Weeks Hall’s Trip to Europe—Seeking to Reveal More Details
We have heard nothing from Weeks—unless one counts a postcard… We were pathetically pleased by this attention, and like to boast of it. There are many less favored than we. My mother, who has settled in Florence, has evidently not seen him since they were all in Paris together sometime in January. I think that the whereabouts of Weeks will remain an unsolved mystery—for all that we know he may be permanently lost! [Shirley Watkins to Gideon Stanton, May 30, 1921]
And so it was for many of William Weeks Hall’s friends and family members during his trek through western Europe while on scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There is very little information found regarding his experiences in Europe—a few letters with a mention here and there of his travels. Of the letters written by Weeks Hall from Europe, it seems he is far more concerned about the restoration work taking place on his home and the safe arrival and care of plants he ordered to formulate his new gardens.
In a letter dated July 13, 1921, Weeks Hall first informs W. B. Davis, Shadows caretaker, of plants that were ordered and should have already arrived. He then directs Davis on when to water them and asks him to “Please write me how they are getting on…” It is after this that Weeks Hall writes he has been to England, Belgium, Holland, and through parts of France and that “I haven’t enjoyed it a very great deal, though perhaps I liked England better than any…”
In a letter written to his cousin Ned Weeks in 1922, Weeks Hall asks him to stop in at the Shadows to make sure the furniture and plants he purchased were delivered. Then, Weeks Hall writes that he will probably return in the fall. “My trip has not been very fruitful…. I find things still suffering from the mental attitude of such a great catastrophe as the last unpleasantness [World War I]…” He also mentions the places he visited concluding with Poitiers saying, “At this last place, full of marvelous twelfth and fifteenth century remains, and even a building dating from 300 AD, I found a very great deal to interest me.”
While not overly satisfied with his trip, Weeks Hall was observant of his surroundings, writing, “I have been struck very much by the similarity in temperament and customs in the French provincial towns to the Creoles around home; the same characteristics seem implanted throughout generations, and the only thing that we lack is the beautiful surroundings that the French countryside usually possesses.”
Photo of the Eiffel Tower taken by Weeks Hall when he visited Paris. From the collection of the Shadows-on-the-Teche.
Apparently, there was little that pleased Weeks Hall during his sojourn through Europe and he expressed his opinions to his friend, Gideon Stanton. Weeks Hall’s letter of July 13, 1921, to Stanton in New Orleans reflects the initial quote by Shirley Watkins, as he begins it by writing, “This letter does seem, I am sure, as though it comes from the depths of the grave or from as far away.” He initially discusses art materials and an easel given to him by Paul Froelich as payment for a bet before proceeding to say, “I haven’t been doing much work as Paris hasn’t impressed me very favorably and is in dozens of ways so very far behind the times. The present French taste is execrable and the arrangement of exhibitions and the interior decoration is rotten. I found the schools and exhibitions in England a great deal better…. I would like to live there a long time. The attitude in England too, is rather more trusting than the French, who, as far as I can see, regard the American quite as he does the German…” He goes on to discuss how the French life seems to be more sensual than intellectual and therefore “I doubt if there is a man with French blood in his veins who is today painting great pictures.”
Weeks Hall then voices his opinion of the artwork of several contemporary artists. “I saw, in his garden, the great Monet. He came down to his gate and looked at me as though he wanted to throw me in his cheap little lily pond, of which he is now painting, a very vigorous man at the age of eighty-two, ten decorations to be given to the French Government. Can you imagine a lily-pond as he paints it, decorating anything?” One cannot help but smile at his reference to Monet’s “cheap little lily pond” when, a year later, he installed one as part of his landscape plan for the Shadows. Of Henri Matisse he writes, “The things that [he] did in Nice this winter prove him to be an absolute faker, and I don’t think that he has ever been able to do anything.” There was at least one highlight, “a very great exhibition by a very intellectual and thoughtful painter, as a Spanish painter can sometimes be. I don’t think you’d like him right away. I didn’t, but after two years, I have the greatest admiration in a very careful way, even for his cubist things, though I don’t quite get them…some day I’m going to write him and see if I can’t meet him, though I have been offered a direct introduction already. Pablo Picasso.” He concludes by saying that, “…I have only been arrested once—quite a record—I think less than most of my friends—even less than in New Orleans.”
While we are lacking substantial written records for this time in Weeks Hall’s life, the best and greatest record he left us of his travels in Europe are the photographs he took throughout his journeys. The historic photograph collection contains over 300 images documenting the places he visited including Hampton Court, Trafalgar Square, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Chantilly, and the canals of Holland. These photographs offer us a rare glimpse of post-war Europe—the restoration of Rheims Cathedral, the construction of the quay along the Seine, and views of buildings constructed for the Paris Exposition of 1900 that were later demolished to make way for new structures for the 1937 World’s Fair. Approximately eighty of the photographs are in 5 x 7 format and over 200 of them are only 1 ¾” x 2 ¾”. The remaining photographs, which are also the small size, are in a small green scrapbook. The photographs do not seem to be in any particular order. Some photographs are grouped together according to the city in which the site exists. Occasionally, a page will have a location written on it, but only the city and never the exact identity of the site. One page may have photographs from Paris, the next Rouen, the next Holland, and then back to Paris. Another strange thing is that the scrapbook is not even half full. Did Weeks Hall lose interest in putting the photographs in the scrapbook? Why did he take the photographs in the first place? Were they souvenirs of the trip? Were they for future reference for painting the scenes on canvas? Are they his first attempts at photography as art?
There are two things that we definitely know. The first is that Weeks Hall was an excellent photographer long before the accident that curtailed his painting career and led to his work in photography. The second is that for a man who was so disappointed in Europe, especially Paris, Weeks Hall left us a precious documentary record of the sites he saw—some of which, unlike Weeks Hall and the Shadows, would become permanently lost to future generations.
Originally published in The Shadows Service League monthly newsletter, October 1997.