Walter Elmer Schofield (September 10, 1866 – March 1, 1944) was an American Impressionist landscape and marine painter. Although he never lived in New Hope or Bucks County, Schofield is regarded as one of the Pennsylvania Impressionists.
His body of work includes autumnal landscapes and snow scenes of Pennsylvania and New England, and summery landscapes and marine paintings of England and France. Late in his career, he painted vividly-colored landscapes of the American Southwest.
Schofield's works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Woodmere Art Museum, and other American museums. In Europe, his works are in the collections of the Godolphin Estate in England, and the Musée d'Orsay in France. Two paintings are in the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum in Montevideo, Uruguay.
The world auction record for a Schofield work was set on December 1, 2004, when Rapids in Winter sold for US$456,000 at Sotheby's NY.Rapids in Winter, from Sotheby's Auctions.
Biography W. Elmer Schofield (pronounced "SKŌ-field") was the youngest of the eight children of Philadelphia businessman Benjamin Schofield (1820–1900) and Mary Wollstonecraft Schofield (1822–1899). His parents emigrated from England to Philadelphia in 1845, and his father and uncles built textile mills in Manayunk, along the Schuylkill River.Edwin Troxwell Freedly, Philadelphia and Its Manufactures (Philadelphia: Edward Young, 1859), p. 261. He grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, and graduated from Central High School in 1886.Stephanie L. Herdrich, "Walter Elmer Schofield," in Helene Barbara Weinberg, American Impressionism and Realism: A Landmark Exhibition from the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009), p. 310. He attended Swarthmore College for a year, before dropping out and working as a cowboy in San Antonio, Texas. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1889–92, under Thomas Anshutz and Robert Vonnoh. He moved to Paris in 1892, and studied at the Académie Julian under William Bouguereau, Gabriel Ferrier, and Henri Lucien Doucet.
Schofield returned to Philadelphia at the end of 1894. Robert Henri, a friend and fellow PAFA alumnus, was then teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.Constance Kimmerle, Edward Redfield: Just Values and Fine Seeing (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 22–23. Schofield was among a group of Philadelphia artists – William Glackens, Edward Willis Redfield, John French Sloan, Everett Shinn, George Luks, James Moore Preston, Edward Davis, Charles Grafly, Stirling Calder, Hugh Breckenridge – who would meet at Henri's studio on Tuesday nights to discuss art and aesthetics. Schofield, Henri, Glackens, Grafly and artist Augustus Koopman sailed for France together in June 1895.Ira Glackens, William Glackens and the Eight: The Artists Who Freed American Art (New York: Horizon Press, 1984), pp. 69–70. Schofield, Henri and Glackens were fascinated by the subtle atmospheric effects of Dutch Old Master painters, and the trio made a bicycle tour through Belgium and the Netherlands, visiting churches and museums along the way. Schofield was also influenced by Les Nabis, "a group of French painters whose work emphasized bright colors, flattened forms and decorative patterning."Thomas Folk, The Pennsylvania School of Landscape Painting - An Original American Impressionism, exhibition catalogue, (Allentown Art Museum, 1984), p. 47.
Schofield returned to Philadelphia in Fall 1895, and worked in his father's textile business for a short time. He met Muriel Redmayne, an English visitor to the city. They married on October 7, 1896 in Ormskirk, Lancashire (near Liverpool). The newlyweds returned to Philadelphia, and lived with his parents in Cheltenham Township, just north of the city. They bought a house in the Oak Lane section of Philadelphia. Schofield had early professional success with restrained Pennsylvania winter landscapes, painted in a Tonalist style "characterized by muted colors and soft, flowing brushwork". In 1899, he and his pregnant wife moved to Southport, North West England, and lived with her parents. The couple had two sons, Seymour and Sydney. The family lived for a time in Brittany, and from 1903 to 1907 in the coastal town of St. Ives, Cornwall.C. Lewis Hind, "An American Landscape Painter: W. Elmer Schofield," The International Studio, vol. 48, no. 191 (January 1912), pp. 280–89. Schofield would spend half of the year in Philadelphia, painting his signature autumn and winter scenes, while his wife and sons remained in England. He maintained this routine from 1902 to 1937, except during World War I.
