Arts Club of Chicago

Published in: The Chicagoan, Vol. 12, No. 3, October 1931, pp.35‐37, 62, 64.

Simultaneously with the Armistice, the Arts Club of Chicago projected itself into the progressive art life of its native city.

The Arts Club had been in existence for two or three years, going the mild, uneventful way art clubs are more apt than not to travel. Its membership was made up largely of local artistism, with the intent of showing each other their work, drinking tea and discussing their little problems.

But in the spring of 1918, there was a reorganization. Mrs. John Alden Carpenter was elected President, and Miss Alice Roullier was appointed Chairman of the Exhibition Committee—and things began to happen.

The first exhibition season, under the new regime, started November 3, 1918, at galleries and club rooms at 610 South Michigan avenue. The initial show was a loan portrait exhibition, mild enough and scarcely ranking as a counterattraction to the false Armistice jubilation of exactly a week later or the official celebration the following day.

Among the wildest painters of portraits exhibiting were Augustus John, Orpen, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Renoir, Mancini, Martha Walter, Whistler, Zorn, Gari Melchers and dozens even less harmful. Sargent’s portrait of President Wilson was patriotically included.

But Mrs. Carpenter and Miss Roullier were showing first the velvet paw. Mrs. Carpenter is of the wealthy Winterbotham family, all of them collectors of Modern art, and herself an artist of no mean distinction. Her talents run to the decorative, and she has designed and partially executed many lively interiors in and about Chicago. Furthermore, she has as domestic associate that ultra-advanced composer of music, John Alden Carpenter.

Miss Roullier is the daughter of the late Albert Roullier, pioneer dealer in fine prints in Chicago, and she was brought up in the wide-awake art circles of this city and of her father’s native France. She divides her time even between Chicago and Paris. Mrs. Carpenter and Miss Roullier started their adventures with the Arts Club with formidable backing of both wealth and determination. Among their strong sympathizers in the policy they adopted—whose ingredient was fearlessness—were Arthur Aldis, Robert H. Allerton, Frederic Clay Bartlett, Walter S. Brewster, Arthur Haun, Mrs. Russell Matthias, Miss Katherine Dudley, Charles H. Worcester, and John and Joseph Winterbotham.

A plank in the platform of the reorganized club provided for the exclusion of one-man shows by artist members and by artists of Chicago in general. It was ruled that there should be an annual exhibition by all the professional members who cared to send in anything, but aside from this one show, the Arts Club was to display the work of outsiders, foreign and American.

After the “loan portraits,” there came a show by American Modernists, which caused some annoyance to the conservative members of the club—the club, even to this day, in its artist membership, is overwhelmingly conservative. A show of sculpture by the Pole, Szukalski, followed and increased the annoyance to that group of members. But it was not until April 9 of this first exhibition season that the claws of the fair tigresses shot out from the velvety paws. “French Post-Impressionists” read the catalogue title.

The hated Cezanne led the list of names recorded alphabetically. There were two paintings of his, both landscapes. Then came Delauney with one canvas; Derain with two; Dufy with one; Matisse, scarcely less detested than Cezanne and even more feared, with eight; Picasso, whose satanism was already sensed but not yet fully realized in Chicago, with one; Rodin with three; Seurat with two; Signac with five, and Paul Vera, whose name has been lost since in the Parisian art shuffle, with one.

One of the two Seurats has since become immortal in Chicago, rivaling even the great El Greco altar painting for first place among the Art Institute’s treasures—Un Dimanche à la Grande-Jatte. This painting, for which the Art Institute recently refused approximately half a million dollars from a French syndicate intent upon securing it for the Louvre, where Seurat's “Le Cirque” hangs, the gift of the American John Quinn, was bought during the war years in France by the wealthy Frederic Clay Bartlett, Chicago artist, and his wife, Helen Birch Bartlett, at a price that strained their cash resources at the moment—much below the figure the French syndicate offers, but several times the figure Van Gogh once estimated the painting to be worth. (Five thousand francs, said Van Gogh, and he thought he was being generous to his friend.) Mr. Bartlett tells with amusement how he and his wife scurried about Paris, amid the war-time pranks of the franc, seeing this banker and that, hectically raising cash on his Chicago resources to buy Grande-Jatte, fearing all the while somebody else with money in hand would beat him to it. However, he triumphed, and brought the picture back to Chicago, where it was ridiculed not only in the Arts Club's show in 1919, but later in an Art Institute show where the Birch-Bartlett collection was displayed before the trustees could get up their courage to accept Mr. Bartlett’s princely gift to the museum as a memorial to the wife who had helped him assemble it. (Grande-Jatte and the other pictures, incidentally, fared no better in New York and Boston where the collection was displayed before being permanently housed in the Chicago museum.) Exhibition of Un Dimanche à la Grande-Jatte from April 9 to April 23, 1919, may be regarded as the red-letter event of the first year under leadership of Mrs. Carpenter and Miss Roullier—an event important enough in itself to justify the existence of the club. [Letters by Bartlett to Art Institute Director Robert Harshe contradict this story such that Bulliet’s account is wholly inaccurate but makes for “juicy” interest. Although the picture was only rarely seen in the three decades following the death of Seurat in 1891, its visibility was dramatically increased in 1924, when Frederic Clay Bartlett purchased the picture and placed it on loan at the Art Institute. It has hung there ever since.] A complete history of the painting may be found here.

