By Bruce Weber
Unknown Photographer
Robert Winthrop Chanler, n.d.
Chanler Famly Archives, Rokeby
Robert Winthrop Chanler was one of the most original artists and colorful personalities to frequent Woodstock in the Roaring Twenties. The art historian Betsy Fahlman has noted that Chanler was a “prodigious drinker and epitomized what [the writer and photographer] Carl Van Vechten characterized as the ‘Splendid Drunken Twenties.’”(1)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1825)
Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler, 1893
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Chanler was one of the eleven offspring of John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Ward Chanler. Through his father, he was a great-great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant. Through his mother, he was a grandnephew of John Jacob Astor III and William Backhouse Astor, Jr. Among his siblings was Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler, who in 1893 sat for one of John Singer Sargent’s finest American portraits.
Rokeby Estate, Barrytown
Upon the death of his parents in the mid-1870s, Chanler and his siblings were raised by an aunt at his parents 420 acre Rokeby Estate in Barrytown, New York, almost directly across the Hudson River from Kingston.
Jean Alexandre Falquière (1831-1900)
Asia, 1878
Musée d’Orsay
Jean Leon-Gerome (1824-1904)
A Roman Slave Market, c. 1884
Walters Art Gallery
Pinturicchio (1454-1513)
Susanna and the Elders, 1493-1495
Borgia Apartments, Vatican
Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497)
East Wall, c. 1459
Chapel of the Magi, Palazzo Riccardi
During the course of 1890 to 1905, Chanler studied art in Rome and Paris. He originally wanted to be a sculptor, and studied with Jean Alexandre Falquière at the École des Beaux-Arts. Next he attended the Académie Julian and the Académie Colorossi, and spent time in the atelier of painter Jean-Leon Gerôme. Tired of his academic training he travelled to Italy and fell under the spell of the 15th century frescoes by Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, and by the work of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Palazzo Riccardi in Florence.
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Giraffes, 1905
Luxembourg Museum
Among Chanler's earliest known works is Giraffes, which was created in Paris in 1905 and acquired for the French state collection. The painting was inspired by the music of Bach, Gluck and Haydn, and is reminiscent stylistically of 16th century French tapestries.
Natalina Cavalieri in “Sposa Nella Morte!,” 1905
Chanler’s first marriage to Julia R. Chamberlain ended in divorce in 1907. This was followed by a whirlwind romance and brief marriage to the opera singer Natalina “Lina” Cavalieri. Chanler then made a brief foray into politics – serving as a New York state assemblymen and sheriff of Dutchess County. Early in his career he began to take an interest, both artistically and financially, in struggling young writers and artists.
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Wilhelm Hunt Diederich (1884–1953)
Mille Fleurs: A Three-Part Folding Screen, 1919
Wrought and cast iron, cut aluminum, woodpanels with gesso,
silverleaf and polychrome
Private Collection, Courtesy of
Conner-Rosenkranz
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Leopard and Deer, 1912
Gouache and tempera on canvas,
mounted on wood
Rokeby Collection
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Stained-Glass Windows, 1918-1923
New York Studio School
Over the course of his career, Chanler produced screens, murals, frescoes, canvases, panels, and stained-glass windows, and did paintings on the ceilings of rooms as well as on a covered swimming pool. He built his reputation on his sumptuous screens, for which he had a steady stream of wealthy patrons. They generally feature bold chromatic harmonies, combinations of gold and silver backgrounds, and metallic overlays, and on one known occasion he collaborated on a screen with Wilhelm Hunt Diederich, who was intermittently active in Woodstock from the late teens to the early 1930s (see post on website), and sold Chanler the house just outside the village of Woodstock that Chanler purchased in 1920 for his romantic companion Clemence Randolph. In Woodstock, Chanler was also associated with Konrad Cramer, who worked with him in the 1920s on designing and painting screens, and in 1925 Lucille Blanch executed a tapestry based on designs by Chanler.
The artist believed that the ultimate message of a painting was conveyed in decorative terms. Chanler’s friend and protégé, the Russian-American writer Ivan Narodny (who also had a home in Woodstock) remarked that, according to Chanler, “the origin of decorative art lies in the magic of the days before primitive man built a temple and created his gods,” and that a screen’s purpose was to “create an atmosphere of romance and mystery. . . .'"(2)
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Detail of “Deep Sea Fantasy,” c. 1920
Chanler’s works contain images of birds, porcupines, octopus, fish, butterflies, flowers, and monsters, all of which, Narodny relates, are meant to suggest “the subconscious desire of man’s ego to absorb all the pleasures of the world.”(3) The sources for Chanler works range from paintings of the Northern European Renaissance to early 20th century French cinema.
