Saybrook Point, Connecticut River
Saybrook Point affronts the Connecticut River, the longest river in New England, spanning four states, and having its southern mouth empty into the Long Island Sound. For decades, the environs offered picturesque vistas of water and land. Around 1900 Howe came to the area, particularly to neighboring Old Lyme, Connecticut, where he founded an art colony along with Henry Ward Ranger (also in the Union League Chicago Collection). This evocative painting merges landscape and seascape, and is populated with cows, the animal he excelled at illustrating. In the distance, sailboats hover and glide in the river, illuminated by the sun reflecting on the water.
Born in Ravenna, Ohio, Howe began formal art training somewhat late in life--not until his mid-thirties. Though interested in art since childhood, he first pursued a business career. After serving in the Civil War, he worked as a clerk for the Spring Dry Goods Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and later for a wholesale dry goods company in St. Louis, Missouri. Encouraged by his friends to pursue his artistic passions, he gave up the security of gainful employment and left for Europe, where he first enrolled in an art class at the Düsseldorf Royal Academy in 1880. After a brief stay there, he went to study animal painting in Paris, where an important tradition of sculpting and painting anatomically correct animals had been fostered by Antoine-Louis Barye and Rosa Bonheur, and later by Howe’s teacher Félix- de Vuillefroy (1841-1916). In Paris, Howe found his calling, perfecting his art so well that by 1883 his work was accepted at the Paris Salon. Once while traveling in Holland, Howe visited the small charming village of Laren, and began to paint the meadows and the local cattle. His painting Evening at Laren, also in the Union League collection, stems from that sojourn.
Howe specialized in illustrating cows so well and so often that he was given the nickname "Howe Cow," which he considered amusing. He painted these Holsteins with a sensitivity that imparted them human qualities and infused the cows with a distinct personality. His paintings became highly fashionable at the turn of the twentieth century. The enthusiasm was sparked in part by the Dutch pastoral tradition promulgated by earlier artists such as Albert Cuyp and Paulus Potter, as well as by the taste of American cattle breeders, who enthusiastically decorated their homes with agrarian art.
An immensely popular artist both in America and abroad, France honored him as Officier de L’Académie and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In America he was recognized in major exhibitions and named an Academician of the National Academy of Design.
Saybrook Point affronts the Connecticut River, the longest river in New England, spanning four states, and having its southern mouth empty into the Long Island Sound. For decades, the environs offered picturesque vistas of water and land. Around 1900 Howe came to the area, particularly to neighboring Old Lyme, Connecticut, where he founded an art colony along with Henry Ward Ranger (also in the Union League Chicago Collection). This evocative painting merges landscape and seascape, and is populated with cows, the animal he excelled at illustrating. In the distance, sailboats hover and glide in the river, illuminated by the sun reflecting on the water. Abundant clouds fill the large expanse of sky, providing a dramatic backdrop to the scene of cows resting on the river shore.
Born in Ravenna, Ohio, Howe began formal art training somewhat late in life--not until his mid-thirties. Though interested in art since childhood, he first pursued a business career. After serving in the Civil War, he worked as a clerk for the Spring Dry Goods Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and later for a wholesale dry goods company in St. Louis, Missouri. Encouraged by his friends to pursue his artistic passions, he gave up the security of gainful employment and left for Europe, where he first enrolled in an art class at the Düsseldorf Royal Academy in 1880. After a brief stay there, he went to study animal painting in Paris, where an important tradition of sculpting and painting anatomically correct animals had been fostered by Antoine-Louis Barye and Rosa Bonheur, and later by Howe’s teacher Félix- de Vuillefroy (1841-1916). In Paris, Howe found his calling, perfecting his art so well that by 1883 his work was accepted at the Paris Salon. Once while traveling in Holland, Howe visited the small charming village of Laren, and began to paint the meadows and the local cattle. His painting Evening at Laren, also in the Union League collection, stems from that sojourn.
Howe specialized in illustrating cows so well and so often that he was given the nickname "Howe Cow," which he considered amusing. He painted these Holsteins with a sensitivity that imparted them human qualities and infused the cows with a distinct personality. His paintings became highly fashionable at the turn of the twentieth century. The enthusiasm was sparked in part by the Dutch pastoral tradition promulgated by earlier artists such as Albert Cuyp and Paulus Potter, as well as by the taste of American cattle breeders, who enthusiastically decorated their homes with agrarian art.
An immensely popular artist both in America and abroad, France honored him as Officier de L’Académie and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In America he was recognized in major exhibitions and named an Academician of the National Academy of Design.