But many other sensations were to follow—so sensational that the Arts Club of Chicago became internationally famous—far and away the leader of similar American organizations that came after it.

To the Arts Club of Chicago, belongs much of the credit of breaking down the barrier of prejudice against progressive art not only in Chicago, but in all America—New York included. For, while New York got rid much more rapidly of its inhibitions and complexes once the break was made than Chicago—which still nurses them, thanks largely to the antiquated art policies of its newspapers of greatest circulation—it was not until the organization in 1929 of the Museum of Modern Art that New York had anything comparable in power for art progress with the Arts Club of Chicago. But it was no bed of roses for Mrs. Carpenter and Miss Roullier. Mrs. Carpenter, though naturally suave and good-natured, stood like adamant in the storm warnings angrily stirred against her and the club, while Miss Roullier clenched her little fists and went searching for a new sensation that would eclipse the one that had just gone before it.

Paris was quick to sense the power of the new club, and artists and dealers alike showed not only willingness, but anxiety to co-operate. The Arts Club of Chicago, consequently, had the pick of Parisian “horrors.” Individual New York dealers of progressive tendencies were as quick as the Parisians, and soon the Arts Club of Chicago was enabled to bring huge shows across the Atlantic in co-operation with individual New York galleries.

Generally, at first, the pictures shown here and then passed on to New York—in later years New York and Chicago have shared priority about fifty-fifty. After the “French Post-Impressionists,” the season of 1918–19 drifted to its conclusion with some progressive Americans—Joseph Stella, Hunt Diederich and Gaston Lachaise among them.

The next three seasons at 610 South Michigan witnessed the dogged determination of the “powers” of the Arts Club—“usurpers,” they were sometimes called, quite out loud—to show the new things of world art in Chicago in the face of opposition, sometimes angry, always sullen, of the club’s conservative membership—and also in face of ridicule and abuse from the “critics” of the Chicago newspapers.

Whenever a city editor felt he ought to have a funny “feature story” to liven up his local columns, he sent a star reporter to the Arts Club. The witty Paul Gilbert did some masterpieces. About the only newspaper friend the club had was Samuel Putnam, whose co-workers of the press considered him a bit off when it came to art.

In these three seasons, Chicago was brought face to face with the Italian-American sculptor Faggi, now of Woodstock; with the Spanish painter Zuloaga (nobody at the Arts Club brags much about this achievement now); with the Russian painter and stage designer, Leon Bakst; with Foujita, the Japanese Parisian, who was to come back stronger in 1930–'31; with the sculptor, John Storrs, of Paris and Chicago, a more or less frequent exhibitor since; with the late Paul Thevenaz, the promising Swiss portraitist, who died untimely; with Nicholas Roerich (also a later repentance); with the New York go-getting painter, Walt Kuhn, and with a group of Modern Russians including Grigoríev, Zadkine and Sudeykin.

Meanwhile, the Arts Club had formed a more or less unholy alliance with the Art Institute of Chicago—an alliance that was to continue through five years of bickering and heart burnings on both sides. Director Robert B. Harshe of the institute, a progressive at heart (out on the Pacific Coast at the time of the Armory show, Mr. Harshe was showing the natives what the new art was like, and there exists a book by him published in San Francisco in 1914 called A Reader's Guide to Modern Art) was in sympathy with the aims of the Arts Club. But he reckoned without his trustees, and it was no unusual sight, during the alliance, to see him being paraded through the gallery set aside for the use of the Arts Club with a gray-haired trustee on either side of him, lamenting: “Now, Robert, this is beneath the dignity of the Art Institute,” or “Robert, this thing oughtn’t to hang here,” or “Robert, why these insults,” and the like. In the interest of diplomacy, of which he is a past-master (as all good museum directors have to be) Mr. Harshe had to protest to the adamant Mrs. Carpenter and to the fiery Miss Roullier of the little doubled-up fists.

Both sides were rather glad of it when the alliance was discontinued in the spring of 1927. Nor was any great mischief wrought, for the Arts Club meanwhile had moved from its cramped quarters at 610 South Michigan to its splendid new galleries in the Wrigley Building at the Michigan Avenue bridge. But during the club’s tenancy of the gallery at the Art Institute set aside for its use—and in the agreement, the club was given utmost freedom of action—notable things transpired. The gallery at 610, indeed, was somewhat neglected.