Unknown Photographer,
Robert Winthrop Chanler, Chimney,
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Studio, 1928
Archives of American Art
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Mai Coe’s Bedroom, Coe Hall, Oyster Bay, by.1921
Swimming Pool with Fresco by Robert Winthrop Chanler at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, 1916
Chanler’s greatest patron was his friend Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. The sculptor and founder of the Whitney Studio Club and later the Whitney Museum of American Art, commissioned a set of seven stained glass windows for her studio on McDougal Alley in Greenwich Village, as well as an immense chimney. Chanler also designed murals for Whitney’s studio in Greenvale, New York. Among his other great patrons were Major and Mai Coe, and James Deering, for whom he created an undersea fresco on the ceiling of the swimming pool at Villa Vizcaya, his winter home in Miami.
Unknown Photographer
House of Fantasy, 1920
Rokeby Collection
Chanler’s house at 147-149 East 19th Street in Manhattan, which was across the street from George Bellows and his family, was known as the “House of Fantasy,” and became a social center for New York’s art community. The artist decorated the interior with his own paintings. By far the most elaborate room was his bedroom, the walls of which were covered with images of fanciful jungles. A gargantuan oaken bed, rumored to sleep eight, was crafted by Chanler himself from trees on his Dutchess County farm. Its multitude of drawers were filled with remedies for nights of revelry.
Arnold Genthe (1869-1942)
Clemence Randolph, 1914
Gelatin silver print
Library of Congress
Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964)
Louise Hellstrom, 1933
Gelatin silver print
Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library
Luncheon in Woodstock at Home of Clemence Randolph, 1920s
Included at the table are Louise Hellstrom
(far left beside Louis Bouché and Charles Bateman) ,
and Clemence Randolph and Robert Winthrop Chanler
(far right, Marian Bouché is seated beside Clemence Randolph)
Louis Bouché Papers, Archives of American Art
In addition to his farm and ancestral home of Rokeby, Chanler shared a house in Woodstock with Clemence Randolph, who cowrote with playwright John Colton the 1922 Broadway play Rain, based on a W. Somerset Maugham short story about a missionary and a prostitute on a quarantined Pacific island. In 1932 the play served as the basis for the Joan Crawford film of the same title. Chanler had a simultaneous relationship with the interior decorator, fashion designer, socialite, restauranteur, and art collector Louise Hellstrom, who spent considerable time living in Woodstock and on the Maverick in West Hurley. The women apparently alternated hostess duties at the House of Fantasy. Chanler paid both women stipends and, on his death, bequeathed to Randolph a trust of $50,000, which provided an income for life.
Louise’s husband was Gustaf Hellström, a Swedish author who in the 1940s and early 1950s became a member of the Swedish Academy. They were married in France in 1915, and lived there for a while until Louise went back on her own to the United States. Gustaf followed her there in 1918, and they maintained a home in Manhattan and a cottage in the Maverick art colony in West Hurley until separating in about 1920.
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Portrait of Louise Hellstrom, c. 1924
While living on the Maverick Gustaf served as an influential editor of Hervey White’s illustrated magazine The Plowshare. Louise, pictured in a satirical portrait by Chanler. was the subject of a hysterically funny piece in the July 23, 1925 issue of the local satirical magazine Hue and Cry titled “Louise Hellstrom, Her Life and Quirks,” by Norman de Plume (obviously a pseudonym) which alluded to a non-existent color plate in the issue which was supposed “to give an accurate impression to the reader of the many beautiful tints of color . . . Hellstrom has used on her hair . . . .”(4)
Chanler was one of the most critically acclaimed American artists to exhibit in 1913 at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better knowns as the Armory Show. Chanler had nine of his screens on view near the entrance, where they delighted the public and critics alike. As his screens sold he was given permission to replace and rotate more than a dozen others, including some barely visible on the wall in the foreground of the photograph above.
