WILLIAM SERGEANT KENDALL (Spuyten Duyvil, New York 1869 – Hot Springs, Virginia 1938)
Saint Yves, Pray For Us (Saint Yves, Priez Pour Nous)
signed and dated SERGEANT . KENDALL .. PARIS . 1890 . in the lower left and inscribed .L.D. in the lower right
38 ½ x 42 ½ inches (96.52 x 107.95 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, New England, until 2022
EXHIBITED
Paris, Salon, 1891, no. 898, awarded Honorable Mention
Munich, Jahresausstellung von Kunstwerken aller Nationen, September 1, 1891 – 1892, no. 3073
Chicago, World’s Columbian Exposition, May 1 – October 31, 1893, no. 642
Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, December 18, 1893 – February 24, 1894, no. 76, awarded Walter Lippincott Prize & $300
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Spring & Summer 1896, no. 417
Nashville, Tennessee Centennial Exposition, May 1 – October 30, 1897, no. 264, awarded Honorable Mention
Omaha, Trans – Mississippi and International Exposition, June 1 – November 1, 1898, no. 322
Paris, Exposition Universelle de 1900, April 15 – November 12, 1900, no. 176, awarded Bronze Medal (the medal is now in the collection of the New York Historical Society)
Buffalo, Pan – American Exposition, May 1, 1901 – November 2, 1901, no. 151
LITERATURE
Société des Artistes Français pour L’Exposition des Beaux – Arts de 1891, Société D’Imprimerie et Libraire Administratives et Classiques, Paris, May 1, 1891, p.78, no. 898
George Lafenestre, ed., Le Livre D’Or du Salon de Peintre et de Sculpture, Libraire des Bibliophiles, Paris, 1891, p. 96
Walter Armstrong, “The Two Salons” in The Magazine of Art”, Cassell & Company, Limited, London, Paris & Melbourne, 1891, p. 366
The Illustrated Catalogue of the Paris Salon, Chatto & Windus, London, May 1891, p. 82, no. 898, illustrated
“Liste Des Artistes Récompenses” in Société des Artistes Français pour L’Exposition des Beaux – Arts de 1892, Salon de 1892, Société D’ Imprimerie et Libraire Administratives et Classiques, Paris, 1892, p. CLIII
The Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893, p. 21, no. 642, on Paul V. Galvin Library Digital History, Collection Illinois Institute of Technology
“William Sergeant Kendall – Saint Yves, Pray for Us” on List of American Painters Exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, illustrated at wikipedia.org
World’s Columbian Exposition Revised Catalogue, Department of Fine Arts, W. B. Conkey Company, Chicago,1893, p. 76, no. 1221
“Pictures and a Statue for Chicago” in The New York Times, January 12, 1893, p. 4
“Report on the Fine Arts Exhibit, New York at the World’s Colombian Exposition” in Documents of the Senate of the State of New York One Hundred and Seventeenth Session, volume x, no. 86, James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1894, p. 385
“Oil Paintings” in Report of the Board of General Managers of the Exhibit of the State of New York at the World’s Columbian Exposition, James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1894, p. 563
Forty Works of Art from the Sixty-Third Annual Exhibition of the Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, The Levy Type Company, Philadelphia, December 18, 1893 – February 24, 1894, p. 27, no. 76, illustrated
Charles de Kay, “The Quarter’s Art, The Philadelphia Academy” in The Year’s Art as Recorded in the Quarterly Illustrator for 1894, Harris C. Jones, New York, p. 202
“Jahresausstellung der American Artists” in Die Kunst für Alle, Munich, May 15, 1894, p. 248
W. Lewis Fraser, “The Century Series of American Artists: Sergeant Kendall” in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, volume L, The Century Company, New York, July 1895, pp. 475, 478, illustrated
“Contributions to the Loan Exhibitions for the year 1896” in Trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Twentieth Annual Report for 1895, Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, Boston, 1896, p. 71
Museum of Fine Arts, Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings with a Summary of other Works of Art Exhibited on the Second Floor, Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, Boston, Spring and Summer 1896, p. 45, no. 417