On Sept. 15, 1922, for instance—the club’s opening show at the Institute—sculpture by Bourdelle was introduced along with paintings by Forain. This same first season was enriched by sculpture and drawings by Rodin and drawings by Picasso. The opening event of the next season in the institute gallery was the most sensational of all the five years of tenancy—the first extensive exhibition in Chicago of paintings by Picasso. There were sixteen of them—all important and many now priceless, adorning public museums and great private collections. The show lasted only a week, Dec. 18–23, but it was a week of tremendous indignation and enthusiasm. It is still remembered as a red-letter event.

Marie Laurencin and the Cubist Braque were introduced in the institute gallery this same season, along with the precocious Pamela Bianco. What, by the way, has become of Pamela? The next season at the institute was opened Dec. 23, 1924, with an exhibition of eleven paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec—a prelude to the great Lautrec exhibition at the institute in the autumn of 1930. Out of the Lautrec show was bought “The Circus” for the Art Institute’s permanent collection.

The new galleries in the Wrigley Building were opened this same autumn, but still the Arts Club unsatisfactorily favored the gallery set aside for its use in the Art Institute. Paintings by Berthe Morisot and sculpture by Nadelman were other institute gallery offerings of the Lautrec season. The next season at the institute was enlivened with sculpture by Lachaise, but more especially with paintings and watercolors by Vlaminck and Utrillo. This Vlaminck-Utrillo show had much to do with the split-up between the Arts Club and the Art Institute. It was timed—some thought maliciously—to conflict or co-ordinate with a local show, however you want to think it. It “showed up” the local pictures so lamentably that something had to be done.

But another year intervened before the definite break. The notable show of this final season was a magnificent collection of paintings by Chardin. The Chardins also conflicted with a local exhibition—and the Arts Club had the daring to put into its Wrigley galleries simultaneously a great retrospective show of paintings by Matisse, another of its red-letter triumphs. After the Chardins, paintings by Walt Kuhn were shown—some of them distinctly distasteful to the gray-haired trustees—and then the final curtain fell on the activities of the Arts Club in its institute galleries. Meanwhile, the new galleries in the Wrigley Building were not being neglected, even though choicest things were going to the institute.

The first season, 1924–25, in the new quarters witnessed the introduction to America of Leopold Survage, with the astonishing record of a complete sell-out. The show was to have gone from here to New York, but the eighteen items all remained in Chicago. Archipenko’s sculpture was introduced to Chicago this same season in a small show, from which a marvelously beautiful marble torso was bought for the Arts Club’s permanent collection, of which it is still one of the chief ornaments. Soudbinine’s sculpture followed.

The great smash of the Wrigley Building season of 1925–26 was the Marc Chagall show, another of the hall-dozen supreme events in the history of the Arts Club. This exhibition was probably least understood and most berated of all the club has given in its history. It passed on to New York without a single canvas being sold—though the prices were not excessive—and in New York it met with the same fate.

The next stopping place was Paris—and that was its last. Every canvas was sold in a week—literally gobbled up. Chicago’s financiers never had a better chance to gamble Here is the transcription of the eleventh and final image: —the Chagall market has never crashed like the stock exchange. The Chagalls shown here for a few hundred dollars in 1926 run now into the dizzy thousands. An aftermath: Shortly after the closure of the Chagall show, the time came for the annual exhibition by artist members. The veteran Oliver Dennett Grover refused to send anything—no picture of his should ever hang in a gallery desecrated by Marc Chagall!!

Besides the Matisse retrospective exhibition—the finest collection of Matisses ever brought together in America, and covering his entire painting career—the season of 1926–27 was distinguished by a most startling display of sculpture by Brancusi. The Brancusi show and the show the following season of sculpture by Jacob Epstein proved the Arts Club to be as wide-awake to three-dimensional art as to two. These two exhibitions rank with the Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, and Modigliani displays of painting—the latter being the great event of the 1929–30 season.

But on January 4, 1929, there was opened a show that surpassed in some respects the significance of anything that has occurred at the Arts Club before or since—a “Loan Exhibition of Modern Paintings Privately Owned by Chicagoans.” The event was astounding. There were sixty-nine items, all exclusive of loans and gifts to the Art Institute, and most of the pictures were of importance of “museum pieces.” Largely through the “educational” influence of the Arts Club in only a decade, Chicagoan "twenty-fours" of them—had become “collectors” of Modernism—a “proud eminence formerly enjoyed almost alone by Arthur Jerome Eddy. A year later there was a “Loan Exhibition of Modern Drawings and Sculpture Privately Owned by Chicagoans,” which proved the list greatly expanded. There were forty-three lenders.

The function of the Arts Club in Chicago’s progressive art life has been that of a teacher—a leader—a pointer-out-of-the-way. Through its activities, Chicago, more surely than any other American city, not even excluding New York, has been kept aware of what is going on in the world beyond its gates.