Julian Alden Weir
Julian Alden Weir | 1852–1919 | The Factory Village 1897 | Oil on canvas | 73.7 x 96.6cm | Gift of Cora Weir Burlingham 1979 and Purchase, Marguerite and Frank Cosgrove Jr Fund 1998 (1979.487) | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Photograph courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Factory Village 1897
Julian Alden Weir (1852–1919) was a follower of the academic style of conservative teachers such as Jean-Léon Gérôme, in whose studio he studied for four years. He preferred the discipline of the École des Beaux-Arts. Weir was in Paris at the time of the first impressionist exhibition and, on the occasion of the third in 1877, he wrote that, ‘I never in my life saw more horrible things . . . It was worse than the Chamber of Horrors’.
On a later visit to Paris in 1881 he purchased three Manet canvases for an American collector and Manet’s influence appeared in Weir’s own work of the 1880s. After 1890 he kept the company of John H Twatchman and Childe Hassam, who visited Weir at his Connecticut farm. Their impressionist methods had a decisive influence on Weir’s traditional style, and impressionist landscapes became a hallmark of Weir’s mature period. In The Factory Village 1897, Weir captures an aspect of local industry — the Willimantic Linen Company. Willimantic was near the town of Windham, Connecticut, where his wife’s family had a country home.
