Thaddeus Welch, California landscape painter

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2003 by Alfred C. Jr. Harrison

The California pastoral landscapes painted by Thaddeus Welch (Fig. 1) at the turn of the twentieth century were praised by art critics and sold to collectors across the country. Since his death in 1919, however, his visibility has diminished to the point that art historians relegate him to the status of a minor regional artist if they have heard of him at all. Yet a second look at his works shows that he was a painter of talent and sophistication who had a sympathetic feeling for the beauties of nature.

Born in LaPorte, Indiana, in 1844 into a family of modest means. Welch crossed the plains in a covered wagon at the age of three, ending up in Panther Creek, near the small community of McMinnville, Oregon, where his father tried to make a living as a farmer. (1) The future artist worked long days as a farmhand, despite his small stature and weak constitution. Eventually, he learned the printer's trade in Portland and was hired as a typesetter at the Portland Oregonian. One day, Welch was shown a portfolio of watercolors by the itinerant Danish painter Peter Petersen Toft (1825-1901), and he became obsessed with the idea of learning how to paint. In the late 1860s, Welch moved to San Francisco, and in 1868 he took lessons in painting from the young William Keith (1838-1911). They went on two camping trips together, with Welch doing all the work at the campgrounds in return for instruction in art from Keith. (2)

In November 1870 Welch made field studies of Mount Shasta that resulted in the major painting of his early career, Mount Shasta from Sheep Camp (Pl. III) of 1874, a work in the style of the Hudson River school that shows considerable talent for a young painter without much schooling in art.

Between 1870 and 1874, Welch became increasingly visible as a part of the San Francisco art community. He was a frequent participant in the activities of a short-lived organization called the Graphic Club, founded in June 1873 as an offshoot of the San Francisco Art Association. Members convened once a week in the evening to make sketches devoted to a chosen theme. On February 26, 1874, Welch illustrated that evening's theme, "Sunshine and Shadow," with a depiction of a skeletal cur looking with envy at two well-fed dogs in a kennel. Perhaps Welch identified with the cur, as he contemplated the successful careers of fellow Graphic Club artists such as Thomas Hill (1829-1908) and William L. Marple (1827-1910), who were prospering in the generous art climate of the 1870s in San Francisco. (3)

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Although regarded in some quarters as an amateur, Welch sent paintings to auctions held by San Francisco's professional painters, and they sold at respectable prices. His talent came to the attention of a Mrs. L. Dennison, a wealthy lady who had taken a strong interest in the local art scene. Quite unexpectedly, she offered to send Welch to Munich for a four-year course of study, and by the autumn of 1874 he was enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Konigliche Akademie der bildenden Kunste) there.

Welch prospered as a student, winning prizes for his charcoal drawings, and befriending other American art students such as Frank Duveneck (1848-1919), William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), and John Henry Twachtman (see Fig. 2). In the summer of 1875, he visited the picturesque Bavarian village of Polling, a favorite summer sketching ground for the American students in Munich, including Chase, who showed up there in July. (4) Duveneck and Twachtman arrived in Munich in August 1875. Duveneck had completed a successful period of study there from 1870 to 1873 but had returned to the United States to replenish his funds. An exhibition of his work in Boston in 1875 had caused a sensation. During 1876 Duveneck and other students initiated a practice of painting each other's portraits, and Welch sat for Duveneck in Chase's studio. (5)

Welch and Twachtman went on an extended sketching tour through the German countryside in 1876, riding in a special horse-drawn cart of their own design that afforded them shelter. Throughout his life, Welch showed a remarkable talent for building practical objects, and this wagon was probably his invention. On this trip the thirtytwo-year-old Welch fell in love with the sixteen-year-old daughter of an innkeeper, who was being mistreated by her father. She escaped from home in the small hours of the morning and was married to Welch that evening by a civil magistrate. The marriage was a disaster, and, despite the birth of two children, it ended in divorce when the artist left Germany for Paris around 1880.

Like almost all American art students abroad, Welch struggled to make ends meet, and with a family he was in a particularly perilous situation. Although he was very much one of "Duveneck's boys," the coterie of art students that followed Duveneck's lead both in art and in life, Welch could not afford to accompany Duveneck and his companions on their trips to Italy in 1877 and 1878.