Henry Lyman Saÿen | Biography | Hollis Taggart Galleries

Henry Lyman Saÿen (1875-1918)

An inventive scientist and pioneering artist, H. Lyman Saÿen was one of the earliest Americans to adopt the principles of Fauvism, and one of the most committed. He was captivated by the possibilities of color, by its ability not simply to represent emotions, but to embody them completely. Ever the scientist, he developed theories of color vision, believing that individual’s perception of colors depended on the context in which they were viewed; paired with various hues, colors will register differently to the eye. To demonstrate this theory, he devised a rotating color wheel, which produced the effect of different colors based on their proximity to other colors and the speed with which the disc turned.

Born in Philadelphia in 1875, Henry Lyman Saÿen exhibited a propensity towards science as well art. At age eighteen he was cited by the Columbian Exposition at Chicago for his design of an induction coil while he was employed at Queen and Company, a manufacturer of scientific equipment. A few years later he patented a self-regulating x-ray tube, and during this time he also worked alongside a doctor at University of Pennsylvania’s physics laboratory, perfecting diagnostic radiography.

Enlisting in the army during the Spanish-American War, Saÿen was sent to Fort McPherson in Georgia to construct and man the first military x-ray laboratory. After contracting typhoid fever, he was sent home to convalesce. It was during this recovery period when his art interests took precedence over his scientific endeavors.

In 1899 Saÿen enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to study with Thomas Anshutz, who would become a good friend; he also took night classes with sculptor Charles Grafly. To earn a living, he combined the study of commercial art with scientific design. In 1901 Saÿen was awarded the silver medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, for an improved design of his self-regulating x-ray tube. He also won a competition to execute four allegorical murals for a committee room at the United States Capitol in Washington, which were redolent of academic illustrationalism.

In 1903 Saÿen married a fellow Academy student, Jeannette Hope, who produced fashion designs for the department store Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. It was Jeanette’s employer, Rodman Wanamaker, who funded the couple’s 1906 trip to Paris with the expectations that they would design and supervise the printing of catalogues and posters for his stores in New York and Philadelphia, and would report on the latest French fashion trends. There the artist studied briefly with Charles Cottet at the Salon de la Nationale, but, after meeting Leo and Gertrude Stein and viewing their collection, he found the French instructor rather unremarkable. He soon became a regular at the Stein’s soirees, and his art reflected his engagement with French vanguard painting. (Rumor has it that Saÿen met Leo Stein at a billiard table at the popular Parisian watering hole, the Café du Dôme).

He submitted examples of his new, Fauvist inspired work to the Salon d’Autonmne between 1909 and 1913; his canvases were so favorably received that he was invited in 1912 to become a member of the Salon, which allowed him to exhibit without jury approval. Unfortunately, the Saÿens were forced to depart France in 1914 after the onset of the First World War.

Back in Philadelphia, Saÿen was instrumental in promoting modern art in his native city as Alfred Stieglitz and Walter Arensberg were doing in New York. With masters such as Thomas Eakins and his student Thomas Anshutz teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia had been a major artistic center for the development of modern American art since the mid-nineteenth century. It continued to be an important player in the development of modernism as Saÿen maintained contact with Stieglitz through Philadelphia artists Charles Sheeler, Morton Livingston Schamberg and Charles Demuth. In addition, he collaborated with Schamberg in organizing Philadelphia’s First Exhibition of Advanced Modern Art held at the McClees Galleries in 1916.

In Philadelphia, Saÿen’s wife Jeanette continued her illustrations for Wanamaker, and Saÿen himself turned to commercial work for financial support, illustrating for the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. He used pencil for sketching in the composition and then pen and ink, and some of these sketches are reminiscent of Matisse, with similar emphasis on sunlight and shadow. He received his first one-man show at the local Sketch Club in Philadelphia in 1914, where he exhibited some of the paintings he had done in Paris. The critics, not yet familiar with French advanced painting, reacted unfavorably to what they deemed his “futurist” paintings. One reviewer commented, “He introduces strange color combinations and obscure forms… which are disquieting to the understanding.” (1)

Friend Carl Newman offered him a release from this hostile environment by inviting him for weekend retreats at their house in Bethayre in the Huntingdon Valley. Newman also proposed a project for Saÿen to paint the ceiling of his studio in a chromatic spectrum. With this new assignment, the artist moved into Bethayre, sharing Newman’s studio and painting the surrounding landscape. With Newman, he also designed backdrops for the play Saeculum staged at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. That year he exhibited at the Fourteenth Annual Philadelphia Water Color Exhibition, and in 1917 contributed to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 1919 several of Saÿen’s paintings were shown at the Belmaison Gallery at Wanamaker’s in New York.

After 1916 the artist developed an interest in American Indian art. He made some pottery, and an admiration for Picasso now overrode his passion for Matisse. He also began studying Futurism, and in his almost identical versions of The Thundershower he shows an inventive use of collage. He employed wavy, stippled patterns and heavy lines segregating patterned, rounded triangular areas, probably derived from his study of American Indian art. The larger version of the work was sent to the 1918 New York Society of Independent Artists’ show, an attempt to formulate an American equivalent of European Cubism and Futurism.

There is speculation that Saÿen’s early death at the age of forty-three was hastened by his early work with uncontrolled x-rays. There was a memorial exhibition mounted in 1921 at the Philadelphia Galleries of the Wanamaker store, and in 1929 he was included in the Philadelphia Moderns an exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance.

1. Matisse quoted in Adelyn D. Breeskin, H. Lyman Saÿen, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1970), p. 18.