directly from nature in the open light, often in the raw glare of sunlight. Even winter scenes were painted directly, although sometimes from temporary glass enclosures. With loaded brush and palette knife Picknell thickly buttered his canvases with a rapidity that was legendary. A master figure painter, Picknell depicted the activities of the Portuguese and Yankee fishermen of the New England coast with direct objectivity. He was an absolute realist.

Works from this time period by Picknell are very special, as he was part of a small group of Americans who ventured to France at this time and worked in a manner so close to their European counterparts.  These artists are considered expatriates, and at the time there was the hope that as they returned home with these works, collectors would accept them and buy them as they did the European masters.  They are important precursors to Impressionism.  And indeed Picknell is often one of the Americans sited as initiating the “glare aesthetic” and techniques that introduced a change of style in the United States.

Born in Vermont in 1853 Picknell was orphaned at age 14 after which he went to live with relatives in Boston, a town which at the time was a center for American landscape painting. The example of George Inness may have persuaded the young Picknell to study art, a career that was not acceptable to his family. Picknell, however, persuaded an uncle to support his study of art abroad with the sum of $1000, a gift given with the understanding that there would be no more.

Picknell received criticism from Inness in Italy where the student may have spent several years before embarking to Paris. Picknell enrolled in the atelier of Jean-Leon Gerome at the École des Beaux-Arts in December of 1874 and remained there until his money ran out. By 1876 he was established in the artists’ colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany where he remained until 1880. There he could live and work for next to nothing.

Under the tutelage of the American ex-patriate Robert Wylie, Picknell painted alongside Thomas Hovenden and Hugh Bolton Jones as well as his French friend Louis Pelouse. Wylie, himself largely self-taught, insisted on accurate and truthful representation of nature and on the importance of painting before the subject inside or outside. Wylie taught Picknell to use the palette knife, partially mixing colors and wiping them in broad passages on the foreground, loading the brush with pure hue observed in nature and dragging it across crusty surfaces representing masonry, foliage or as in this painting, tree bark. The entire time Picknell stayed at the Hotel Julia, Picknell’s bill ran for years, and Mlle. Julia contributed art supplies and transportation for his larger canvases to distant sites.

In 1880 her faith was justified when The Road to Concarneau won acclaim and honorable mention at the Salon, and a contract with the dealer Goupil. His triumph at hand and his future assured, Picknell left for two years of painting in England’s New Forest, exhibiting with equal success in England. He returned home empty-handed, his pictures were so much in demand abroad. He had sold everything!

Opening a studio in Boston in 1882, Picknell painted along the Massachusetts coast. Many of his old friends from Brittany joined him to paint at Anisquam. Picknell was awarded critical recognition at home and traveled the United States from California to Florida and to Pennsylvania. Picknell married in 1889 and returned to France with his wife. There he painted in Grez and Moret, wintering in the Midi at Antibes as seen in the painting The Road to Nice. In 1895 Picknell won a medal at the Salon for a Moret landscape and the French nation acquired a painting from the Salon of 1898.

In ill health and grief-stricken by the death of his only child, Picknell returned to Boston in 1897 and died at the age of 43.