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Parody of the Fauve Painters, 1913
Woodstock Artists Association and Musem
Nathan Dolinsky (1889-1981)
The Sightless, 1913
The Munson
Unknown Photographer
Nathan Dolinsky, c. 1920s
Gelatin silver print
Catalog for the Exhibition of Academy of Misapplied Art, Spring 1913
Parody of the Fauve Painters is a spoof of The Sightless of 1913, a large, ambitious, and enigmatic painting by Chanler’s friend Nathan Dolinsky, which was exhibited that year in New York at the Armory Show. The writer, landscape architect, and city planner Michael Owen Gotkin, who is a descendent of Dolinsky, has suggested that the painting may represent a cautionary tale drawn from the poetry of Kahil Gibran, about the hazards of the blind leading the blind.(5) Chanler's painting undoubtedly sprang up in response to a major exhibition of parody pictures held in the spring of 1913 in the wake of the Armory's onslaught of modernism. The exhibition Academy of the Misapplied Art First Annual Exhibition was held at The Lighthouse for the Blind on East 59th Street in Manhattan. Among the artists to show in the exhibition were Cecilia Beaux, Colin Campbell Cooper and George Bellows.(5)
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Blue Nude, 1907
Baltimore Museum of Art
Chanler’s canvas may also be regarded as an attack on the art of Henri Matisse for displaying what he considered that artist’s disregard for the forms of nature. At the same time, it skewers artists who “ape” the style of Matisse—a growing group of young European and American artists who slavishly imitated the Frenchman. This disparagement was a reflection of Chanler’s larger criticism of artists whose failure of originality seemed to him a symptom of laziness. Kiki Randolph, daughter of Clemence Randolph, related that Chanler always “insisted that an artist had to work, work, work.”(6)
Unknown Photographer
Plaster of Constantin Brancusi’s Mademoiselle Pogany I, 1913
Art historian Laurette E. McCarthy has noted that Chanler “blatantly mocked” Matisse’s imitators, “especially the many Americans who aped Matisse’s style.”(7) Yet she also observes he demonstrably admired some of the vanguard European artists who exhibited at the Armory Show. Indeed, Chanler was one of a very small circle who actually bought modern European art from the 1913 show.(8) His purchases included a Cubist painting and watercolor by the Portuguese artist Amadeo de Souza-Cardosa, two lithographs by Redon, and, most spectacularly, a bronze cast of Constantin Brancusi’s Mademoiselle Pogany I—a plaster version of which was exhibited at the Armory Show. If anything, the press decried and caricatured Brancusi’s work even more savagely that it did Matisse’s.
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Portrait of George Barrere, 1926
Woodstock Artists Association and Museum
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Portrait of Lucille Blanch. 1928
Woodstock Artists Association and Museum
Robert Winthriop Chanler (1872-1930)
Portrait of Romany Marie, n.d.
Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872-1930)
Portrait of Bibi Dudensing, 1927
In the 1920s, Chanler specialized in painting portraits, and executed some seventy-five likenesses in the five years before his death. Among the finest is his portrait of the flutist George Barrere with its Persian-inspired floral background. Other Woodstock sitters included Lucille Blanch, one of several artists with whom he was associated with on the Maverick. He also painted now unlocated portraits of sculptor Raoul Hague, writer Richard Le Gallienne, painter Alexander Brook, and Greenwich Village and Woodstock café proprietor Romany Marie. Normally, his subjects posed on a stiff chair atop a small model throne and were lit by a battery of Klieg lights. He often used plain or white backgrounds and sometimes pictured elaborately designed chintzes. Chanler aimed to portray his subjects as he witnessed them at a party.
Guy Pene du Bois (1884-1954)
Portrait of Robert W. Chanler, 1915
Whitney Museum of American Art
In 1930, Chanler’s outsized lifestyle finally got the best of him, and he died in Woodstock following his third heart attack that year at the age of 57. Following his death the artist and art writer Guy Péne du Bois remarked that he “‘was the ‘Sinbad of American artists,’ the man whose lifelong voyage of discovery carried him in a far, luxuriant world where birds flame with color and vegetation spreads a rich, exotic world, sometimes lustrous with the joy of living, sometimes dark and mysterious with terror.”(9)
(1) Betsy Fahlman, "Reclaiming an American Modernist," essay in Robert Winthrop Chanler: Discovering the Fantastic (Miami: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens with Moncelli Press, 2016), p. 33.
This book is a relvelatory exploration of Chanler's life and career.
(2) Ivan Narodny, "Chanlers Dynamic Symbolism," International Studio 75 (September 1922): 470, 481.
(3) Ibid., p. 481.
(4) Norman de Plume, "Louise Hellstriom, Her Life and Quirks," Hue and Cry, 3 (July 23, 1925): 5-6.
(5) Telephone conversation with Michael Owen Gotkin, October 10, 2018.
(6) For a further discussion see "Ronald C. Pisano, "The Art of the Fakirs," essay in Ronald C. Pisano and Bruce Weber, Parodies of the American Masters: Rediscovering the Society of the American Fakirs, 1891-1914 (Stonybrook, Long Island: The Museums at Stony Brook, 1993), n.p.
(7) Comment made by Kikii Randolph in response to request by Tamara Von Prittwitz, Robert Chanler Files, Woodstock Artists Association Archives.
(8) Laurette E. McCarthy, "Setting the Stage: Chanler and the Armory Show," essay in Robert Winthrop Chanler: Discovering the Fantastic, p. 107.
(9) Gene Péne du Bois, "Robert Winthrop Chanler," Arts 17 (January 1931): 232.
Excellent insight on this interesting artist!