Portrait of Juel

Named after the great French Baroque painter Claude Lorraine (1600-1682), Claude Buck was copying old master paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York by the age of eleven. His father, Walter Buck, was a frustrated artist, so he eagerly cultivated his son’s prodigious talent, training him at home until the age of fourteen and then enrolling him at the National Academy of Design in New York. A thoughtful, introspective young man, Claude first painted works inspired by romantic poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton, and William Blake. Later he founded the esoteric movement "The Introspectives," which promulgated painting experiences and feelings before depicting nature. This allegorical aesthetic found little favor at that time in avant-garde Manhattan. To the rescue came a Chicago art dealer, J.W. Young, who encouraged Buck to move to the Midwest, where he found success and began a lucrative practice of refined, hyper-realistic portraits and still lifes.

Despite the shifting sands of art styles and the popular wave of abstraction, Claude Buck remained true to his heart and embraced traditional old-master style of painting for much of his career. The Union League Club’s Portrait of Juel depicts his daughter around age twenty. Buck pays homage to the art historical tradition of grand manner formal court portraiture: Juel is seen in full length, three quarter profile. She wears a white frilly laced gown that was sewn by her maternal aunt, and one she wore when she sang in the opera Madame Butterfly.

The painting is rendered in a cool, muted palette of celadon greens, and the only burst of color is the red rose adorning her curly dark hair. A calligraphic, feminine bannister composed of brass rods forms a series of three hearts, indicating his affection for his daughter. Two peacocks stand as companions. White peacocks (also known as Indian peafowl), are rare in the wild, though they do appear more often in captivity due to selective breeding. Buck’s choice is threefold: compositionally, the white color complements Juel’s gown and the peacock’s intricate feather pattern mimics her frilly lace hem. There is also symbolic significance. The white peacock is a rare bird, elegant and dignified, just like his daughter Juel. Juel Buck’s mother Estrid was a pianist as was Juel’s husband John Schiller, who lovingly donated the work to the Club, as he wrote "to preserve the beautiful painting, the legacy of his father-in-law Claude Buck, and as tribute to his adored wife, Juel Buck Schiller."

Sally Metzler, Ph.D., Director of the Art Collection