Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
John Quidor
American; 19th-century
Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Art
72%
Wolfert Webber at the Inn (Wolfert Webber's Golden Dream). 1857. Oil on canvas
There are deficiencies with respect to the composition: the tree at right and the tree at left compete for the title of more commanding repoussoir, and together they hem the picture in; it's charming how the four-ish figure groups are so spread out, but ultimately their disjointedness scatters any tension across the whole area of the canvas; the building behind the figures recedes back to the left a bit too severely; the rhombus of a background beyond the tavern at left isn't open enough to allow the image to breathe, and this image is gasping. But something about Quidor's painting makes it worthwhile to put such gripes as these aside. Namely, his handling — there's, like, dirt that suffuses this painting, an awful brown that's inside every nook, that envelops figures and mixes them in with their surroundings. It's noxious and fascinating; it's like Rubens had a bad trip. (Just look at the courted girl's face in the midground at right! Look at the foremost two figures' clothes!) I'm guessing that Quidor achieved this effect by putting quick strokes of selectively blended dark colors all over the top of a bright underpainting, such that light is immanent in the scene but everywhere suppressed. (It's almost like Luminism's evil older brother.) The most exceptional thing about this is that, even from 10 steps back, the paint doesn't congeal into a more reasonable image, as one would expect. Though this isn't enough to salvage the overdone arrangement (there's too much undigested Dutch art in there, especially Steen), it's enough to make it a curio of American painting. (TFS, 2025)