WILLIAM JAMES GLACKENS 1870-1938
Still Life with Three Glasses, c. mid-1920s
Oil on canvas, 20 X 29" (50.80 x 73.66 cm.)
Signed, lower left
Museum purchase, 957-0-111

In 1957, the Butler Institute purchased Still Life with Three Glasses to commemorate the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of the historic exhibition of The Eight. With the acquisition of the painting, William Glackens became the final member of The Eight to be represented in the Butler lnstitute's permanent collection. Still Life with Three Glasses was a favorite of the artist's son and biographer, Ira Glackens, who considered it one of his father's finer fruit still lifes and specifically recommended the painting to the organizers of at least one Glackens retrospective after his father's death. In 1964, the Museum of Modern Art in New York selected the painting as the only Glackens still life to be included in their major exhibition of The Eight. Born in Philadelphia, Glackens spent his early career as a newspaper illustrator. He attended evening classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he met Robert Henri. After traveling abroad, he joined Henri in New York, where he became a member of The Eight. By the late teens Glackens had begun to favor studio subjects over the urban, genre scenes of parks, beaches, and cafes, with which he had been so closely identified during the heady years of The Eight's revolt against the strictures of the National Academy of Design. Nudes, figure studies, and particularly still lifes began to engage more of Glackens's creative energy and appear with greater frequency. Still Life with Three Glasses epitomizes the artists work from the' 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, still life was the dominant -subject of the artists last years. Glackens considered France his spiritual home. B ginning in the spring of 1925, he divided his time between Europe and America, spending extended periods in France through the early 1930s. An early trip to Spain and France in 1906 had been largely
responsible for awakening Glackens's sense of color, for it was on that trip that he fell under the spell of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Within a few years of his return he had transformed his dark palette, inspired by Frans Hals, Diego Velazquez, and Edouard Manet, into one dominated by the brilliant color of Impressionism. By the end of the decade he was already considered to be an American Impressionist by some, and was soon called the 'American Renoir."
Still Life with Three Glasses is a tour de force of color and form. It reveals that Glackens's mature style remained grounded in Renoir's colorism, enriched by an awareness of Henri Matisse. The painting is certainly one of his most elaborate still lifes, filled with a rich, abstract grace. A complex play of volumes and flat surfaces is created, with the voluptuous contours of the painted objects repeated in the intricate, decorative patterns of the wall hanging. For instance, the abstract shapes that hover above the goblet at the far right echo the design of the fruit in the compote at the center of the composition. The palette of sumptuous vermillions, radiant yellows, and rich blues and greens is applied with the soft, feathery brushstroke Glackens adopted from Renoir to produce a lush, shimmering surface.
Glackens imbues the Butler Institute still life with the same joy in life's ordinary pleasures that is present in his scenes of parks and beaches. As a whole, Still Life with Three Glasses is far more than a table arrangement designed to showcase a painter's skill. It is an inviting repast that entices the viewer with the taste of fresh fruit and the sip of a cool drink. The painting is truly haunted, as a writer once suggested about Glackens's canvases, by "the specter of happiness."

NANNETTE V. MACIEJUNES