Adams
was born in Franklin, Massachusetts in 1858, just before the Civil War. He came
from English descent with Puritan and Revolutionary War era stock and was always
very proud of his ancestry. Adams would always be known for strict discipline
and fastidiousness whether he was relating to his sons, himself, or his craft.
For him, passions were expressed through painting.
Adams’
father died while Charles was a child and later a sister contracted tuberculosis
and passed away. When his remaining sister began to show signs of illness, the
family moved to Colorado in 1876, the year of statehood. His sister died but Charles
thrived—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—under the spell of
the Colorado Rockies. Denver’s Wild West was a far cry from well-tamed New
England.
Adams had begun working as an engraver for Helen
Henderson Chain in the Chain and Hardy Book and Art store. Chain was originally
from San Francisco, an artist of merit who had studied with George Inness. Through
her influence, Adams realized he was destined to be a painter. Helen Chain taught
Adams and introduced him to other artists in the community. Like her, he concentrated
on the mountain landscape; also like her, he moved away from the meticulously
representational approach of Bierstadt toward more subjective and impressionistic
interpretations. Adams also taught himself from books and, most important, from
direct observation, lending his work a freshness and singularity of vision. Through
a combination of factors, Adams was a successful painter by the age of 25, winning
a Gold Medal at the 1883 exposition in Denver. Teaching, painting, selling and
enjoying great success, he married Alida Joslin Reynolds in 1890.
Adams
had arrived during an amazingly active period in the Denver art community. The
Academy of Fine Arts Association of Colorado was founded in 1876. Another group
- known as both the Kit Kat Club and the Colorado Art Association, started up
in 1880 and Adams was a member, along with well-known local figures like Howard
Streight, Charles Stewart Stobie, John Harrison Mills and Harvey Otis Young. In
1882 the Colorado Academy of Design was founded, followed in the 1886 by the Denver
Art Club, the Denver Paint and Clay Club in 1889 (Adams was a member), the Le
Brun Art Club in 1890, the Denver Art League in 1892, and the Artists’ Club
in 1893. (The Artists’ Club is still with us, though transformed: it incorporated
in 1917 as the Denver Art Association and in 1923 became the Denver Art Museum.)
Adams was a highly successful artist. His professional
stature was such that several Colorado railroads provided Adams with bartered
fare, trading train-travel for paintings. Adams could never get enough of the
mountain scenery, especially his beloved Longs Peak, and this was a perfect way
to travel throughout the region, to the Spanish Peaks, the San Juan Mountains,
to Ouray, to Aspen and up to the Tetons. He shared a train car with a photographer
friend. For the two paintings and two photographs the artists respectively bartered,
the railroad provided a private car, a cook, and open permission to uncouple and
stop anywhere and then hook up again with any train.
For
a time Adams shared a studio with the sculptor A. Phimister Proctor. He also taught
landscape painting at a school started by the Art League with Munich-trained figure
painter Samuel Richards from Indiana as director. Adams didn’t really enjoy
teaching and couldn’t seem to discourage his students from copying his style.
He didn’t really need to teach, anyway, since his work was selling
well.
Then, in 1893, everything changed: the United States
went off the silver standard. Colorado’s economy was totally wrapped up in
silver mining and the state crashed badly. Art schools closed and no one had money
for fine art. Overnight, Adams was ruined. As he and his family struggled, a friend
from church gave the artist a set of watercolor paints as an act of charity. Although
he’d never worked in the medium before, Adams dove in and began prolifically
producing small paintings on paper, works he could sell for $2 each even in Denver’s
poor economy. Sales of the watercolors and eventually some teaching jobs gradually
led back to the sales of his larger oils. By 1905 the family’s fortunes had
recovered sufficiently for Adams to build a summer home and studio, which he named
“The Sketchbox,” up in Estes Park, where he and his wife had honeymooned.
Adams continued to travel periodically—British Columbia,
Wyoming, a trip to Europe in 1914. He travelled to paint, to view other artists’
work and to stay current on emerging techniques like Impressionism, the Barbizon
school and tonality. He managed to absorb these influences without losing his
personal style. Part of this is due, no doubt, to his innate caution and discipline.
Ironically, this disciplined and conservative man could express overwhelming beauty
with a loose brush stroke and powerfully expressive color.
No
one loved Colorado more than this transplanted New Englander. When he traveled
to paint in New Mexico and New Orleans and later when he lived in California,
Adams longed for Colorado and wished he hadn’t strayed from his mountains.
Whether influenced most profoundly by Victorian romanticism,
his family background, or his early losses and religious convictions we’ll
never know, but Charles Adams developed an overpowering Thoreau-like devotion
to nature. On his 75th birthday he quoted Arthur Hugh Clough,
Nature
I loved and next to nature art
I warmed both hands before the fire of life
It sinks and I am ready to depart.
The
watercolors and oils by Charles Partridge Adams are stunning in their lush composition
and beautiful color. Savageau Gallery is extremely pleased to present his work.
SELECTED
COLLECTIONS:
Dr. and Mrs. Bruce Friedman Collection
Reynolds Morse collection
Denver Public Library
Kansas City Art Association
Colorado University
at Boulder
The Colorado Normal School in Greeley
Various organizations
in both Denver and San Diego
Numerous private collections in Denver and Chicago.
He was awarded a special gold medal for his service to Colorado by Colorado University
in 1919.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS, OFFICES
AND AWARDS:
Denver Artists Club active charter member, exhibitor, and sometime
treasurer
Society of Western Artists (the only Colorado member)
Laguna
Beach (California) Art Colony member
National Mining and Industrial Exhibition,
Denver, 1883 - Exhibited and won the Gold Medal (this event was the first major
art exhibition held in Colorado)
Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, exhibited
National Academy of Design, exhibited
Pan-American Exposition in New
York, exhibited
Art Institute of Chicago, exhibited
Louisiana Purchase
Exposition in St. Louis, exhibited
Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha,
exhibited
Denver Exposition of 1882, exhibited
SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Baker and Hafen. History Of Colorado. Vol. III: 1267-1269
Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs
et Graveurs. Paris: Librairie Grund, 1976.
“Charles Partridge Adams”
Obituary. The Rocky Mountain News. Oct. 17, 1942: 13
Dell, Barbara.
Artists of the Rockies and the Golden West, winter 1985 “Charles Partridge
Adams 1856-1942.”
Dines, D., Leonard. S.J., Cuba, S.L. The Art of
Charles Partridge Adams. Golden, CO.: Fulcrum 1993.
Fielding, M. Dictionary
of American Painters, etc., Poughkeepsie: Apollo Books, 1984.
Gerdts,
William H. Art Across America: The Plains States and the West. Illustration,
Picture Caption: “#3.79 - Charles Partridge Adams (1858 - 1942) ‘Looking
across South Park,’ 1897 Oil on canvas, 27 ¼ " x 39 ½" in. Private Collection”
Havlice, P.P. Index to Artistic Biography, New Jersey: Scarecrow 1973.
Mallette, D. T. Index of Artists. New York: Petersmith, 1948.
"Masterpieces by a Colorado Painter," Denver Times, March 9, 1904.
McNeil
B. Artists Master Index. Detroit: Gale Research -Tower 1986.
“Rocky
Mountains on Canvas.” Denver Times, April 2, 1899:2.
Samuels,
P. and H. Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artists etc., Garden City: Doubleday,
1976.
Thieme, U. and Dr. Felix Becker. “Allgemeines Lexikon Der Bildenden
Kunstler,” Leipzig: Engleman, 1907.
Young, W. Dictionary of American
Artists, Sculptors and Engravers. Cambridge: Arno, 1968.
