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May 20, 2014

Mary Holland Bacher

1891

Otto H. Bacher

(American, 1856–1909)

America, Ohio, Cleveland

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 90.6 x 57.4 cm (35 11/16 x 22 5/8 in.)

Gift of Will Low Bacher 1966.388

Location

not on view

Description

Bacher was the first artist from Cleveland to achieve international renown, and this portrait of his wife exemplifies the Impressionist style he adopted after studying in Paris during the late 1880s. The painting’s unusual subject testifies to the emergence of tennis as one of the few sports of the era in which women could participate without being considered inappropriately masculine or uncouth.

Artist biography

Otto H. Bacher

Painter and printmaker Otto Bacher was the first artist from Cleveland to earn international renown in the art world. Born in Cleveland, Bacher grew up in a neighborhood bordering the east bank of the Cuyahoga River near the mouth of Lake Erie. A childhood pastime of sketching shipping activities in the busy port eventually led to a job painting inscriptions on commercial vessels. He became interested in art during his teen years and studied with De Scott Evans and also learned from Willis Seaver Adams and Sion Wenban. In 1876 Bacher helped found the Art Club and had a solo show at the Kemmer and Kushman Decorating Company. The following year he had his second solo exhibition, at J. W. Sargeant’ s Art Shop. He traveled to Europe in 1878, attended the Munich Royal Academy, and studied with Cincinnati native Frank Duveneck in Munich, Florence, and Venice. A chance meeting in Venice with James A. McNeill Whistler in 1880 led to a long friendship that had a decisive effect on Bacher’ s etching style. In 1883 Bacher returned to Cleveland and began teaching at the Cleveland Academy of Art and privately at a summer retreat he organized in Richfield, Ohio. He returned to Europe in 1885, hoping to stay for an extended period, but his financial situation forced him to come back to America. After a brief visit to Cleveland, Bacher settled in New York City. To support himself, he did illustrations for Century Magazine in 1888. In 1895 he moved to Bronxville, New York, and by that time his artistic style revealed a strong debt to impressionism. During the last two decades of his life, he exhibited in New York, London, Paris, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Bacher died in Bronxville.
"Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 222.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed lower left: Otto H. Bacher. / --91.

Provenance

-1966

Will Low Bacher [1898-1982], the artist's son, by gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art

1966-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Sackerlotzky, Rotraud, Mary Sayre Haverstock, Nan Grossman. F.C. Gottwald and the Old Bohemians. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Artists Foundation, 1993. Reproduced: p. 23; Mentioned: p. 21, 26

Exhibition history

New York, Fourteenth Exhibition of the Society of American Artists (1892)

Buffalo, Pan-American Exposition: Division of the Fine Arts (1901), cat. no. 272, listed p. 25.

New York, The Walpole Galleries, Exhibition and Sale of Paintings of the Late Otto H. Bacher (13, 22-23, January 1917), cat. no. 45 under title Portrait of a Lady; listed p. 11.

New York, New York World's Fair, Masterpieces of Art: Catalogue of European & American Paintings 1500-1900 (May-October 1940), cat. no. 311-a, listed p. 216-217.

Washington, National Gallery of Art, American Impressionist Painting (1 July-26 August 1973); traveled to New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art (18 September-2 November 1973); to Cincinnati, Cinncinnati Art Museum (15 December 1973-31 January 1974); to Raleigh, The North Carolina Museum of Art (8 March-29 April 1974); cat. no. 1, illus. p. 53

Coshocton, OH, Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, American Paintings 1825-1915 from The Cleveland Museum of Art (7 July-1 November 1979), no cat. numbered.

Cleveland, One Cleveland Center Gallery, The Cleveland Museum Presents Four Cleveland Artists: George Adomeit, Otto Bacher, Frederick Gottwald, and Walter Sinz (15 October-2 November 1984)

Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Fraternité: Artistic Relations Between France and America (21 July-18 October 1987), no cat.

Columbus, Columbus Museum of Art, Triumph of Color and Light: Ohio Impressionists and Post-Impressionists (6 February-15 May 1994); traveled to Spingfield, Springfield Museum of Art (late Fall 1994); to Youngstown, Butler Institute of American Art (14 March-30 April 1995), cat. no. 4, illus. p. 43.

South Hadley, MA, Mount Holyoke College, The Sporting Woman: The Female Athlete in American Culture (13 April-1 August 2004), no cat.

Massillon Museum, OH (5/26/2007 - 8/19/2007) and Riffe Gallery, Columbus, OH (7/31/2008 - 10/12/2008): "Midwestern Visions of Impressionism", ex. cat. no. 36, p.44.

Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967).

American Impressionistic Painting. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (organizer) (July 1-August 12, 1973); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (September 18-November 12, 1973); The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (December 15, 1973-January 31, 1974); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC (March 8-April 29, 1974).

American Paintings 1825 - 1915 from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, Coshocton, OH (organizer) (July 7-November 1, 1979).

The Sporting Woman: The Female Athlete in American Culture. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA (organizer) (April 1-July 31, 2004).

Midwestern Visions of Impressionism. Massillon Museum, Massillon, OH (organizer) (May 26-August 19, 2007); Riffe Gallery, Columbus, OH (July 31-October 18, 2008).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=Mary Holland Bacher|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1966.388|author=Otto H. Bacher|year=1891|access-date=27 September 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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