Arts and Letters

It was the happy destiny of Charles Adams Platt to achieve eminence in three fields of art. This by itself was much, but this was not all. An etcher in his youth, a landscape painter in his early manhood, and an architect in his consummate final period, he had the added felicity of becoming a pioneer in two movements of high importance in the development of our national art. Both movements were democratic. One concerned itself with our dwelling-places and gardens; the other, with our museums.

His early work in architecture gave a vital and timely impetus to the harmonious designing of a structure and its immediate surroundings to fit its allotted landscape, if any. The structure might be a little two-story home, or a lordly villa; a summer-house or an art library. He maintained that no matter how modest, no matter how monumental the design, a three-fold wholeness of beauty, order, and fitness should always be sought, and could almost always be found. We had indeed been fortunate in our landscape architects for many of our great public parks; but until Charles Platt created a few summer homes and gardens of thrilling beauty in Cornish, New Hampshire, under the benevolent eye of Mount Ascutney, in Vermont, we had hardly realized that the basic principles of landscape architecture could be happily domesticated at our own dooryards.

Perhaps we had foolishly imagined that such principles were the exclusive right of civic grandeur, or else of great riches. All very well, we said, for Versailles, or the Villa Lante, but not for us! Charles Platt, more abundantly than any other man of his day, showed us our error. And having produced half a dozen shining examples of house-and-garden beauty, in more or less simple guise, he thereupon created designs on a grander scale; designs now of private, now of public importance.

Enthusiastic appreciation of his work spread from New England and New York to the South, the Middle West, the Far West. His style was his own. It held within itself the best of that which is traditional, always provided that the tradition harmonized with his profoundly imaginative conception of the beautiful possibilities that might magically flower from a bare problem.

Certainly the movement for ordered beauty about our private dwelling places was democratic. No less so was the trend toward a higher fitness to purpose in planning our public museums of art. Thus an aristocrat (for in the noble root meaning of the word Charles Platt was an aristocrat) served the ends of democracy. The Freer Gallery in Washington was our first really notable example of an art museum designed from within rather than from without. We had many fine museum buildings antedating the Freer. Too often, however, our architects had stressed a grand exterior rather than a practical interior. A change of ideals was needed. Then came a fortunate circumstance. In designing the Freer Museum, so monumental without, so friendly within, Charles Platt the painter and Charles Platt the lover of fine craftsmanship stood at the elbow of Charles Platt the architect, never for a moment allowing him to forget that things of beauty must be thoughtfully placed and fitly lighted in order to be seen aright.

That "form should follow function" was to many a discovery; with him it was an instinct,—a feeling neither to be overlooked nor yet to be overworked. His plans for the new wing of the Corcoran Gallery are thoroughly practical. He was commissioned to make preliminary designs for our National Gallery, an enterprise still in abeyance. To this he gave much research and study.

After my forty years of cherished friendship with this great artist, I look back with unceasing wonder at his full half-century of achievement. The mere volume of work accomplished would have been remarkable in a man of robust physique, but our dear colleague's physique was never that. When people spoke to him of his success, he would often say, with his whimsical twist of eyebrow, "I was lucky." Doubtless his greatest piece of luck was that first, last, and always, he was an artist in every fibre of his being.

He was born in New York, in 1861, son of a distinguished lawyer. His mother belonged to the Cheney family, noted for the artistic manufacture of silks. When a young boy, he eagerly chose his career. There was never any doubt or hesitation. As a natural activity, he drew, he painted, he made cardboard models of houses and things. Excited by a visit to the studio of John Rogers, of Rogers group fame, he even went so far as to make plaster casts from life, from hands and faces of obliging friends. However, later, a somewhat unsuccessful experiment on the countenance of Laurence Hutton, collector of life masks, completely dashed his ardor for such adventures: Hutton had a mustache. But "sculpture per se," as Charles himself would say, always held his keen interest. In the various groups and statues in which I had the joy and honor of his collaborations as to pedestal, placing, and planting, he gave to each problem, however modest, his best and richest thought.

His formal education in art began in the schools of the National Academy of Design, and in the Art Students League. He studied etching under Stephen Parrish, and at twenty, produced a delightful plate, “Gloucester Harbor.” His subsequent fame as an etcher is well known. In 1882 he went to Paris, where he drew and painted under Boulanger and Lefebvre. He took what he needed from these masters, his own nature being in profound sympathy with the seriousness in study inculcated by both. At that time the Impressionists were making many a dent in the academic armor. He noted their thrusts, and balanced the good and ill of their efforts. He profited by intercourse with the young students in architecture. He painted in Holland, he traveled, he exhibited in the Paris Salons.

Returning home in 1887, he was at once welcomed into the reasonably insurgent Society of American Artists and other groups. He formed close friendships with the leading artists of the day: Saint-Gaudens, Dewing, Brush, Thayer, Walker, Cox, Alexander, Metcalf, Twachtman, Hassam; a host! His fame as etcher and as painter increased; honors and prizes were his. His next sojourn abroad was in Italy, where with his brother William he made exhaustive studies in the magic of Italian gardens, the majesty of Italian buildings. The Renaissance rather than the Baroque charmed him. Much of his scholarly research is embodied in his book on Italian Gardens, published by Harpers in 1924.

From this period onward, all his previous studies became his great gain in his architectural work. His mastery of light-and-dark in his etchings, his assured line-and-color composition in his landscapes were his willing servants. It is a mistake to say that he "took up" architecture. "Versatile" is far too flimsy a word to describe his endowment. And it was precisely because of his unusual endowment, joined to his unusual variety of artistic experience, that he was a power and a glory in our architecture. He loved beauty too deeply to overadorn a design. Yet with all his passion for beauty, he never forgot fitness to purpose. Hence the fine integrity, within and without, of his city structures; such as the Hanna buildings in Cleveland, and his New York houses,—designs of necessity developed without benefit of landscape background, yet with their own characteristic comeliness, as well as practical arrangement.

Some of his most impressive work is found today on campus grounds, as at the University of Illinois, at Deerfield, and at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. At Andover he constructed anew, rearranged the old; and always in the spirit of the place. His chapel and art gallery are gems of loveliness. Fortunate indeed are the Andover students, to dwell in such an environment.

He was consulting architect for the new architectural development at Dartmouth College, and had much to do with the new Baker Library, and with making its beautiful setting at the head of the campus. For the sake of those who knew Mr. Platt's position at Dartmouth, and valued his opinion, I may state that he was not consulted as to the fitness of the much discussed Mexican murals, now covering some thousands of square feet of wall space in that library.

His integrity as man and artist knew no compromise, but controversy as such was distasteful to him. We think rather of the harmony of his life. We recall his unfailing generosity, his singularly lovable personality, his many-sided genius, his enduring contribution to our culture. On a door into a room of our New York Public Library is an inscription, "Art and Architecture." As if the two were quite separate chapters in the story of art! In Charles Platt's work the two were one. He could never have been the architect he was, if he had not been the artist he was: dedicated to beauty, fitness, and order; and believing in the discipline which helps us to create these things.