On display in
the master bedroom of Glessner House Museum are four small etchings depicting
houses in the London neighborhood of Chelsea. Just as they did in the
Glessners’ time, the four prints, each under four inches tall, hang in a single
frame alongside the bed, amongst intimate family portraits, and immediately below
a painting of Frances Glessner’s mother.
The four etchings
are the work of British artist Elizabeth Piper, an active printmaker
between 1892 and 1932. She trained at the Clifton School of Art in Bristol and
the Royal College of Art in London, as well as in France and in Belgium. Piper
was a member of the Royal West of England Academy and an Associate of the Royal
Engravers. She was skilled as both an etcher and a painter, and her works,
which she exhibited often, were purchased by both the city of Leeds and Queen
Victoria. The Glessner prints are each
signed in the bottom right-hand corner, in pencil, by the artist.
Carlyle's House
A Shift in Collecting
Though records
have not been found to confirm exactly where and when the Glessners acquired
the four prints, it is highly unlikely that they purchased the works through
their regular print dealer, Frederick Keppel. The majority of prints in the
Glessner collection were purchased through Keppel, with detailed receipts that
document these purchases starting in 1877, and spanning a 14 year period.
Frances Glessner also recorded the purchases in her journal, describing the way
in which she and her husband John chose the artworks.
The firm of
Frederick Keppel & Co. often sent several dozen prints over to the
Glessners for review. The Glessners would then sift through the works (regularly
with the company of close friends), and through rounds of elimination, they
would send back works they did not care for, and purchase the prints they felt
they could not live without. At the height of their collecting in the 1880s,
they were purchasing as many as 21 prints at once. Frances Glessner’s journal entries show the great
enthusiasm with which they collected prints for a time, and demonstrate the way
that the Glessners became community authorities on the medium through their
collecting.
Frances Glessner
was a member of both the Fortnightly of Chicago and the Chicago Society of
Decorative Art, and was asked multiple times to present for both organizations.
In the autumn of 1881 she documented her preparations for a paper on etchings
and engravings for the Fortnightly. A number of journal entries show the
special care she took in presenting the topic, from carefully selecting prints
from the Glessner collection and borrowing selected artworks from Frederick
Keppel, to reviewing her paper several times over and having it critiqued by
others before she presented it.
Despite the
fervor that both John and Frances Glessner showed for the medium, they rarely
added to their print collection after the late 1880s, and the additions that
they did make show a rather different approach to collecting. Even though there
was continued mention of Frederick Keppel in the Glessner journal through 1899,
the once frequent entries describing the viewing, selecting and purchasing of numerous
prints in a single transaction ceased after December 27, 18 91. Instead, the
Glessners purchased prints in smaller quantities, and the purchases they made
often took place during out of town visits or special exhibitions.
Another key
shift seems to have taken place in the Glessner’s collecting habits from the
mid-1880s onward; the Glessners added pieces to their collection that
represented the contemporary output of the medium. The collection, which
remained heavy in prints taken from plates produced by Dutch and French artists
of the 17th and 18th centuries, began to include a few works by artists who
were contemporaries of the Glessners, with pieces by printmakers such as Albion
Harris Bicknell, Henri Guerard, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and of course,
Elizabeth Piper entering the collection.
Queen's House
Four Chelsea Houses in Chicago
Though Elizabeth
Piper worked and exhibited in Great Britain for most of her life, it is known
that she was represented at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A text
published by Rand, McNally & Company in 1894 titled, Art and Handicraft in the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian
Exposition, Chicago 1893, detailed the involvement of women artists at the
fair. Within that text is an article titled, “Great Britain- Art,” written by
Mrs. E. Crawford, which provides a summary of the types of work by female
artists from Great Britain on exhibit at the fair. Crawford notes that some of
these women were able to show their works not just in the Woman’s Building, but
also in the Palace of Fine Arts, and states, “among the etchings and engravings
excellent examples of the work of Mrs. Dale, Miss Ethel Martyn, and Miss Elizabeth
Piper may be found. When the exceedingly high standard of the work which Great
Britain has sent to Chicago is taken into account, it is a significant and
encouraging fact that forty-five women are represented among the British
artists exhibiting in the Art Palace.”
Piper showed a
print of a woman at a spinning wheel in a carefully documented interior in the
Woman’s Building, and a number of architectural etchings in the Palace of Fine
Arts. It has been noted that among these architectural prints were etchings not
only of prominent cathedrals, but also of the homes of Carlyle, Rosetti, Turner
and Eliot-- the same four locations that appear in the signed prints owned by
the Glessners.
As noted in
their journal, the Glessners were frequently in attendance at the World’s
Columbian Exposition, and though it cannot be proved with certainty that the
Glessners purchased their four small etchings at the fair, it is certainly a
powerful suggestion that they were at least made aware of Piper and her work at
this point. With the Glessners’ changing collecting habits, the idea that they
may have become interested in a set of prints by a contemporary artist at such
an event certainly adds power to that suggestion.
