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for William Anderson Coffin
American, 1855 - 1925
William A. Coffin graduated from Yale College in 1874. After a year of working with his father in a Pittsburgh insurance business, he returned to Yale to train at its art school. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he studied for four months with Louis-Marie-François Jacquesson de la Chevreuse before settling in the spring of 1878 in the atelier of Léon Bonnat. Except for a trip home in 1880, Coffin remained with Bonnat until 1882. Yet he revered the Barbizon School painters Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, and Théodore Rousseau, whom he called "The Three Princes" (Van Dyke, ed., 119). Corot, especially, served as his constant model.
Coffin reveled in the bohemian life of Paris and remained a lifelong friend of Bonnat. Reminiscing about the Bonnat studio, the painter Benjamin West Clinedinst later said, "Coffin was the life of the place on his visits. The French adored him and considered him one of them." In the memorial read at the Academy's annual meeting following Coffin's death, Edwin H. Blashfield remembered a masquerade ball at Bonnat's: "Billie was a prominent figure in it, dancing wildly in a Madame Angot Incroyable suit with floating coattails three feet long."
Coffin was first represented in a National Academy annual exhibition in 1881, while still living in Paris. Back in New York the next year, he continued to be a regular participant in the annuals-receiving a Julius Hallgarten Prize in 1886-despite the wait of sixteen years before being elected an Associate. His work, however, did not go unnoticed. He was soon elected to the Society of American Artists, which he served as secretary from 1887 to 1892. In 1891 he received the Society's Webb Prize for his tonal landscape The Rain (1889, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Coffin also worked as an art critic. From 1886 to 1891, he wrote for the Nation and the New York Post. Between 1896 and 1900, he was art editor of the New York Sun. His criticism also appeared in Harper's, Scribner's, and the Ladies Home Journal. He lectured often and belonged to many organizations and societies. In 1901 he directed the fine arts exhibition at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He served on the Academy Council from 1914 to 1917. During World War I, he worked on behalf of the families of French artist-soldiers. In his memorial, Blashfield also remembered Coffin as "a strange mixture of keen resourceful administrative faculty with a temperament just as keenly appreciative of what was best in the Bohemianism of Paris of the seventies, its subtle artistic sense, literary quality and joie de vivre, combined."
Coffin reveled in the bohemian life of Paris and remained a lifelong friend of Bonnat. Reminiscing about the Bonnat studio, the painter Benjamin West Clinedinst later said, "Coffin was the life of the place on his visits. The French adored him and considered him one of them." In the memorial read at the Academy's annual meeting following Coffin's death, Edwin H. Blashfield remembered a masquerade ball at Bonnat's: "Billie was a prominent figure in it, dancing wildly in a Madame Angot Incroyable suit with floating coattails three feet long."
Coffin was first represented in a National Academy annual exhibition in 1881, while still living in Paris. Back in New York the next year, he continued to be a regular participant in the annuals-receiving a Julius Hallgarten Prize in 1886-despite the wait of sixteen years before being elected an Associate. His work, however, did not go unnoticed. He was soon elected to the Society of American Artists, which he served as secretary from 1887 to 1892. In 1891 he received the Society's Webb Prize for his tonal landscape The Rain (1889, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Coffin also worked as an art critic. From 1886 to 1891, he wrote for the Nation and the New York Post. Between 1896 and 1900, he was art editor of the New York Sun. His criticism also appeared in Harper's, Scribner's, and the Ladies Home Journal. He lectured often and belonged to many organizations and societies. In 1901 he directed the fine arts exhibition at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He served on the Academy Council from 1914 to 1917. During World War I, he worked on behalf of the families of French artist-soldiers. In his memorial, Blashfield also remembered Coffin as "a strange mixture of keen resourceful administrative faculty with a temperament just as keenly appreciative of what was best in the Bohemianism of Paris of the seventies, its subtle artistic sense, literary quality and joie de vivre, combined."