Tennessee Centennial Exposition: Catalogue Fine Arts Department, The Brandon Company, Nashville, 1897, no. 264
F. Hopkinson Smith, “Some Note’s on Tennessee’s Centennial” in Scribner’s Magazine, volume 22, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, July – December 1897, p. 337
Herman Justi, ed., “Honorable Mention – St Ives Pray for Us, Sergeant Kendall, New York” in Official History of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, May 1 – October 30, 1897, Nashville, Tennessee, 1898, p. 125, no. 264,
Trans – Mississippi and International Exposition, Official Catalogue of Fine Arts, Klopp & Bartlett Co., Publishers, Omaha, Nebraska, 1898, pp. 28, 81, no. 322, illustrated
Ethel Evans, “Art at the Exposition: Trans - Mississippi & International Exposition” in Omaha Daily Bee, September 13, 1898, p. 4
Florence N. Levy, ed., “Trans – Mississippi and International Exposition, Omaha, Nebraska, June 1 to November 1, 1898” in American Art Journal, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1899, p. 324, no. 322
Catalogue officiel illustré exposition des beaux – arts États – Unis d’Amérique, Exposition Universelle de Paris 1900, Noyes, Platt et Cie, 1900, pp. 25-26, 67, no. 157
Catalogue Officiel Illustré de L’Exposition Décennale des Beaux – Arts, Exposition Universelle de 1900, Imprimeries Lemercier et Cie, Paris, 1900, p. 294, no. 176
Paris Exposition of 1900 Fine Arts Exhibit of the United States, Noyes, Platt & Company, Boston, 1900, pp. 25, 67, no. 157
Catalogue of Exhibitors in the United States Sections of the International Universal Exposition Paris, 1900, Société Anonyme de Imprimeries Lemercier, Paris, 1900, p. 55, no. 171
Francis B. Sheafer, “Art Notes. American Paintings for Paris – Exhibition News” in Book Notes, A Monthly Literary Magazine and Review of New Books, volume IV, no. 3, New York, March 1900, p. 190
“Editorial Comment” in The Art Interchange Monthly Magazine, volume XLIV, no. 4, April 1900, p. 86
Florence N. Levy, ed., “Paris Exposition 1900 – Bronze Medals” in American Art Annual 1900 -1901, volume III, Noyes, Platt & Company, 1900, p. 10
Report of the Commissioners Representing the State of New York at the Universal Exposition at Paris, France 1900, Brooklyn Daily Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, New York, 1901, pp. 47, 53
Catalogue of the Exposition of Fine Arts, Pan American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901, David Gray Publisher, Buffalo, pp. VIII, 7, 121
“Art School Notes” in The Art Interchange, The Art Interchange Company, New York, 1901, p. 119
Report of the Commissioner – General for the United States to the International Universal Exposition, Paris 1900, volume IV, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1901, p. 248, no. 171
Universal Exposition St. Louis 1904, Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1904, pp. 131 – 132
The Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of the Nineteenth Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, October 16 – December 29, 1906, p. 37
Catalogue of the First Annual Exposition of Paintings by American Artists, Detroit Museum of Art, January to February 1906, p. 14
Catalogue of the First Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, May 31 – September 2, 1906, pp. 38 – 39
Florence N. Levy, ed., “Directory of Painters, Sculptors, Illustrators in American Art Annual, volume V, American Art Annual, New York, 1905 – 1906, p. 378 (additionally in volume VI, 1907 – 1908, p. 371; and volume VII, 1909 -1910, p. 150)
Raymond Gros, & François Bournand, “William Sergeant Kendall” in L’Oncle Sam Chez Lui, Louis Michaud, Paris, 1907, p. 209
“William Sergeant Kendall” in Who’s Who in New York, Historical Publishers Company, New York, 1907 p. 147
Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, & Frank Moore Colby, eds., “William Sergeant Kendall” in The New International Encyclopedia, volume XI, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1907, p. 444
Richard Rathbun, “William Sergeant Kendall” in The National Gallery of Art, Washington Government Printing Office, 1909, p. 124
“William Sergeant Kendall” in Men and Women of America, A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries, L. R. Hamersly & Company, New York, 1910, p. 941
