The Tile Club: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting The Tile Club | Page 10

Although painting tiles was important to the Club’s
formation, they were only a small part of their overall
output. Members also made excursions to Long Island
and up the Hudson River to sketch and paint—the
works completed during these trips document the first
plein-air painting organization in the young nation.
Their first journey, with stops at Captree and Shelter
Island, was organized by Laffan, a writer and passenger
agent for the Long Island Railroad. The following year,
they sailed up the Hudson to Lake Champlain on the the group’s decade-long existence, A Book of the Tile
Club, lavishly illustrated and written by Francis Hop-
kinson Smith and Earl Shinn.
Of the many art clubs that were organized in the
late nineteenth century, the scholar Ronald Pisano
aptly describes the Tile Club as “perhaps the smallest,
one of the shortest lived, and most definitely the least
understood.” 2 The mysteries of the Tilers are perhaps
what makes them the most intriguing. Thanks to the
perseverance of Mr. Pisano and the collector and au-
summer excursion was in 1881, when Club members
traveled to Port Jefferson, a small harbor village on the high-spirited nature of this fascinating group of
artists and writers.
John C. Earle, and in 1880, they took the tugboat P. B.
Casket to northern Long Island. The fourth and final
Long Island’s north shore. These four lively trips were
both sponsored by and reported in Scribner’s Monthly
and The Century magazine. Their exaggerated stories
intrigued readers, some of whom began to explore
thor D. Frederick Baker, who had the drive and vision
for this exhibition, I, too, have become captivated by
Ann Glasscock, Guest Curator, Chazen Museum
of Art
the areas traversed by Tile Club members. Several art
colonies and plein-air organizations were also estab-
lished as a result—including William Merritt Chase’s
Shinnecock Summer School on Long Island.
After the Club’s last summer trip, they settled into
their new headquarters in the lower levels of Abbey’s
and Alfred Parsons’ studio at 58 1/2 West Tenth Street.
From the street, members negotiated a discreet pas-
sage to its entrance. From there, Tilers walked into a
rich interior designed by Stanford White—deep red
curtains and paintings hung on the redwood-paneled
walls, two large white-tiled fireplaces were positioned
at either end, and a grand piano and miscellaneous
furniture and bric-a-brac filled the room. White also
designed what might be considered a culmination of
4 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting
1. Francis Hopkinson Smith, The Novels, Stories and Sketches of
F. Hopkinson Smith, Vol. 7 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1905), 163.
2. Ronald G. Pisano, “Decorative Age or Decorative Craze?
The Art and Antics of the Tile Club (1877–1887).” In The Tile
Club and the Aesthetic Movement in America, edited by Elaine M.
Stainton, 11–67 (New York: H. N. Abrams in association with
the Museum at Stony Brook, 2000), 12.
Right detail: Alfred William Parsons, (English, 1847–1920),
Wixford, Stratford, Warwickshire, ca. 1900.