What do Monet and Marietta have in common?Visitors to the Columbus Museum of Art this month may be astonished to discover the work of Theodore Earl Butler (1861-1936), who was Claude Monet’s closest apprentice, one of the most renowned American post-Impressionists, and a graduate of Marietta College in the class of 1882.
Butler was born in Columbus, the son of Courtland Philip Livingston Butler (who is President George W. Bush’s paternal great-great-great grandfather!)
After leaving Marietta, he went on to study in New York and then abroad in France. According to gallery owner James Keny of Columbus it was in 1888 that Butler and a fellow Ohioan, Theodore Wendel, boarded a train for Normandy. They disembarked in Giverny where Monet lived and worked his gardens, which were often represented in his paintings. Butler decided to stay and in doing so became one of the first of a colony of artists inspired by Monet that sprung up near Giverny.
It was in this place that Butler married first one and then the other of Monet’s stepdaughters. He married Suzanne in 1892 and after her death married her sister Marthe in 1900. Even though Monet didn’t typically warm to novices, Butler’s marriages seem to have ensured his place at the master’s side. And, he was a family man, often painting scenes from his happy domestic life in works such as Bathing the Child, Suzanne and her Children, and Lily Butler in Claude Monet’s Garden.
The Columbus Museum of Art exhibit available to the public until January 20 features the art of Monet, but supplements it with the work of Butler and others, providing a vivid example of their similarities and differences.
In Ohio, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Keny Galleries in Columbus, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art hold several of Butler’s paintings in their permanent collections. His work can also be found at such prestigious locations as: Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museé Americain, Giverny, France, and Musée Claude Monet, Giverny, France.
But, there is an example of his finest work to be found even closer to home. In 1915, the artist designed a library bookplate for Marietta College
“The plate shows the seal of the College in the foreground between the two figures representing Wisdom and the Youth who is about to receive the wreath of success. The building in the background represents Erwin Hall, the oldest building on the campus,” said Harry Parker Ward in his book Some American College Bookplates.
Even though the plate has long since been phased out of daily use, it can still be seen inside the front cover of books from the college library archives. Butler himself presented the college with a painting depicting the bookplate scene, but it’s a different work that has found its home with the alumni office. A signed winter scene full of Butler’s favored deep greens and blues has been in storage for many years.
There’s just one note in Butler’s alumni record from Marietta College. After graduation he planned to be a bookkeeper.
