Images by F. Holland Day: Portrait of Cora Brown, Portrait of Angela Grimke, “Menelek”, “Indian With Jar”, “Orpheus”, “St. Sebastian”, two crucifixion scenes and “The Seven Words”. From The Visionists of Boston documentary.
Tag Archives: F. Holland Day
F. Holland Day on Oscar Wilde
Of all men who have consented to adorn the present age, at least within the realm of that Power upon whose domain the sun never sets, none have been the recipients of adulation so profound, intermingled with opprobium so venomous as that bestowed upon Oscar Wilde. That the philosophy for which Mr. Wilde stood, upon his advent into Letters, was, to the Philistine, a new and somewhat startling one, needs no argument; but to prove his sincerity and absoluteness of belief, in its principles, to those congregations of Canaille that he has addressed from time to time with his unique suavity, will undoubtedly fall to the good fortune of a future generation.
F. Holland Day reviewing Oscar Wilde’s A House Of Pomegranates in the first issue of The Knight Errant journal, published be Francis Watts Lee’s Elzevir Press, Boston, 1892.
British writer Oscar Wilde, who toured the US in 1882, was a hero of young F. Holland Day, and later an acquaintance. Day’s publishing firm Copeland and Day were the American publishers of Wilde’s play Salomé. Text from archive.org/JSTOR Early Journal Content.
Above: Portrait of Oscar Wilde taken during his 1882 US tour by Napoleon Sarony. Print in the Library of Congress.
Francis Watts Lee
Francis Watts Lee (1867-1945) was a publisher and photographer based in Boston. He is best known for publishing the Visionists’ journal The Knight Errant, helping to introduce a distinctive soft-focus lens that became associated with American pictorialism, and for his family’s role as friends and muses to several influential photographers.
Lee grew up in Roxbury, MA. He attended the Chauncey School in Boston where he made friends with F. Holland Day. He was married to Agnes Rand Lee, a poet and the daughter of William Henry Rand of Chicago, co-founder of Rand, McNally Company.
Lee was a staunch believer in Christian Socialism and a supporter of social justice-oriented Episcopalian organizations such the Order of the Holy Cross founded by hid friend Father James O. S. Huntington. Like many of his fellow Visionists, he was also inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement. Lee began a small press, Elzevir, committed to the fine art of print, like those of his friend Day and his hero William Morris. Elzevir published The Knight Errant, a quarterly art and literature journal representing the perspectives of his friends Day, Ralph Adams Cram, Bertram Goodhue, Louise Imogen Guiney, and their circle.
Lee paid great attention to detail and the four issues of the “quarterly” took two years to release. During this time he became a father and began a more reliable job running a printing press at the Boston Public Library, where he was Guiney’s co-worker.
Lee’s photography included sensitive portraits of his family and other women and children, and of Father Huntington. Through Day he became part of a circle of pioneering photographers that included Gertrude Kasebier and Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Lee’s family became frequent models. One of Kasebier’s best-known works, Blessed Art Thou Among Women, is an image of Agnes Rand Lee and daughter Peggy taken at their home in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.
Lee was the most technically experimental of this circle, and worked with Henry Smith of Pinkham & Smith Company, prescription opticians and
photographic suppliers in Boston, to commission a special soft-focus lens for pictorialist photographers. The first of its kind in the US, it was inspired by a lens Coburn purchased in England.
In 1910 Francis and Agnes Lee parted ways. Francis married Marion Lewis Chamberlain, an MIT grad who worked in the fine arts department of the library. They lived in Walpole, MA and Francis continued working at the library until he retired at the age of 70.
Source:
Patricia J. Fanning (2012) Francis Watts Lee: A Reintroduction, History of
Photography, 36:1, 15-32 (requires academic access)
Further reading:
Patricia J. Fanning: Artful Lives: The Francis Watts Lee Family and Their Times, 2016
Above: Portrait of Francis Watts Lee by Gertrude Kasebier. Platinum print at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Above: Gertrude Kasebier: “Blessed Art Though Among Women.” The models are Agnes Lee and daughter Peggy Lee at their home in Jamaica Plain. A platinum print at The Met.
Against an epoch
Men against an epoch; is it not that after all? One by one in this last night, the beautiful things have disappeared, until at last, in a world grown old and ugly, men, forced to find some excuse for the peculiarity of their environment, have discredited even beauty itself, finding it childish, unworthy, and unscientific: not only beauty in Art, but beauty in thought and motive, beauty in life and death, until the word has become but a memory and a reproach. This is the condition that demands the new chivalry. The fight against Paynims and dragons was the work of a carpet knight compared with this ; yet in this fact is there any cause for discouragement? God forbid! But whatever the issue, the Quest lies clear in sight, and he would be craven knight indeed, who would shrink from this new ‘siege perilous.’
From the editors’ introduction to the first issue of the journal The Knight Errant, published by Elsevir Press, 1892.
