LOUIS KRONBERG
Kronberg, often referred to as
"the American Degas,"was born in Boston on December 20, 1872. He
displayed artistic talent in his elementary school years and while he
was only fifteen years old, his brother, who had become an impresario,
made it possible for Louis to copy portraits of stage and concert
celebrities backstage. Louis came to know Ignaz Paderewski, Boris
Chaliapin, and other big names. Kronberg eventually became a student at
the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where he was influenced
by the Tarbell-Benson manner. By October of 1889, Kronberg was in New
York where he sought new inspiration at the Art Students League. The
Boston Museum School's Longfellow Traveling Scholarship allowed Kronberg
to continue his art studies in France. Then in his early twenties,
Kronberg sailed for Europe.
Once in Paris (1894-97), Kronberg
enrolled in the Académie Julian and he came to know the work of Degas,
the basic tenets of impressionism, and the juste-milieu painters. After
returning to America, Kronberg participated in various group
exhibitions such as the annuals of the Boston Art Club (1891-1907), the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1892-1941), the Art Institute of
Chicago (1898-1940), and at the National Academy of Design (1911-49).
He exhibited pastels in the Paris Salons of 1897-99 and in 1900, he
showed a pastel nude study at the Exposition Universelle. By the turn
of the century, Kronberg's preference for subjects of the theater was
dominant. Contemporary art critic Sadakichi Hartmann (1902, vol. 2, p.
251) pointed out that Kronberg "has a keen eye for movement and
footlight effects, and the ability to express them with a brilliancy of
color." Kronberg's treatment of the theme became somewhat predictable
by 1906 when more than fifty oils, watercolors, drawings, and pastels
brought him notable coverage by the press. Kronberg's imagery of
dancers is less genteel than most Boston School art in which women
appear in their safe, luxurious homes. The stage was, after all,
despite the rigorous discipline of a dancer's life, a place for loose,
bohemian morality.
Kronberg received a silver medal at the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco (1915). After
that time, his painting became well known to the American art community
and gained a place in numerous museum collections. The Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, for example, has nine of Kronberg's works. The artist
worked mainly in Boston though in 1921, he decided to relocate to New
York City. There he was active in the Salmagundi Club and during that
decade (even into the early 40s), solo shows occurred in Chicago,
Boston, and New York. The Guild of Boston Artists honored him with a
show in 1935. Two years later, Kronberg was awarded a Medal of Honor at
the Paris International Exhibition for a painting entitled The End of the Ballet, featuring a ballet dancer with a bouquet of flowers. This event carved him a niche in the French art world.
About
Kronberg's theater and ballet subjects, one critic stated that, "in
spite of all the aura of the stage, of the glamour of the footlights,
Kronberg's dancers remain living human beings drawn all the nearer to us
as they stand framed in a poetry of color." (Cerutti-Simmons, 1928, p.
194). Regardless of Degas' precedent, Kronberg rejected the "accidental
compositions" in favor of more traditional, almost illustrative
images. Although he understood the technique of impressionism and used
it to present the excitement of the ballet, his subjects appear posed.
There is, however, a luxurious richness in Kronberg's application of
paint, which complements his ability to observe the myriad effects of
artificial light upon flesh and inanimate objects, an effect that
recalls Degas. Frequently these images were worked up from preliminary
watercolor studies that Kronberg collected during his travels; these
intensified the painterly aspect of his art. Although Kronberg was
always a keen observer of human movement and the effects of light and
color upon form, his figures are solid forms in space.
Kronberg's
fascination with dancers was manifested in his studio, which was
adorned with various souvenirs, costumes, and other paraphernalia from
the theater. His other favorite theme, that of the Spanish dancer,
shows an independence from Degas. Kronberg seems to have done these
works with less inhibition and thus he achieved an even greater intimacy
and understanding of a dancer's movements. One such painting, Dancer in White,
was chosen as his reception piece for membership in the Société
Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1922. Kronberg was also made a chevalier of
the French Légion d'Honneur. He was a competent portraitist and
painter of the nude; unfortunately, these works are rarely seen. He was
always a popular painter whom the press never failed to recommend.
Referring to the exhibition at Grand Central Art Galleries, Royal
Cortissoz of the Herald Tribune was quoted in Art Digest (15
December 1940) as saying that Kronberg's ballet subject matter "poses
the always alluring problem of action . . . The figure in graceful
aspects [and] it has atmosphere. All these things emerge from under the
skillful hand of Louis Kronberg." The artist lived to the grand old age
of ninety-three, passing away in Palm Beach, Florida in 1965, when
artists such as Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns
were in the headlines.