AFA Autumn 2018

2018 Antiques & Fine Art 115 this page, top Arthur B. Frost (1851–1928), The Cellist (Portrait of Antonio Knauth), ca. 1875. Gouache on paper, 13¼ x 10½ inches. Chazen Museum of Art; Gift of D. Frederick Baker from the Baker/Pisano Collection (2017.27.25). Antonio Knauth was an honorary “music” member of the club. Born in Germany, he came to the United States in 1877 to attend Columbia University Law School. He then clerked for former Wisconsin governor Edward Salomon who had moved to New York. Arthur B. Frost is best known as an illustrator of books by Lewis Carroll, Joel Chandler Harris, and Mark Twain. this page, bottom Robert Swain Gifford (1840–1905), Figure in Tree, 1879. Painted and glazed earthenware, 8 x 8 inches. Chazen Museum of Art; Gift of D. Frederick Baker from the Baker/Pisano Collection (2017.27.86). of reformers William Morris, John Ruskin, and others active in the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements, the Tile Club members gathered every Wednesday evening to paint an eight-by-eight-inch ceramic tile. The club’s earliest meetings were attended by two Englishmen, Edward Wimbridge and Walter Paris, and by Americans, Edwin Austin Abbey and Charles S. Reinhart. The membership soon included Winslow Homer, William R . O’Donovan, Ea rl Shinn, F. Hopkinson Smith, William Mackay Laffan, J. Alden Weir, Arthur Quartley, and R. Swain Gifford, rounding the number out to twelve. Over time, as Tilers left New York to travel, get married, or for career reasons, a new Tiler would come aboard. By the time the group disbanded in 1887, the club’s “roster” included more than thirty members. The meetings became a time to not only create art but also to socialize, dine, and take pleasure in the music performed by the group’s honorary members, such as the violinist Dr. Joseph Lewenberg—whose club sobriquet was Catgut. Indeed, every member of the group received a nickname, several of which were a play on the member’s surname; Arthur Burdett Frost, for example, was known as Icicle. Other names drew on the member’s physiognomy or personality: William Mackay Laffan was designated Polyphemus, as he had a glass eye, and Winslow Homer was dubbed the Obtuse Bard. The light-hearted monikers were matched by the club’s organization—there were no rules, no minutes were kept, and no amount of disorderliness was ever frowned upon. Fellowship, wit, and a pursuit of pleasure in the arts were the highest priority. Although painting tiles was important to the club’s formation, they were only a small part of its overall output. Members also made excursions to Long Island and up the Hudson River to sketch and paint—the works completed during these trips document the first plein-air painting organization in the young nation. Their first trip, with stops at Captree and Shelter