Object Type: Painting

Medium and Support: oil on canvas

Credit Line: Florence Griswold Museum Purchase

Accession Number: 2012.2

An artist of many “isms,” Elmer MacRae’s 1915 floral still life shows him at his most modern. Previously MacRae studied and painted with the American Impressionist John Twachtman at the art colony in Cos Cob, Connecticut. He turned his attention to floral painting in the early twentieth century, influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, which he collected, and Japanese calligraphic brushwork learned from Genjiro Yeto, an artist at the colony. MacRae’s Japonisme remains evident in Magnolias, but the additional influence of the Post-Impressionist artists, like Cézanne and Gauguin, manifests strongly in this work’s audacious colors and myriad decorative shapes. As one of the primary organizers of the 1913 Armory Exhibition, MacRae helped to usher European Modernism into the American art world, where it was alternately embraced and reviled by artists, critics, and audiences.