01 Painting, The Art Of The Nude, with footnotes # 33

WILLIAM HENRY CLAPP, A.R.C.A. 

THE ARTIST AND HIS MODEL

oil on panel

10.5 ins x 13.75 ins; 26.7 cms x 34.9 cms
Private collection

William Henry Clapp is one of the monarchs of Canadian Impressionism.  Indifferent as an artist to the emotional elements implicit in everyday experience, he extolled landscapes and the human figure - specifically the nude.  In painting these works, he observed the phenomena of light on the generative forces of the organic world.  The body is only a detail, an iconography, subordinate to the pattern in which light and shade govern vision.  Immersed in golden quietude, Clapp's art is all the more credible because of its objective truth - an art of passive reverie that has inspired all Impressionists since Renoir who are preoccupied with light and colour to the exclusion of human issues."A signature of his works, Clapp's setting is diaphanous and diffused.  Mauves and violets blend with rosy white to form his model's supple flesh.  The eye is attracted by the sensuous application of colour, a hazy softness that tempts and beguiles us.  The artist gazes back at the viewer, catching us in our intrigue of this Andromeda, against a backdrop of deep yellow. More on this painting

William Henry Clapp, landscape and figure painter (b at Montréal 29 Oct 1879; d at Oakland, Ca 21 Apr 1954). Born of American parents, Clapp lived in Oakland 1885-1900. He studied at the Art Association of Montreal 1900-03 with William BRYMNER, and painted at St-Joachim and Baie-Saint-Paul with Clarence GAGNON. From 1904 to 1908 he studied in Paris at the Académie Julian, the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière with J.-P. Laurens, Tony Robert-Fleury and Lucien Simon, and in Madrid with William Laparra. He painted in Belgium and Spain.

Living in Montréal from 1908 to 1915, Clapp exhibited some of the most advanced impressionist canvases in Canada. Almost a pointillist in touch, his surfaces vibrate with broken colour and dappled light. Clapp left for Cuba in 1915, settling in Oakland in 1917, where he was curator (1918-20) and director of the Oakland Art Gallery (1920-1949). In Canada he was a member of the Canadian Art Club (1913-15) and in California of the Society of Six (1923-28). He stopped exhibiting in Canada in 1918. More on William Henry Clapp

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