Catalogue of Works Shown in the United States Section, Exposición Internacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Mackenzie & Co., Santiago – Chile, 1910, unpaginated
Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., “Kendall, Painter of Children” in Art & Decoration, volume 1, no. 1, November 1910, p. 16
Sixth Annual Exposition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, The City Art Museum St Louis, 1911, p. 36
Albright Art Gallery, Catalogue of the Sixth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings, Buffalo, May 12 – August 28, 1911, p. 24
Biographical Sketches of American Artists, Michigan State Library, Lansing, 1912, p. 99
Seventh Annual Exhibition of Selected American Paintings, An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings and Sculpture by the members of the Société des Peintres et des Sculpteurs, City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1912, p. 49
Annie Nettleton Bourne, “W. Sergeant Kendall, The Exhibition of the Works of the New Director of the Yale Art School” in Yale Alumni Weekly, volume XXIII, no. 14, New Haven, Connecticut, December 19, 1913, p. 353
John E. D. Trask, ed., Catalogue de Luxe of the Department of Fine Arts Panama – Pacific International Exposition, Paul Elder and Company, San Francisco, 1915, p. 153
Albert Nelson Marquis, ed., “William Sergeant Kendall” in Who’s Who in New England, A. N. Marquis and Company, Chicago, 1916, p. 625
Bulletin of The Detroit Museum of Art, volume X, no. 1, October 1915, p. 4
“1894” in The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Catalogue of the 11th Annual Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1916, p. 11
“William Sergeant Kendall” in The Corcoran Gallery of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Press of Gibson Bros., Washington, D.C., 1920, p. 54
Catalogue of the Nineteenth Annual International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1920, unpaginated
“William Sergeant Kendall” in Who’s Who in America, volume 12, A.N. Marquis & Company, Chicago, 1922 – 1923, p. 1757
“William Sergeant Kendall, Who’s Who in Art” in American Art Annual, volume XX, The American Federation of Arts, Washington, D.C., 1923, p. 577
“William Sergeant Kendall” in Academy Notes, The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, volume XVIII, no. 1, January – June 1923, p. 30
D. R., “The Walter Lippincott Collection II” in Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, volume 19, no. 81, December 1923, p. 46
J.E. Homans & L.E. Dearborn, eds., “William Sergeant Kendall” in Cyclopedia of American Biography, volume VII, The Press Association Compilers, Inc., New York, 1924, p. 455
Ralph Clifton Smith, “Sergeant Kendall, St Ives Priez pour Nous” in Life and Works of Henry Wolf, Winfred Porter Truesdell, Champlain, 1927, p. 63, no. 511
Ulrich Thieme & Felix Becker, “William Sergeant Kendall” in Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, volume xx, Veb E. A. Seeman Verlag, Leipzig, 1927, p. 150
“Sergeant Kendall 1869 – 1938” in Bulletin of the Associate in Fine Arts at Yale University, Yale University Press, 1938, p. 74
Helen Grant Cushing, ed., Nineteenth Century Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, H. W. Wilson Company, 1944, p. 1478
E. Bénézit, “William – Sergeant Kendall” in Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, volume 6, Librairie Gründ, Paris, 1976, p. 193
Alice Coe MCGlaufin, ed., “William Sergeant Kendall” in Dictionary of American Artists 19th & 20th Century, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1982, p. 182
Peter Hastings Falk, ed., “William Sergeant Kendall” in Who’s Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison, Connecticut, 1985, p. 322
Glenn B. Opitz, ed., “William Sergeant Kendall” in Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptures & Engravers, Apollo, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 1986, p. 482
Michael Andrew Marlais, Americans and Paris: Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, August 1 – October 22, 1990, p. 55
Louis Marie Fink, “William Sergeant Kendall, 1891” in American Art in the Nineteenth Century Paris Salons, Smithsonian Institution, Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, New York, 1990, pp. 310, 361, no. 898
