Willard Metcalf

Willard Metcalf painted New England through the seasons: blossoming orchards, green summer hills, bright autumn birches and snowy villages. His calm, carefully built landscapes earned him the nickname “poet laureate of the New England hills”.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the Académie Julian in Paris. By 1886 he was painting in Giverny, apparently the first American painter to work there. He was one of the Ten American Painters, who broke from the Society of American Artists in 1897, and from 1905 he often painted at the Old Lyme art colony in Connecticut. His May Night (1907) won a gold medal at the Corcoran Gallery. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A Family of Birches and Afternoon by the River at Grez show his soft Impressionist touch.