Theodore Earl Butler 1860 - 1936

A pioneer of American Impressionism, Theodore Butler was among the first generation of American artists working in Giverny in the late 1880's. Introduced to Monet in 1888 by friend and fellow artist Theodore Robinson, Butler adopted the Impressionist master's use of broken brushwork and a bright chromatic palette. Butler's subsequent transformation, his style a synthesis of Monet's formal influence, brought him success both at home in America and abroad. Single-artist exhibitions at Gallerie Vollard and Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, and Durand-Ruel in New York over the next decade helped to establish his reputation and earn him valuable commissions. After living in France for almost fifteen years, Butler returned to New York in early 1913 -- a city exploding with modern change and excitement. In 1914-15 he painted murals for the mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt III at 640 Fifth Avenue and Solomon R. Guggenheim's summer mansion in Long Branch, New Jersey. With hopes of returning to France, Butler was forced to stay in New York by the onset of World War I.

During the years he remained in New York, Butler witnessed many of the parades and loan drives that took place along Fifth Avenue, which was renamed Avenue of the Allies during those years. On November 15^th, four days after the end of the war, the gallery of Durand-Ruel in New York held the exhibition: A Series of Paintings of the Avenue of the Allies by Childe Hassam, which consisted of twenty-four works Hassam had executed between 1917 and late 1918. The present painting likely depicts Allies Day in the fall of 1918, not long before the end of the war. Several blocks along Fifth Avenue had been dedicated to the Allied nations, transforming the street into a colorful celebration. Cascades of the Allied flags and banners fill the composition, the compression of space and blurred forms and edges simulating the frenzy and movement of the scene. In the lower portion of the painting, bravura splashes and strokes of color describe the street's cacophony of automobiles, buses, and pedestrians. Flowing stripes of red, white and blue colored flags and banners swirl rhythmically above the traffic and crowds, as a gust of wind unites them, blowing each in the same direction. The most boisterous and animated presence is the painting's focal point and symbolic center -- the iconic and majestic American flag - its visual impact, the pure expression of celebration and patriotic fervor that gripped the nation at the close of the war.