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members’ studios, with the host receiving artwork from Mr. Baker’s recent gift includes tiles by this Another part of Mr. Baker’s gift provides the museum
the other members, often pieces created that evening. interesting group, including Charles Stanley with its first collection of American portrait miniatures.
The other pastime of the Tile Club was painting tiles, Reinhart’s Lady of Ye Empire (1880), and Robert Popular from the 1700s through much of the nineteenth
purportedly to take advantage of the enthusiasm for Swain G ifford’s Figure in a Tree (1879). Works that century, painted miniature portraits were often
crafts, but also providing a focus for the evening’s poke fun at the group, like Edwin Austin Abbey’s mementos of absent loved ones; they were eventually
entertainment. As the group grew they organized Procession of Ye Tilers at Long Island (1878), and replaced by photography. The portraits range from
sketching outings to go “in search of the picturesque,” other more serious works by the members, J. Alden carefully cut-out silhouettes to elegant miniature
around New York and New Jersey. Four of these Weir, On the Beach, Lake Champlain (1879), paintings on ivory, and often include snippets of the
outings were memorialized by articles in the popular Augustus Saint-Gaudens Francis D. Millet (1879), loved one’s hair. They are housed in handsized, oval
Scribner’s Magazine: “The Tile Club at Work,” “The help fill the picture of the group. These works will be mountings making them intimate objects. This gift
Tile Club at Play,” “The Tile Club Afloat,” and “The brought together with others in an exhibition, The deepens the Chazen’s collection of American art in the
Tile Club Ashore.” These amusing stories recounted the Tile Club: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air nineteenth century, providing glimpses of the times.
founding of the club, and reported its sketching trips. Painting, opening February 23, 2018 at the Chazen.