Carolyn Kinder Carr, Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World’s Fair, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 274, no. 1221, illustrated
Susan James – Gadzinski, American Sculpture in the Museum of Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of American Art, University of Washington Press, 1998, p. 168 (as location unknown)
William Sergeant Kendall, American Master 1869 – 1938, Owen Gallery, New York, 1998, unpaginated
“William Sergeant Kendall” in American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: artists born by 1876, volume II, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2006, p. 727, (as location unknown)
Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Seydoux, “Salon de 1891” in Les Catalogues des Salons des Beaux – Arts, volume 16, L’Echelle de Jacob, Dijon, 1999 – 2014, p. 78, no. 898
Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Seydoux, “Liste des Artistes Récompenses, Salon de 1892” in Les Catalogues des Salons des Beaux – Arts, volume 16, L’Echelle de Jacob, Dijon, 1999 – 2019, p. CLIII
Anne Underwood Enslow, “William Sergeant Kendall, Forgotten Genius,” at Word Press, November 4, 2015
“An Interlude by William Sergeant Kendall” on mydailyartdisplay.uk, December 8, 2019, illustrated
“William Sergeant Kendall”, Smithsonian American Art Museum at americanart.si.edu, illustrated by wood engraving by Henry Wolf in their collection
“William Sergeant Kendall”, American Art Collaborative, americanartcollaborative.org
, illustrated
“William Sergeant Kendall” at Portrait Collection, The John Hopkins Medical Institution at portraitcollection.jhmi.edu
“Photograph of Saint Ives, Pray for Us by William Sergeant Kendall” at Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum at gardnermuseum.org (inscribed “To Mrs. Gardner, William Sergeant Kendall, 1892”)
“William Sergeant Kendall, Saint Ives, priez pour nous” at de Young Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco at www.famsf.org, illustrated by wood engraving by Henry Wolf in their collection
Maud Naour, “Visite au Pouldu de l’Arriere - Petite – Fille du Celebre Peintre Americain William Sergeant Kendall (1869 – 1938)” in Communique de Presse, September 19, 2023, illustrated
ENGRAVED
Henry Wolf, 1895
At the age of twenty-two Sergeant Kendall while studying in Paris submitted Saint Yves, Pray for Us to the Paris Salon of 1891 for which he was awarded an Honorable Mention.[1] The importance of exhibiting at the Salon in Paris at this time cannot be overstated. The Salons set the standards for the art market not only in France but throughout the entire Western world. Thousands of paintings were hung at each Salon, creating the largest exhibition of contemporary art in the world. Thousands poured into Paris to attend the Salon, with years that had 500,000 visitors not unusual. The public regarded painters whose work had been accepted by the Salon as worthy of purchase, with the exact opposite being true for those whose paintings had been rejected.[2]
In his review that year of the Salon for The Magazine of Art the august Walter Armstrong, then an art critic and later director of the National Gallery of Ireland, wrote: “For poetry of conception and delicate truth of painting, nothing in the whole Salon was better than a small picture by Mr. Sergeant Kendall, an American … The subject of ‘Saint Yves, priez pour nous’ is simplicity itself. Two Breton girls, one perhaps eighteen the other ten, are sitting on a stone seat at the foot of a whitewashed wall, on which a small image of the Saint is fixed. The small girl shrinks to her sister’s side, the elder looks up to the shrine with the pathetic faith of the paysanne. That is all: but the whole canvas vibrates with colour, every square inch is so full of quality, of intensity of vision, of sincerity in labour, that our sympathies were stirred as no other picture in the whole seventeen hundred had power to stir them”.[3] For a young American to receive such an award and review in the press can only be regarded as monumental achievements, the true beginning of an impressive career.
