Take the mystery out of art history
 
Fish - "Waldoboro" Realistic watercolor painting of pitcher, glass, bowl of strawberries, and pipe on flower patterned cloth
 
 

Janet Fish • American: B:1938

Waldoboro • Watercolor on Paper 31” x 42”

As the winter sun fell southward toward the equator, Janet Fish would follow it from Boston to Bermuda in search of her grandfather. There, amid the sun-splashed beaches, she would find Clark Voorhees, an American Impressionist painter of some repute. She would sit at his side as he painted bright canvases filled with light dancing across ocean, sand and trees.

Summers, she would follow the sun north to her Boston home and the Old Lyme (Connecticut) artist’s colony founded by her grandfather when he was a young artist. At home in Boston, and later Bermuda, she shared a dinner table with her art historian father, artist mother and photographer sister. She never had a chance. Art was her future and her past. The central fixture in an unconventional life.

As a mature woman, Fish swam against the tides of Abstract Expressionism to develop a realistic style filled with light dancing off glass and reflective surfaces. Her work can be viewed as a highly evolved form of impressionism, so perhaps the Fish never fell far from the grandfather’s rather unconventional tree.

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Born into a somewhat privileged family, Fish attended Smith College and the Yale School of Art and Architecture for her graduate studies. Between those two she snuck in a summer residency at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Art in Maine. Yale seems to have had the greatest influence on her life as her small class included famed photo-realist Chuck Close, abstract expressionist Richard Serra and minimalist Robert Mangold. It was at Yale that Fish grew bored with Abstract Expressionism. Her embrace of a lush representational style was championed by her professor, Alex Katz.  

As her career unfolded, Fish continued to explore the effects of light on glass and reflective surfaces, lending a unique transparency to her lushly-colored realistic still lifes. Since most of the art world continued to explore abstraction, her life has been spent like a salmon leaping up the falls to return home. Apparently this is how she felt most comfortable since she once described the reasons for her two short marriages as, “my reluctance to be a good conventional housewife.” She remains a Fish swimming against the tide on a journey back to her grandfather’s side.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Margretta Bockius Wilson Fund 2005.8

 
 

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“Her grandfather was an artist. Her father an art historian. Her mother an artist and her sister a photographer. Poor kid never stood a chance.”

2.
“She was destined to be a Fish always swimming against the tides of conventional art during her life.”

3.
“She had two short-lived marriages which she attributed to her reluctance to be a ‘conventional housewife.’”

4.
“A lifelong feminist, she was one of the first female artists to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale.”

 
 

Fish Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.