According to Ralph Adams Cram’s autobiography, the editors included Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Francis Watts Lee, F. Holland Day, Herbert Copeland, and Cram. “Paynims” means “pagans” in the medieval European sense. Text from Archive.org/JSTOR Early Journal Content.
Above: “The Knight Errant” by British Pre-Raphelite painter John Everett Millais, 1870. Oil painting at the Tate Britain. The Pre-Raphaelites were favorites of the Visionists.
F. Holland Day: Portrait of Kahlil Gibran
Portrait of Kahlil Gibran at age 13 by F. Holland Day. Print in the Library of Congress.
“Hypnos” by F. Holland Day, ca 1896. Platinum print at the National Media Museum. They say “the young man is inhaling the hallucinatory scent of a poppy” but it looks like a lotus to me. Also I don’t think you can hallucinate by sniffing a poppy!
F. Holland Day: Menelek, 1897. Platinum print at The Met.
F. Holland Day
Fred Holland Day (1864-1933) was an American photographer and publisher based in Boston who played a key role in establishing photography as a fine art, and served as a mentor to many other artists and photographers.
Day was born to a wealthy family in the part of Dedham, MA that is now Norwood. As a child her was an avid reader and collector, and his hero was English Romantic poet John Keats. (In fact, he helped to organize the fist public memorial to Keats in England.) He attended the Chauncey School in Boston where he met lifelong friend Louise Imogen Guiney. Day and Guiney were part of several literary clubs and artistic circles, including the Visionists.
With fellow Visionist Herbert Copeland, Day founded a small press, Copeland and Day. Inspired by William Morris’ Kelmscott press, they championed quality materials and fine craftsmanship in bookmaking. They were the American publishers of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé and the risqué English journal The Yellow Book.
In time Day’s attention turned from publishing to his lifelong passion, photography. He began taking pictures to document his visits to important literary sites, but came to see photography as artistic expression, drawing inspiration from visual artists. His work included portraits of his many fascinating acquaintances, often in costumes from his collection. He also shot many male nudes, working with professional art models. Much of his inspiration came from classical mythology or religious themes. For his “sacred subjects” series, he re-enacted the crucifixion on a hillside in Norwood, casting himself as Christ and his friends as saints and Roman soldiers.
Day’s bold vision attracted the attention of others working to establish photography as a fine art, including Alfred Stieglitz. At the turn of the twentieth century, Day and Stieglitz were the two best know American photographers. In 1900 and 1901, Day organized a show entitled “The New School of American Photography” in London and Paris which introduced Europeans to several leading American photographers. Stieglitz discouraged associates in London from putting on the show, leading to a rift between him and Day. After that, Day did not include his work in Stieglitz’s influential journals, which perhaps explains why he has not been remembered as well as Stieglitz. A devastating fire at Day’s studio in 1904 destroyed most or all of his negatives and prints. His work now exists in the form of prints in a fairly small number of institutions including the Met, the Library of Congress, The National Media Museum (UK), The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the George Eastman Museum.
Day’s Universalist upbringing and his experience as a self-taught artist may have instilled in him liberal social values and a strong sense of public service. He was a friend, mentor, or teacher not only to emerging professional artists but to immigrant children in Boston’s South End and at a progressive school for students of color in Virginia. In 1896 he received a letter from a friend who was a social worker in Boston, asking if he might have “any artist friend who would care to become interested in a little Assyrian boy, Kahlil G.” who had shown promise in art classes. Day met with 13-year old Kahlil Gibran, let him help out in his studio, and lent him books from his collection. Not long after, Gibran’s family sent him back to his native Lebanon (then a part of the Ottoman Empire) to continue his education. When he returned to Boston in his twenties, Day hosted the first exhibition of Gibran’s visual art. Through Day Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who became his close friend and a key supporter of his work. Best known for his 1923 book The Prophet, Gibran would become one of the best-selling poets of all time.
After the 1904 Day spent less of his time in Boston and more at Little Good Harbor, his beach house in Maine, originally purchased from Guiney. There he focused on photography and hosted some of the many other influential photographers who were his friends or mentees. These included Gertrude Kasebier, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Frederick Evans, Clarence White, Zaida Ben-Yusuf, fellow Visionist Francis Watts Lee, and Edward Steichen. Steichen would become one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century and one of the first fashion photographers.
If you are in New England, a great way to learn more about Day is to visit his former home in Norwood, MA, now the headquarters of the Norwood Historical Society. Check their website for tour information.
Recommended further reading: Through an Uncommon Lens: The Life and Photography of F. Holland Day by Patricia Fanning.
Above: “Solitude,” 1901, a portrait of F. Holland Day by friend and mentee Edward Steichen. Platinum print at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Portrait of F. Holland Day with a male model, 1902 by friend and mentee Clarence White. A platinum print at The Met.
Above: Portrait of F. Holland Day about 1898 by friend and fellow influential pictorialist Getrude Kasebier. Platinum print at The Met.
“The Vigil” by F. Holland Day. A platinum print at The Met. The model is Thomas Langryl Harris, an artist and close friend of Day.
The Visionists of Boston 