After his parents' deaths, Schofield would stay with his brother Albert and family in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of the city. This was a short walk from the Valley Green section of Fairmount Park, and the picturesque Wissahickon Creek became the subject of a number of his paintings.
Schofield had roomed with Edward Redfield in France, and the two enjoyed a friendly rivalry. Both worked en plein air even in the coldest weather, both favored large canvases and preferred to finish a work in a single day, and the pair sometimes painted together. Observing Redfield, Schofield gradually abandoned his Tonalist technique in favor of a more dynamic style "of expressionistic brushwork and a greater sense of form, structure and patterning that itself border[ed] on Post-Impressionism."
Redfield and Schofield had a major falling out in 1904, that developed into a lifelong feud. Art historian Thomas Folk suspects that Schofield never painted in New Hope again. Painter Emile Gruppe witnessed the results of Schofield's transformation in the first decade of the 20th century: "I can still remember the great National Academy shows. Three painters dominated the walls: Edward Redfield, Daniel Garber and Elmer Schofield. They all worked boldly and with wonderful color – and you never critically compared them, for you loved each one when you stood in front of his canvas."Emile Gruppe, Gruppe on Color (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1979), p. 7.
Schofield painted in a brighter palette after World War I, applying this new approach to snow scenes, to coastal scenes of Cornwall, and to landscapes of California, New Mexico and Arizona.
World War II ended Schofield's annual trips to the United States. He spent his last years living and painting in Cornwall.
Personal
Schofield was close friends with Pennsylvania Impressionist painter Walter Emerson Baum, who named one of his sons Elmer Schofield Baum.
In July 1915, at age 48, Schofield enlisted as a private in the British Army during World War I. Three months later, he accepted a commission as 2nd lieutenant in the Cornwall Garrison of the Royal Artillery. He rose to the rank of captain, and was discharged with the rank of major.
After the war, Schofield and his wife lived in Perranporth, Cornwall for several years, and in Otley, Suffolk from 1925 to 1937. In September 1937, they purchased "Godolphin House," a 17th-century manor in Breage, Cornwall, which was restored by their architect son, Sydney Elmer Schofield (1901–1983).David Tovey, Creating A Splash - The St. Ives Society of Artists - The First 25 Years (1927–1952) (Hilmarton Manor Press, 2003). Many of Schofield's late paintings depict the manor and its gardens. The couple moved to the smaller "Gwedna House" on the same property in 1941, and gave the manor house to Sydney and his bride.Thomas Folk, Walter Elmer Schofield, exhibition catalogue, Brandywine River Museum, (Chadd's Ford, PA: Brandywine Conservancy, 1983).
Walter Elmer Schofield died of a heart attack at "Gwedna House" on March 1, 1944. His body was temporarily buried in England, and after World War II was exhumed and reburied in Philadelphia, at the Church of St. James the Less. His wife Muriel, who survived him by 16 years, was buried beside him. Sydney designed their gravestone. In addition to being an architect, Sydney was a portrait painter.Sydney Elmer Schofield, from Suffolk Artists. Sydney's widow sold "Godolphin House" to the National Trust in 2007.Nigel Reynolds, "National Trust buys Godolphin House," The Daily Telegraph, August 9, 2007.
Exhibitions, awards and honors
Schofield exhibited at a number of international expositions: the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris (honorable mention for January Evening);The Artist: An Illustrated Monthly Record of Arts, Crafts and Industries, vol. 28, no. 246 (July 1900), New York: Truslove, Hanson & Comba, p. x. the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York (silver medal for Autumn in Brittany);Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts: Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo, 1901), pp. 33, 42, 56. the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri (silver medal for Winter Morning); the 1910 Exposición Internacional del Centenario in Buenos Aires, Argentina (gold medal for The First Days of Spring);Exposición Internacional de Bellas Artes: Catálogo Oficial Ilustrado (Moneda esquina San Antonio, 1910), p. 62. the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco (silver medal for The Hilltop); and the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia (silver medal for The Little Harbor).