FACes & PlaceS
AROUND TOWN

New Hope Impressionists
by Andrea Giambrone*

Parry Mansion
Painting by Kristen Moore *

Since colonial times the riverside town of New Hope, Pennsylvania attracted painters to capture its quaint serenity and beauty. This hamlet originally served as the halfway-point for those traveling to and from New York City and Philadelphia. As the 19th century charged through America’s Industrial Revolution, New Hope became less of a stopping point and more of a destination.

Despite more and more of the northeast giving way to burgeoning industry, New Hope remained untainted by this modernization, providing harried city dwellers an anachronistic treat of a nostalgic setting and landscape. This appeal would soon be felt by those American artists who were well practiced in the painting of European countrysides. Through the settlement of already renowned artists, a New Hope art colony would spring forth as one of the most unique movements to come out of early 20th century history.

The greatest asset of New Hope was not only its beauty, but its location. Having such a close proximity to historic Philadelphia and colossal New York caused urban professionals, like Dr. George Marshall, to seek out places like New Hope and make them objects of attraction. Dr. George Marshall is famous for having purchased the abandoned New Hope property of Phillips Mill. His purchase and New Hope residence was key in the attraction of the founder of the New Hope Impressionist colony, William Lathrop.

When Marshall had the New York City-based artist stay on his property in 1899, Lathrop found the natural peace and beauty of the land so inspirational he immediately purchased property to live and paint on. Many artists would follow in the example of Lathrop and take themselves out of the claustrophobia of the city, where they often taught and sold their work, to freely paint.

Of the serious artists who flocked to join the New Hope colony, Daniel Garber and Edward Redfield came forth as the most prominent members of the growing Delaware River movement. Lathrop’s renowned reputation and his many associations acted as a magnet from 1907 onward as he attracted artists’ attention, as well as their residence, to the New Hope area by inviting them out to his property. Most of those artists who would form the New Hope group were émigrés from other parts of the United States, save Walter Baum who was a native of Bucks County.

The apex of the New Hope colony occurred with collective exhibiting tours across the United States and Europe. Between the years of 1915 and 1917, six painters grouped together into what they called the “New Hope group”. The river town’s top painters showed together with other Pennsylvania Impressionists in 1915 as a feature in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

The startlingly beautiful and daringly colorful rural scenes of the Pennsylvania artists gave New Hope and its surrounding countryside wide acclaim and heightened interest for this hidden aesthetic treasure and the talent it harbored. The following year brought together the informal collaboration of the New Hope sextet: Daniel Garber, William Lathrop, Robert Spencer, Rae Sloan Bredin, Morgan Colt, and Charles Rosen.

Ironically the man who is the most famed New Hope artist, Edward Redfield, refused to join the coterie because of his disinterest in being labeled with an association tied to a region. Nonetheless, the New Hope Group showed throughout the next two years in such places as the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The group would also be regularly featured in New York and Philadelphia as well.

Despite being overshadowed by avant-guard and socially expressive work of New York centered artists for much of the 20th century, a revived interest into the beauty and importance has taken place with the work of artists and patrons residing in the New Hope area.

The praise the New Hope group received by early critics was based on their individuality in how they utilized the impressionist style. Although the New Hope artists exhibited together, much like the founding French Impressionists themselves had no single “style”. Edward Redfield was known to have boasted of being a strict “plein air” painter, executing huge winter scenes on sight, like Easter Morning and Woodland Brook (one of many of his winter scenes near creek and river banks). Yet Rae Sloan Brebin was the only artist of the group who painted primarily the human figure, one example being his portrait Jean in White. They came together because of their personal comradery and social lives more than a strict artistic agenda.

The New Hope Impressionists are always identified by their rural local scenes and views of the familiar sights in the New Hope area. The New Hope scenes and the continued focus on the color and light of the setting would play into the contented, familiar serenity that the artists identified New Hope with.

Considering their attraction to New Hope and their usage of it as an escapist retreat, New Hope Impressionist work sought to exude a tranquility of a time untouched by industrialization. They captured familiar landmarks or identifiable spots, in paintings titled by location: Phillips Mill Barn by Colt, Tinicum Hillside by Daniel Garber, Lane in New Hope by Brebin, and many more. These every-day locales were held dear to the community allowing the viewer to retain the image of a time unthreatened by the turbulence that the 20th century was bound to bring.

The New Hope Impressionists constituted one part of a continuing legacy of artistry that New Hope has fostered since its earliest days. However, the notoriety of prominent artists coupled with the fascination with impressionism at the dawn of the 20th century gave birth to one of the most unique artistic treasures in American Art. A time in history, untainted by the modern world, will forever be captured as the haven for those who painted in New Hope.

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The two New Hope Solebury High School honors history classes, in cooperation with the New Hope Historical Society, have created a new series of essays (and artwork) on local areas of historical interest. Around Town this month features two of the projects submitted - an essay on the New Hope Impressionists by Andrea Giambone and a wonderful painting by Kristen Moore.