When Effie Pope of Cleveland changed her name to Theodate, Greek for gift of God, the world should have known this 19-year-old only daughter of wealthy parents knew who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do.
She wanted to be an architect.
After two years at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, she fell in love with the Connecticut countryside and persuaded her parents to let her buy land with a small brown house, which became her first renovation and building project. Eventually she convinced her parents, who wanted a retirement home in the East, to let her design and build that house on a high hill in Farmington. She called it Hill-Stead, a play on homestead, and filled the acreage with a working farm.
What some architectural historians call the most important Colonial Revival house on the East Coast, Hill-Stead may resemble Mount Vernon on the outside, but inside it is uniquely modern and gracious. And it is a showcase for a small but remarkable collection of Impressionist paintings that glow like jewels.
Theodate’s father, Alfred, had taken his family on a European grand tour in 1888-89. In Paris he saw and was soon taken with Impressionism. He came home with three Monets including the first of two in Monet’s superb Grainstacks series, “Grainstacks, White Frost Effect.†On later trips Pope would buy paintings by Manet, Degas, Carriere, Cassatt and Whistler. As Theodate designed Hill-Stead (with the help of a young architect at the famous McKim, Mead and White firm in New York City,) she created rooms and sight lines to give the paintings starring roles.
Alfred, while relying on advice from art dealers in Paris, must have had a superb eye for art. His second “Grainstack,†a sunlit scene of light and shadow, uniquely shows both Monet’s moving the smaller stack on the canvas as the light shifted (he painted the series “en plein airâ€) and painting over part of the larger stack. The artist’s very early (Monet was only 28) “Fishing Boats at Sea,†while realistic, contains hints of his later work in the pink and mauve clouds and the hazy pink mist on either side of the scene. Then, too, one boat has obviously been overpainted and moved.
Monet’s “Jockeys†is a pastel that reflects the painter’s fascination with Japanese woodblock prints: The horses and riders are placed on a rising diagonal within a horizontal orientation.
Theodate and her father must have loved this painting, since the dining room where it hangs is decorated in the celedons of the picture.
Whistler’s “Blue Wave, Biarritz,†was painted as the artist recovered from the lead poisoning he got from licking his paintbrushes while painting the famous “Lady in White.†Dramatically, Whistler took time away from the painting for a swim, was swept out to sea and thought himself doomed, then was returned to shore by another wave. He rushed back to his easel and finished an emphatic canvas.
There is a wonderful Degas, “The Tub,†showing a woman bent over to moisten her sponge in the shallow bathing pan, one of the artist’s many bathing scenes that were highlights of last summer’s Degas/Picasso show at the Clark in Williamstown, MA. And a moody “Dancers in Pink,†with gauzy pink skirts and dark hair highlighted by luminous pink roses.
Manet’s flat, dramatic “The Guitar Player†was Pope’s most expensive purchase. Manet famously wanted to paint “in the moment†and show the world and people as they were, so his work is filled with stark, harsh light that reveals character and story. His “Toreadors†is a direct descendent of Goya with a ghostly central figure that seems only half finished, but is, I think, what Manet wanted.
One Carriere, a painter out of favor now, is quite special: A lovely woman looks at us with interest and an ironic smile, while a bright red flower in her dark hair draws us to her face. Mary Cassatt’s “Sara Handing the Toy to the Baby,†is a lovely example of her domestic scenes, beautifully composed, if a tad saccharine.
Hill-Stead contains more than these paintings, of course. There are ceramics and bronzes and splendid drawings — hard to take in on the wall of the main stairs — and fully original bedrooms, libraries and bathrooms (Theodate’s are simple, light, and functional: She installed the first flushing toilets in Farmington.)
And then, too, there are amazing stories connected to the house. On March 17,1899 the Popes were in New York City at their apartment in the Windsor Hotel on Fifth Avenue when a fire threatened the art collection they had brought with them from Cleveland. Alfred paid men to throw the paintings out a window to waiting catchers on the ground, and a dramatic photograph in Hill-Stead shows Monet’s “Fishing Boats†landing safely. (Mrs. Pope’s clothes were destroyed, and she refused to go to the Met Opera’s performance of “Lucia†on March 20 in store-bought apparel.)
But make no mistake. Hill-Stead is Theodate Pope’s house. This woman who survived the sinking of the “Lusitania†in a lifeboat filled with corpses, who married at 49 and promised her diplomat husband, John Riddle, only six months a year away from her architecture and estate management, who designed famous private schools and hosted Mary Cassatt and Henry James at Hill-Stead, was singular and far ahead of her time. Her house is, too.
Hill-Stead, currently decorated for the holidays with menus for Christmas dinner, 1921, on the fully set dining table and garlands and decorated trees, is at 35 Mountain Road in Farmington, not easy to find because signage is poor. Call or go to the Web for directions. The house and gardens are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Docents accompany you except on the first Sunday of each month, when you can move through the house at your own pace. Call 860-677-4787 or go to hillsteadmuseum.org.
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