Saint Yves, Pray for Us became Kendall’s showpiece and was subsequently sent during the summer of 1891 to Munich for the Jahresausstellung von Kunstwerken aller Nationen (Annual Exhibition of Works of Art from all Nations)[4] until 1892. In 1893 the work was exhibited at the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago, which at the time was viewed as the most exciting destination in America, but soon became one of its most notorious. Nicknamed the White City, as most of its buildings were white, the fair also served as the hunting ground for the serial killer known as Dr. H. H. Holmes. In 1893 – 1894 the painting was shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where it was awarded the newly established Walter Lippincott Prize “for the best figure piece in oil by an American painter at the Academy” along with $300.[5]
During the spring and summer of 1896 Saint Yves, Pray for Us hung at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This was followed in 1887 by the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville which featured a recreation of the Parthenon and a large pyramid. There it received an Honorable Mention. Next was the 1898 Trans – Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha where over 2.6 million attended. Perhaps most dazzling was its inclusion in Paris at the Exposition Universelle de 1900 for which both the Grand Palais and Petit Palais were constructed. Intended to usher in the new century, it was enormous in scope and visited by more than fifty million. Saint Yves, Pray For Us was honored by a Bronze Medal. Lois Marie Fink in American Art at the Nineteenth Century Paris Salons noted that the Bronze Medal was particularly important for American exhibitors as since its inception in 1874 “with few exceptions, it was the highest award they received”.[6]
Lastly it was displayed at the Pan – American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo. This World’s Fair is remembered as where President William McKinley was shot by the Anarchist Leon Czolgosz while greeting the public on a receiving line. A week later he died of his wounds ushering in his Vice President Theodore Roosevelt as the new Commander in Chief.[7] Afterwards Saint Yves, Pray for Us vanished from public view. Although gone from sight, its reputation continued as it is noted in almost all the subsequent literature on Kendall, the painting’s popularity being undeniable.
Kendall began his studies at the Brooklyn Art Guild when he was fourteen. Thomas Eakins was his first teacher, and when he returned to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1884, Kendall followed. In 1886 Kendall returned to New York and studied with Harry Siddons Mowbray and J. Carroll Beckwith at the Art Students League. All three of his teachers had trained in France and undoubtably influenced Kendall’s decision to leave for France in 1888. In Paris he studied with Luc-Olivier Merson who had a “profound influence on Kendall”.[8] Merson who had spent three years in Italy painting pictures of saints and religious scenes, works were reflective of the then evolving Symbolist Movement.[9] Symbolism lacked a cohesive style being more a collective response to the period. During the 1880s in Paris “great political, social and spiritual instability reigned”. As a result of ever-increasing industrialization, modern society valued financial wealth above all else, and a vast gulf opened between the bourgeoisie and working classes.[10] An oracle of the Symbolist Movement Gilbert Albert Aurier felt paintings “should express ideas through symbols, be synthetic, subjective and, as a consequence, decorative”. For some in the movement this meant indirect communication, as opposed to direct representation.[11] Kendall did not remain unaffected.
While the artist was in France most summers were spent in Brittany. During the summer of 1890 Kendall stayed at the Hôtel Destais in the remote village of Le Pouldu in Brittany. Many French and American painters were drawn to Brittany as idealized images of the peasant population became the most popular subjects in the Salons,[12] and proved particularly saleable to American collectors. Le Pouldu with a population hovering around 150 remained untouched by industrial development where “life remained rooted to the customs of the Middle Ages, its Catholic superstitions, its costumes, and its daily labor on the land”.[13] Subjects avoided by most Americans in their art were those of contemporary social problems, as well as images of saints,[14] something hard to overlook in an area called the Land of the Saints as some 750 were venerated in the province.
