American painters Benjamin West visited Venice in 1772, and John Singleton Copley visited in 1775. They were part of the Grand Tour of Europe that American artists undertook to study the great art works of Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, and others. These Americans did not paint scenes of Venice. Whistler was sent to Venice in 1879 to make 12 images for the new Fine Arts Society in London (1876). In 1877 a group of Americans who were studying in Munich, traveled to Venice. They were led by their teacher, American artist Frank Duvencek. The group became known as the Duveneck Boys, although some young women were in the group. They met and became friends with Whistler during his fourteen-month stay.
Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) was born in Covington, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. He served an apprenticeship with a firm of church painters. He began studies at the Royal Academy of Munich in 1869. William Merrit Chase and John Twachtman were among Americans studying there. Duveneck opened his own school in Munich in 1878. From there the group moved to Italy and painted in Florence in winter and Venice in summer. He started the movement away from the use of dark colors and detail of German art to more freely applied paint in brighter colors.
Duveneck’s painting Water Carriers, Venice (1884) (oil) (48”x73’’) (SAAM) is a depiction of Venetians working hard to achieve a productive economy. Crossing one of the arches on the Riva degli Schiavoni, a group of young women and children carry heavy buckets of fresh water from a communal cistern to their homes. At the left and in the background is the popular church of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its bell tower rising into the sky. A large sailing ship crosses in front of it. In the mid-distance, across the Grand Canal, are the domes of San Marco. In this scene, the weary, sweaty hard-working people take precedence over the iconic architecture of Venice.
Venetian Fruit Sellers (1884) (oil) (20”x40”) (Cincinnati Museum of Art) continues the interest in the ordinary people of Venice going about their daily lives. Two women stand under the canopy of a fruit vendor’s stall. One looks over the wide variety of fruits available, and the other, looking in the viewer’s direction, fans herself. What is notable is the new freedom in Duveneck’s use of paint. He has applied bright reds, oranges, whites, and yellows across the canvas. His brushwork is not yet as free as the Impressionists’ style, but he has seen their work. He continues to use black and white, but he has added some blue to the shadow on the walkway.
Duveneck’s oils were only part of his work in Venice. He made etchings. Thirty-seven of them are known today, and 23 of them were of Venice. His interest in depicting the life in the streets of the Venetian people continued. The Mercuria, Venice (1884) (etching) (11”x16”), captures a scene of bustling daily life on the bridges and walkways, and on the canal. Near Saint Mark’s Square and the Teatro La Fenice on the Barcaroli Canal, the area included the Hotel Mercuria, family owned and operated for generations. His etchings were highly detailed. His brushwork became more free in his paintings.
Duveneck captured some of the iconic structures in Venice in his etchings. The Rialto Bridge (1883) (11”x19”) (etching) depicts one of the most famous bridges in the world that has become an icon of Venice. The name Rialto is derived from the Italian rivo alto, or high bank. Originally a pontoon bridge (1173), it is the oldest bridge spanning the Grand Canal. The stone bridge-arcade was built over the years from 1588 to 1591 by Antonio da Ponte and his nephew Antonio Contino, winners of a design competition. Duveneck’s view includes numerous people going about their daily lives.
Whistler and Duveneck were friends, but when their Venice etchings were shown together in London, Whistler became annoyed that his own gallery thought the etchings were his, under an assumed name. Joseph Pennell (1857-1926), a printmaker and the chairman of the International Jury of Awards for Engraving at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1915, proposed that Duveneck receive a gold medal. The recommendation was approved unanimously. In his 1919 book Etchers and Etching, Pannell wrote, “No one has approached him in beauty and meaning of line…every line is vital. The point of view is personal and the arrangement individual…they are masterpieces.”
Duveneck also was an outstanding teacher from the time he started the school in Munich in 1878 and later at the Cincinnati Art Academy from 1890 until his death in 1919. The University of Cincinnati awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1917. At a meeting at the Cincinnati Art Museum, his former students adopted a memorial resolution: “Frank Duveneck, master in sculpture, in etching, and supremely masterful with the brush, has left in his words a legacy of unlimited value. We the students of the Duveneck Class, who worked under him in the early days in Europe, in Boston, or here in Cincinnati, are possessed of a treasure even richer, the inspiration of his character, of his vigorous and tender personality, of the high ideals of art and of life he implanted… Be It Therefore Resolved: That we, his students, are united by the privilege of association with the master, the great teacher of his day. That we shall cherish the nobility of his ideals, striving not only to live up to the best in ourselves as he would have us do, but to keep alive and pass on to those with whom we may be associated, the teachings and ideals of one who has been an inspiration not only in art, but in life itself.”
