The Coffee House

Winter 1905/6

Alson Skinner Clark
American, 1876–1949

In The Coffee House, Alson Skinner Clark painted Chicago on a winter day, with ice floating down the river and the city’s skyscrapers looming through smoke and fog. The State Street Bridge, with its characteristic curving ironwork, draws the viewer’s eye into the picture. Clark’s scene is in the tradition of the urban realism of the French Impressionists, recalling such pictures as Claude Monet’s Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare. Like Monet, Clark sought to suggest both the ephemeral nature of fog and smoke and the atmosphere’s effect upon the forms of the city.

Status: On View, Gallery 179
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Alson Skinner Clark
Title: The Coffee House
Place: United States (Object made in)
Date: 1905–1906
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: signed: A.S. Clark
Dimensions: 96.5 × 76.2 cm (38 × 30 in.)
Credit Line: Gift in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Alson E. Clark
Reference Number: 1915.256

AIC Bull IC (1915) p. 65; 72.
Judith A. Barter et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2011), no. 90.

Art Institute of Chicago, Nineteenth Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists Oct 16–Nov 29, 1906, cat. 76.
Art Institute of Chicago, First Exhibition of Works by Former Students and Instructors of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan 8–Feb 7, 1918, cat. 98.
Aurora, Illinois, Fine Arts Building, Old Fair Grounds, Central States Fair and Exposition, Aug 4–12, 1922.
Art Institute of Chicago, Half a Century of American Art, Nov 16, 1939–Jan 7, 1940, cat. 37.
Chicago, University Club Lobby, Oct 17, 1951–Jun 3, 1954.
Art Institute of Chicago, Art in Illinois in Honor of the Illinois Sesquicentennial, Jun 15–Sep 8, 1968, checklist, p. 3.
St. Louis Art Museum, Currents of Expansion: Painting in the Midwest, 1829–1940, Feb 18–Apr 10, 1977, cat. 80, as Coffee House.
Art Institute of Chicago, Centennial Exhibition; Alumni of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Nov 23, 1979–Jan 20, 1980, cat. 26.
Sacramento, California, Crocker Art Museum, California Light, 1900–1930, Jun 22–Aug 26, 1990, cat. 119; Laguna Art Museum, Oct 12, 1990–Jan 6, 1991; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Feb 7–Mar 15, 1991.
Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago Modern: 1893–1945: Pursuit of the New, Jul 17, 2004–Oct 31, 2004.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sep 28, 2018–Jan 6, 2019, cat. 39.

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