Kendall began work on St Yves, Pray for Us on October 22, 1890, when he took his model nineteen-year-old Thérèse le Goué to the Chapelle Saint – Maudet in Le Pouldu to try out various poses. She was a maid at the hotel where he was staying and the niece of Mme. Destais the hotel’s proprietor. On November 3rd and 4th, he executed several pochades in the church of Thérèse and Antoinette, the younger girl. Antoinette was ten years old and the daughter of another maid at the hotel. On November 5th Kendall stretched the canvas. On November 7th he wrote, “Friday evening, Worked all day again and stretched a canvas at noon, upon which I began again my picture at the church… John [Lambert, a friend and fellow art student from Philadelphia who accompanied him to France] thinks I have one of the most beautiful subjects he ever saw. It is wonderfully beautiful, and if the picture is a failure, it will be absolutely owing to a lack in me.”[15]
The backstories of his sitters as recorded by Kendall are riveting adding a deeper poignancy to the work. On December 6, 1890, he wrote of Thérèse, “She is a true ‘Cinderella’ here. Her aunt beats her before people when she (the aunt!) is drunk and calls her vile names, so that the poor girl is ready to die of shame. I asked her why she always went to sleep when she posed for me at the church. She said, ‘Because when I pose for you and am away from my aunt, everything is so peaceful and happy that I think I am dead and in heaven. So I shut my eyes and rest. From the time I wake till I go to sleep when I am at the house, I have nothing but continual scolding and fault finding from everyone of the family’… The girl not knowing what else to do stayed, and has stayed ever since, receiving no pay, doing the work of three servants, and being treated as none but a poor relation can be treated, insulted in every way, even by the two spoilt children of the family.” Other than the hotel, Thérèse had no home, as her mother was deceased, her father lacked a home of his own, and her sister and brother were married. Antoinette’s father had died young, and while Kendall was painting the girls, her mother died. Antoinette was so distraught that she “tried to throw herself on the coffin at the internment”.[16]
Kendall remained all winter in Le Pouldu, writing in his journal on March 13, 1891, “Friday ought to have been an unlucky day, Friday and the 13th together, but it has apparently not been so; thank God – I have worked all day long at St. Maudé [Saint – Maudet], but do not consider my picture finished yet. I shall have but tomorrow … I shall leave Monday morning … my picture is coming on very well considering everything”. By March 20, 1891, the painting had been sent to the Salon. Kendall wrote, “After lunch I felt all my strength gone – my pictures out of my power to change, and I had to lie down for a while”.[17]
In St. Yves, Pray for Us, Kendall employs the tools of Symbolism which embraced simplified forms, executed in broad strokes of lightly colored areas and subdued hues, and confronted the societal problem of females left to fend for themselves in a world for which they are completely unprepared. Anguish as personified by women of purity as well as their counterparts femme fatales were “one of the most pervasive themes in Symbolist art” from the 1880s through the first decade of the twentieth century.[18] In Kendall’s work although lovely in their shabbiness, desperation has brought these girls to the church to appeal to St. Yves the patron saint of Brittany and abandoned children. By Kendall cutting the saint’s head off at the top of the picture plane, a feature never mentioned in any account of the painting, the futility of their plea is clearly stated. Although well in keeping with the pessimism of the Symbolist view of the modern world as well as a cry for change, Kendall also acted to make an essential difference.
Work in Le Pouldu for the peasants was fundamentally an “unending struggle against nature’s existence”. The little girls of the village were described as wearing rags, jaundiced, skinny, strong and mainly employed to tend cattle.[19] Working as a maid in a small hotel under any circumstances would hardly have been much better, as Kendall witnessed firsthand and compelled him to help. He was able to send Thérèse to America where she was employed by his parents as a housekeeper. While there she continued to wear the traditional clothes of Brittany, which caused quite a stir in the town of Greenwich in upstate New York where they lived. Afterwards she worked for Kendall’s aunt in Brooklyn, eventually returning to Brittany where it is believed she married.[20] The painter had done what he could. The fate of Antoinette remains unknown.
By 1892 Kendall had come back to New York City. From 1892 to 1895 he taught a woman’s painting class at the Cooper Union.[21] Many of the returning American artists who trained in Paris viewed teaching as an important professional responsibility and took up posts throughout the country.[22] In 1896 he married a former student who was a miniature painter Margaret Weston Stickney, with whom he had three daughters. His principal subject matter became his family, and by 1910 he was “the most famous painter of children of his age”.[23] In 1908 he taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as well as the Carnegie Institute. In 1913 Kendall became director and later dean of the School of the Fine Arts at Yale University where he worked until 1922. Kendell and his wife divorced in 1921, and the following year he married Christine Herter, the niece of Albert Herter, who was also an artist. They moved to Hot Springs, Virginia where he also raised Arabian horses. His subject matter turned toward the mythological, featuring idealized female nudes in landscapes.
