Through most of the 19th century East Hampton remained an isolated, even insular place. Unlike the slightly more urbanized Sag Harbor, this country cousin's pace was slow, and steady. Families lived much as they has done for 200 years, living off the land, providing for themselves, and raising the next generation as they had been raised.
That began to change in the late 1800's when a small trickle of visitors discovered us. As so often happens, it was artists who first stumbled on this backwater's charm. Drawn by the town's remarkably well preserved colonial flavor, and its natural beauty, they began to paint and sketch. Arriving by buggy from the nearest rail head in Bridgehampton, or though the steamer terminal at Sag Harbor, they would take up residence in family homes for the summer.
The best known boarding house was located on Main Street, on what is now the site of the Presbyterian Church. It was the favorite spot for the ever increasing number of artists who came here. Famous for its patrons' habit of staying up late at night, smoking pipes and drinking beer, it became known as Rowdy Hall. It was said at the time that the front porch would still be crowded with revelers when the first parishioners were on their way to Sunday services.
East Hampton's reputation for natural beauty was thrust into the national spotlight in 1879, when Scribner's Magazine sent a group of well known landscape artists here. Members of the Tile Club, they were expected to paint at least one small decorative tile each day as they fanned out over meadow and beach with easel and sketch book in hand. Among them was Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran and his wife, Mary Nimmo, a well known etcher in her own right.
The prominent vistas and clear air they found here was compared to that of France's Barbizon region. There Corot and Millet set the stage for the Impressionist revolution Renoir, Monet, Manet and Seurat would stage. Here, in a parallel way, Homer and Moran were the precursors for American Impressionists like Childe Hassam, who would join Moran in the 1890's, to produce some of the most beautiful work of their long careers.
Moran loved East Hampton so, he built a cottage style home on Main Street opposite the Town Pond. Long before the many galleries and museums were established here, his living room (also his studio) was the focal point for the arts. Lively discussions would take place there nightly, as emerging artists and established ones would debate the finer points of painting, poetry and the arts. Moran's impact on East Hampton is fundamental, reflected at Guild Hall where the main gallery is named after him, as well as his home, recognized by the National Historic Trust.
Two years earlier another much less formal organization, the Tile Club, was founded by the architect Edward Wimbridge and the painter Walter Paris, two Englishmen living in New York City. The prescribed quota of twelve members was soon filled by ten Americans: the illustrators Edwin Austin Abbey, Charles Stanley Rein-hart, and Francis Hopkinson Smith; the painters Winslow Homer, Julian Alden Weir, Arthur Quartley, and Robert Swain Gifford; the sculptor William Rudolph O'Donovan; and the journalists William Mackay Laffan and Earl Shin. The Tile Club Flourished during the ensuing decade, with those who dropped out being replaced with new recruits carefully selected and unanimously approved.
From the start the Tile Club was intended to be an informal but exclusive social organization and every member was given a nickname. However; the group was also determined to establish an official raison d'etre. Resigned to the fact that the United States had succumbed to the decorative mania, the club members decided to follow this lead, finding inspiration for their aesthetic mission in the British arts and crafts movement. Of the two English founders Abbey was the stauncher Anglophile, declaring that the Centennial Exhibition in the city of his birth was his "greatest eye-opener" and that the British exhibit of crafts there was "the most interesting and inspiring." Club members debated what line of English-inspired craft they should pursue, with a disciple of William Morris suggesting wallpaper, but with a follower of the American Eastlake preferring furniture. It was Wimbridge, however, who came up with the winning idea--tiles, although none of the members are known to have had any prior experience painting tiles.
It was decided that the group would meet each Wednesday evening in the studio of one of the artist members on a rotating basis. They started with eight-inch-square biscuit colored blank tiles made by Wedgwood or Minton, Hollins and Company, and they preferred vitreous paint applied with brushes, palette knives, or their fingers. As no subject was prescribed, the resulting tiles include figure pieces, landscapes, marine scenes, still lifes, and some purely decorative designs. Colors were for the most part limited to shades of black, brown or "Victoria" blue. However, Homer used a broader spectrum of bright colors.
The activities and methods of the Tile Club were first introduced to the public in an article by William Laffan in Scribner's Monthly of January 1879, which was illustrated by some of the artist members. Wimbridge's illustration (Fig.1) clearly shows that the group intended their work to be used in fireplace surrounds. How many surrounds were completed is not known; the two that survive are both by Homer. Of these, Shepherd and Shepherdess or Pastoral (Pl. V) shows one of Homer's favorite subjects at the time. His double tile Resting Shepherdess (Pl. VI) and others were based on sketches and paintings he made at a friend's farm in Mountainville, New York. In their conception they are indebted to the illustrations of Walter Crane in his children's book. “The Baby's Opera: A Book of Old Rhymes with New Dresses,” published in London and New York in 1877. Crane's illustrations were soon adapted as tile designs and produced by the English manufacturers T. and R. Boote and Minton, Hollins and Company. Although the similarity of Homer's shepherdesses to Crane's (see Pl. IV) is obvious, the design elements are very different. Crane's image is flat and unmodulated and nearly fills the field, whereas Homer's Resting Shepherdess has form and depth and exhibits subtle effects of light and atmosphere in the ample background. This points up the major difference between American Tile Club painters and their British counterparts. While the English treated their tiles as squares to be filled decoratively, with design the paramount concern, the Americans usually treated their tiles like a canvas or panel on which to create a painting (see Pl. XII).
During the summer of 1878, sponsored by Scribner's Monthly, the Tile Club traveled to East Hampton, Long Island, ostensibly to pay homage to the memory of the actor and playwright John Howard Payne (1791-1852), who was best known for his popular ballad "Home Sweet Home." An account of the trip appeared in an article written and illustrated by the members entitled "The Tile Club at Play," and published in Scribner's Monthly in February 1879. Throughout the article the members made both direct and oblique references to the English heritage on Long Island. They wore "London" walking boots, which made them "footsore from the mere superiority of their equipment."
Their first stop on their way to East Hampton was "Castle Conklin” on Captree Island off the South Shore of Long Island. Later they went on to Bridgehampton, where they took a short break while Reinhart purchased a Queen Anne table. Although they had intended to "guy" (an old English term meaning make fun of) Payne, whose popularity was so great in East Hampton that there were at least three houses said to have been the home of his birth, they were soon won over by the charm of the village and its inhabitants. Many local residents still lived in eighteenth-century shingled cottages, used old English phrases, and--most important--were willing to pose for painters.
Quartley immortalized one young woman in his tile “Girl on Beach, East Hampton” (Pl. XII), and Abbey commemorated their visit in the watercolor shown in Plate IX, which was later used as an illustration in the article about the visit. Before returning to New York the travelers paid tribute to "King" David Pharaoh and "Queen" Amelia, who presided over what remained of the once valorous Montauk Indians. To their delight, the members discovered pinned to the wall of King Pharaoh's simple house at Montauk Point a broadside showing figures dressed in English cricketing clothes.