April is a cherished time of year for us at Planting Fields, as it is for many who know and love us. Regrettably, the current health crisis requires us to stay at home or venture out cautiously to open spaces like ours, or otherwise with strict capacity restrictions. In an effort to stayed connected and continue to enrich our audiences, on April 9, we will open our first exhibition of 2020 through a virtual tour of The Electrifying Art and Spaces of Robert Winthrop Chanler, originally schedule to be on view in the Great Hall. The exhibition features decorative screens and panels from private collections throughout America, highlighting Chanler’s depiction of frenzied worlds from the early 1910s to the late 1920s. Chanler (1972-1930), creator of the Buffalo Mural at Coe Hall and the original Lace Room (Mai Coe’s bedroom) is best known for his immersive interiors and screens that adorned the most exclusive estates of the early twentieth century. This exhibition marks the first time since the late 1920s that a comprehensive selection of Chanler’s art is on view for the public to enjoy.
A paradoxical figure in the history of art, Chanler’s frenetic yet lyrical compositions are demanding and destabilizing. A native New York son, Chanler was born and raised in the Hudson Valley, most active at his East 19th Street home and studio dubbed the “House of Fantasy,” and spent the later years of his life in Woodstock. Highly sought after by New York’s elite set with work regarded as a status symbol, Chanler’s two immersive mural commissions at Planting Fields, the Buffalo Mural and Lace Room, are illustrative of the Gilded Age patronage that served as the catalyst for much of his work.
The timing of the exhibition coincides with our celebration of the centennial anniversary of the completion, or so was thought, of Chanler’s Buffalo Mural. As early as 1924 W.R. Coe wrote Chanler’s studio expressing growing concern over the flaking paint in the room. Coe’s worry foretells the universal challenges that stewards of Chanler’s mural work encounter today as his unorthodox material choices and the resulting inherent vice have caused difficulty in preserving his creations. The centennial milestone of the Buffalo Mural generated the desire to expand the awareness of Chanler’s work and celebrate the preservation accomplishments that allow Planting Fields to present the Buffalo Mural to the world with integrity.
My first encounter with Planting Fields was 7 years ago while researching Chanler, whom I have intently studied for over a decade. It is both personally and professionally exhilarating for me that we have the opportunity to introduce an exhibition of this kind at Planting Fields. The Electrifying Art and Spaces of Robert Winthrop Chanler is a reintroduction to someone the world knew very well one hundred years ago, a bon-vivant whose life was as colorful and dynamic as his art, but who is slowly reentering public awareness today.
Gina J. Wouters