Part of Kendall’s income was supplemented by painting portraits. His sitters included Helen Huntington (later Mrs. Vincent Astor) and President William Howard Taft. He typically charged for a full-length portrait $4,000, half-length $3,000, just head and hands $2,000, and a head $1,500.[24] Paintings by the artist are in museums throughout the United States including: the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; de Young Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; the Detroit Museum of Art; two in The Metropolitan Museum of Art; two in the National Academy of Design, New York; three in the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; one pastel in the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Springville Museum of Art, Utah; and four at Yale Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut among others.
Encapsulating so much history during its period of conception and public viewings until its disappearance in 1901, the reemergence of Kendall’s Saint Yves, Pray for Us marks the return of a lost masterpiece of the Symbolist Movement in American Art. The artist’s choice of models whose own lives echoed those of his subject imbues the work with a rare authenticity. Painted in a period of political upheaval, turmoil and insecurity, reflective of our own time, Kendall employed a new pictorial language to shine a spotlight on a social injustice against women that still remains unresolved in our own country.
We are indebted to Anne Underwood Enslow, the great-granddaughter of William Sergeant Kendall for her invaluable assistance in the writing of this entry and generous sharing of the artist’s contemporaneous notes which truly made the picture come alive. This painting will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.
[1] Robert Austin, “William Sergeant Kendall, American Master” in William Sergeant Kendall, American Master 1869 – 1938, op.cit., unpaginated.
[2] Gerald M. Ackerman, “The Glory and Decline of a Great Institution” in French Salon Paintings from Southern Collections, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, January 21 – March 3, 1983, pp. 8-9, 12.
[3] Walter Armstrong, “The Two Salons”, op.cit., p. 366.
[4] Written communication from the artist’s great-granddaughter Anne Underwood Enslow, dated March 18, 2023.
[5] See Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, Vintage Books, New York, 2003; and D.R., “The Walter Lippincott Collection II”, op.cit., p. 46.
[6] Lois Marie Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth – Century Paris Salons, op.cit., p. 116.
[7] “President McKinley and the Pan- American Exposition of 1901” at Library of Congress, www.loc.gov.
[8] Robert Austin, op.cit., unpaginated.
[9] “Luc-Olivier Merson” at Serpent Publishing, serpentpublishing.com.
[10] Sarah Szabo, “Romanticism and Symbolism: The Internal & Beyond”, New York Academy of Art, =sarahszaboart.com.
[11] “A Movement in a Moment: Symbolism” at Phaidon / 100, Phaidon.com.; and Lois Marie Fink, op.cit., pp. 204, 210-211.
[12] Relayed in conversation with Anne Underwood Enslow upon viewing Saint Yves, Pray for Us on March 22, 2023; and for information on the subject matter of Breton peasants in the Salons see Lois Marie Fink, op.cit., pp. 204, 210-211.
[13] Bogomila Welsh – Ovcharov, “Paul Gaugin’s Third Visit to Brittany – June 1889 – November 1890” in Gaugin’s Nirvana, Painters at Le Pouldu 1889 - 90, Wadesworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, 2001, p. 17.
[14] Lois Marie Fink, op.cit., pp. 178, 223.
[15] Written communication from Anne Underwood Enslow, dated April 8, 2023, and the journals and diaries of William Sergeant Kendall located in the New-York Historical Society, Box 4.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Nicole Myers, “Symbolism”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 www.metmuseum.org.
[19] Bogomila Welsh – Ovcharov, ibid, p. 17.
[20] “An Interlude by William Sergeant Kendall” on mydailyartdisplay.uk., op.cit.; and written communications from Anne Underwood Enslow dated April 8, 2023, and April 24, 2023.
[21] Robert Austin, op.cit., unpaginated.
[22] Lois Marie Fink, op.cit., p. 280.
[23] Robert Austin, op.cit., unpaginated.
[24] Biographical information taken from Robert Austin, op.cit., unpaginated; and “William Sergeant Kendall” in American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: artists born by 1876, op.cit., p. 728.