The Tile Club: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting The Tile Club | Page 26

Figure 14. Charles Stanley Reinhart
(American, 1844–1896), The Tile Club
at Work, 1879, etching on paper, 16 x
22 1/2 in., Heckscher Museum of Art,
museum purchase, 2001.6.2
strapping, of little casual goodbyes, was come.” 73 The
group disembarked at the wharf in New York City and
returned to their studios.
Among the guests the Tile Club hosted later that
year was the expatriate artist Elihu Vedder, recently
returned from Italy for a visit. On December 3, 1879,
he was invited to a meeting and introduced to each
Tiler by the gregarious Chase. 74 Apparently Vedder
was somewhat intimidated by the experience, although
he joined the others in painting (a work on canvas
rather than a tile). In spite of Vedder’s apprehension,
Smith implored him to visit again. When he returned
on December 11, he met another guest, Robert Un-
derwood Johnson of Scribner’s who mentioned that his
magazine planned to do an article on him. 75 Vedder,
who was older than most of the Tilers, had strong
ties with the “old guard” at the National Academy of
Design, but was delighted by the attention he received
from the Tilers, writing home to his wife, “The old
fellows consider I belong to them, so do the young.” 76
On January 31, 1880, shortly before Scribner’s
Monthly released its article on the Tile Club’s summer
20 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting
trip of 1879, Harper’s Weekly published a general “up-
date” on the club, written by Laffan. 77 Included with
the text was an illustration by Reinhart showing a club
meeting at the luxurious studio of one of its recently
joined members, Sarony (fig. 14). Thirteen men are
gathered around the table, along with five musicians
grouped near the piano. Although it was still main-
tained that club membership was limited to twelve,
guests often attended the meetings, and those who
were artists almost “always sat down and contributed
a plaque for the benefit of the host of the evening.” 78
Surrounding the image of the group is a beautifully
decorated border incorporating eight tiles and three
plaques. At the lower corners appear commemorative
scenes of the Tilers’ two summer trips, inscribed “Long
Island” and “Northern Canal,” connected by a still life
of sketching gear. Among the images that can be iden-
tified are tiles by Quartley, Weir, Laffan, Reinhart, Gif-
ford, Chase, Sarony, and Smith; and plaques by Shinn,
Dielman, and Gifford. In a sense, this article marked
their “last hurrah” as tile painters, “a decorative craze
that took possession of a number of otherwise worthy