Turner's Last Home
A Shared Interest: Documenting
Architecture
Owning the four
etchings of Chelsea homes marks another departure from many of the works
purchased by the Glessners through Frederick Keppel. The vast majority of the
prints that were acquired through Keppel were renderings of important figures,
praised for their masterfully engraved hair, delicately depicted skin, and
attention to detail in costume and form. The etchings by Piper though, show
historically significant architectural sites, pointing to a common interest
between the artist and the Glessners.
The Glessners
and Elizabeth Piper share a connection beyond that provided by the World’s
Columbian Exposition; the two parties are linked through their individual
commitments to the preservation of architectural sites. The Glessners showed a
commitment to an architectural legacy through their involvement in the
construction of their home, their willingness to open their doors to young
architects and admirers of the space, and through their written words, which
document the house on Prairie Avenue as it was during a key moment in Chicago
history. Elizabeth Piper showed her commitment
to architectural preservation through the many prints she created.
Piper spent
nearly her entire career documenting significant architectural sites in the
United Kingdom, France, and Belgium. She rendered both interiors and exteriors
of schoolrooms, libraries, residential buildings, and churches with great
attention to detail. Her prolific
production of such series of etchings serves as evidence of her dedication to
these places, and in some cases her prints serve as evidence of buildings long
forgotten or since dramatically repurposed.
The four prints
in the Glessner collection represent well-known homes in Chelsea, the
neighborhood in London where Elizabeth Piper was a resident at the time. The homes
in the four prints were along Chelsea’s Cheyne Walk, a street that boasted
sought after 18th century constructions. The buildings were home to
some of the key figures of the Victorian period (the architectural beauty and
historical significance of this stretch of homes has continued to draw notable
figures to this day, and more recent residents have included members of the
Rolling Stones and former Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg). The four
prints show the home of Thomas Carlyle, the home of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (known
as Queen’s House), the last home of Joseph Mallord William Tuner, and the last
home of George Eliot.
The inhabitants
of these homes were well known figures during the Glessners’ time. Thomas
Carlyle (1795-1881), was a Scottish philosopher, writer, historian, and social
commentator. He lived in his Chelsea home with his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle, a
prominent woman of letters, for nearly half a century. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1828-1882) was an English painter, illustrator, and writer, and the founder of
the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He worked closely with figures such as William
Morris (whose work can be found throughout Glessner House). Rossetti lived
along Cheyne Walk from 1862-1882. He is known to have kept exotic animals at
his Chelsea residence, and was famously banned from keeping peacocks, after
receiving noise complaints. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an
English Romanticist landscape painter. He was known for his ability to paint
light, and his works are now widely admired as important pre-cursors to later
styles, such as impressionism. Turner was born in the Covent Garden area of
London, but his final home was along Cheyne Walk, where he lived until his
death in 1851. George Eliot (1819-1880) is the penname of Mary Ann Evans, who
was one of the most celebrated writers of the Victorian era. She lived her last
three weeks at her home on Cheyne Walk.
Like Glessner
House, many of the homes along Cheyne Walk exist today as historic landmarks, but
Piper was depicting these houses at a time when a great boom in development meant
huge changes to the Chelsea neighborhood. The picturesque houses along Cheyne
Walk had formerly fronted the River Thames, but with the construction of sewer
systems and walkways during the late 19th century, the homes found
themselves facing the busy Chelsea Embankment. The building of the embankment
encouraged further modernizing and rebuilding in the area, which meant the
clearing of some older architectural sites, and the building of blocks of flats.
Piper’s etchings serve as documents of significant buildings in a key moment
when many such homes in London faced an uncertain future.
George Eliot's Last Home
The commitment in
Piper’s careful documentation of buildings in Chelsea is mirrored by the pride
the Glessners took in preserving their home on Prairie Avenue. Though the
reasons for changes in the area that surrounded the Glessner home in Chicago
were different from those in Chelsea, and though the two events were separated
by several years, Chicago’s Prairie Avenue nonetheless saw very dramatic shifts
during the Glessners’ lifetimes. These changes meant the demolition of many of
the homes neighboring Glessner House. Aware of the architectural significance
of their home, the Glessners were compelled to preserve the legacy of the
space. In creating written documentation and commissioning pictorial
documentation, the Glessners made efforts to document and protect their home. In
the opening pages of The Story of a House,
John Glessner wrote that the “description of this home may give some indication
of how a man of moderate fortune would live in the latter part of the 19th
century and the earlier part of the 20th.” His text, written to his
children to preserve an image of the physical space and the events that took
place inside it, goes on to detail the family’s connection to architect Henry
Hobson Richardson, the building of the house, and the way the home was furnished.
Through John Glessner’s written word, and through the photographs of the house
that he commissioned from the architectural photography firm, Kaufman and Fabry
in 1923, the important site could endure, in the face of the threat of
demolition.
The four
etchings of Chelsea houses are but a very small fraction of the prized Glessner
print collection, but they point to telling connections between the Glessners, as
print collectors and passionate supporters of the arts and architecture, and
Elizabeth Piper as a printmaker and documenter of the built environment.
Guest
author: Heather MacGregor, an intern at
Glessner House Museum, spent four months documenting the Glessners’ collection
of engravings and etchings. She received
her MA from Sotheby’s Institute, London, University of Manchester in May 2016.
