Curated by Donald Meyer, Chairman of Exhibitions, Woodmere Museum

The following text appeared in conjunction with a chronological exhibition of works by Sketch Club Members from the Woodmere Permanent Collection.  Characteristically each member’s work was at once integral to both the history of the Club and the profoundly influential impact of Philadelphia artists and connoisseurship on the history of national and international art as a continuing experience of the New World from the 19th century to present day.

Founded in 1860 by six artists who wanted to improve their skills at illustration, the Philadelphia Sketch Club quickly became a hub for artists of all disciplines to meet and exchange ideas. The organization moved to its current quarters, a Federal period triple row house, in 1903. Exhibitions and life workshops both began in the 1860s. Over the years, the Sketch Club has conducted life workshops for the general public, and has hosted an annual painting competition since 1865, a competition that continues to be a standard in the Sketch Club's annual exhibition schedule. Some of the most distinguished names in American art, even the controversial Thomas Eakins, were members of the Sketch Club and many more have benefited from its programs. Today the Club remains a vibrant arts organization with over 200 artists/members who continue to create important works or art.

I.

    “It is for you to whom the Sketch Club has been committed, to keep the embers aglow and its traditions alive, to pass its honored charter along to the next generation of eager, bright, aspiring men, who love art not alone for profit, but because it is in them and they must. They will need the Sketch Club just as you have needed it. There may come a time in the future, as it has come in the past, when the Sketch Club will rest dormant for a century or so, but that does not count. It will come into being again, and new generations of artists may fancy, as did the men around Bensell's table, that they are its fathers, having read the ancient tablets. And so the old club will roll down the ages, for you can't kill it off. It is built upon an idea that will never die.” 

-Frank H. Taylor 

On Occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the Philadelphia  Sketch Club, Nov 20,1900.

II.

“...eager, bright, aspiring men, who love art...”

The brothers Moran, Edward, Thomas and Peter were born in England. 

After emigrating as children with their parents and nine brothers and sisters to America in 1844, and  to Philadelphia in 1845, the three brothers went on to become prominent artists. 

Thomas became the most famous of the three as the landscape painter responsible for revealing the majesty of what would become our nation’s national parks. 

Peter was a master etcher, founding the Philadelphia Society of Etchers.

Edward was the painter of seascapes and dramatic marine paintings such as we see here.

All three were Sketch Club Members, nurtured in the spirit and guidance of fellow artists.

III.

     “...that they are its fathers...”

Thomas Eakins is acknowledged as one of the greatest and most controversial artists in art history. 

Thomas Anshutz is seen as crucial to the growth of American art  into modernism through the trail-blazing of his students.  He was a great painter and great teacher.

Quintessentially the “Philadelphia artist”, Eakins had been, at one-and-the-same, and at different times, the Prince and the Pariah of American art.  In fact, at separate times at the Sketch Club, as happens when one club shares a 150-year history with some two thousand artists, Eakins was both.

After Eakins returned from Paris in 1874, the Club helped  him become instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  A distinguished career as teacher and finally director of the school eventually collapsed in controversy for Eakins, due in part to principles and competition with his  assistant Thomas Anshutz.  

IV.

    “...that they are its fathers...”

Thomas Anshutz and others at the Club disagreed with Eakins’ “laboriously following the sign of the eye mechanically” and felt using one’s “natural sense of sight as an instrument” to “unconsciously feel the light in his picture” was the way.  Speakers at Club meetings like James McNeil Whistler and Oscar Wilde supported these views toward modernism.

Eakins resigned from the Academy and, in a complicated flurry of circumstance that included his own brother-in-law and sister, left the Sketch Club.

What matters, as always, to the Sketch Club, regarding these two great men was their work, and how as a Club of artists, by artists and for artists, it aided in that achievement.

For ideas to grow, a place like the Sketch Club is a necessity:  tradition and innovation, antique and avant-garde are the range of our time, our place, our work and our friendships, not the limits.  Agreement to meet, share a meal and discuss their work is all the Club members need agree upon.  

V.

    “...pass its honored charter along to the next generation...”

Edward Redfield and Walter Scofield were the the grand masters of what came to be known as “Bucks County Impressionism”, and the very picture of a rugged American version of the French tradition of “plein-air’ painting:

“Zero weather, rain, falling snow and wind; all these things to contend with only make the open-air painter love the fight!” , Scofield said in 1913.

When in town making rounds of schools,  galleries, friends’ studios, the hangout was the Sketch Club on Camac Street, Philadelphia’s “little street of clubs”.

VI.

“...who love art not alone for profit, but because it is in them and they must...”

The Sketch Club had always been the “bohemian” club, the place where the “wild things” as well as the “well-mannered’ let themselves go a little, played in annual plays and partied at galas in drag and full costume theme-parties, with   theatrical sets and artists’ props available all-around.  Show-girls and flappers, “modern” ideas and outrageous personalities, professors and fine art gallerists mixed with students and avant-gardists.

Adolphe Borie was at home at the Sketch Club.  A friend and fellow Sketch Club member with some of the greatest collectors of Picasso, Brancusi, Demuth, Duchamp,  here or anywhere, Borie and Philadelphians Sam and Vera White,   Earl Horter formed in their discussions the shape of art to come, all while enjoying the company of some of the greatest illustrators of the golden age of Philadelphia publishing and advertising agencies.  N. C. Wyeth, Earl Horter and other successful commercial artists were, at the Sketch Club allowed to be “closet modernists” and avant-garde-ists of the first rank.

VII.

“...They will need the Sketch Club just as you have needed it...”

And the Sketch Club, a mens’ club until 1990, would need ...

...the Plastic Club, the ladies’ art club ....

Down Camac Street from the Sketch Club is the Plastic Club.

Since the Plastic Club was founded literally in the studio of her Sketch Club member father, Elizabeth Shippen Green, one of the famous “Red Rose Girls”, was one of its original members. 

In fact, later, she would leave the famous “Red Rose” group to marry the dashingly handsome Huger (pronounced u-gee) Elliott.  Elliott was a former Harvard professor and became the dean of the Rhode Island School of Design.

He was also a Sketch Club member.

VIII.

After that, there were several husband-wife “teams” shared by these brother-sister clubs.

One of the greatest was Paulette Van Roekens and Arthur Meltzer.

IX.

“And so the old club will roll down the ages, for you can't kill it off. It is built upon an idea that will never die.” 

X.

Bill Campbell has been a Sketch Club member since...well, let him tell you...

“I first visited the Sketch Club in 1935 with Charlie Boland to meet Uncle Pete Boyle.  So I have been connected with the Club for half its existence.”