Robert Lincoln Denison

in Paris studio, circa 1900
courtesy David Rumsey

Born in Portland, Maine, Denison was educated as an architect at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His father, Elias Bemis Denison, was a prominent businessman from whom he inherited income permitting him to indulge his cosmopolitan tastes. Not long after college he moved to Europe and lived for the most part in Paris, with intervals spent in Italy, between 1898 and 1908. His studio on the Left Bank became an informal center for many expatriate American artists and would-be artists who wanted to be part of the artistic ferment then occurring in France. Denison’s grandson remembers him as exemplifying the Anglo-Saxons immortalized by E.M. Forster in A Room with a View, but without the affectations. These people colonized selected parts of Europe in the Service, as they perceived it, of Fine Art. Probably the American artist Lawrence Mazzanovich, who also lived in France during the same period, knew Denison there long before their paths converged again in Tryon.

Residence of Robert Lincoln Denison
Pine Crest Lane, Tryon
designed by himself circa 1920

Denison was a talented dilettante, a term that has now fallen into disfavor. He thoroughly enjoyed using his creative abilities without feeling any pressure to cash in on them. Travelling widely as a young man, he eventually married and had three children. The family summered in Portland, and in 1919 they established their winter base in Tryon for the sake of the delicate health of their daughter Julia.

There he designed their new house, taking advantage of an attractive mountain view. It is still in good condition, near Pine Crest Inn. Denison also designed houses in Maine. All show a rich, almost whimsical, use of contrasting materials and colors. They are in their way an early International Style, suggesting trends then evolving in European residential architecture; they are neither explicitly Craftsman nor the consciously “period” styles then in vogue in this country. Close to this house, Denison soon decided to build a separate painter’s studio. He viewed this project as a hobby to determine whether he could erect an entire building with his own hands. He completed this cottage covered in German siding, and it remains in existence as well.

Denison’s Tryon studio
adjacent to his residence,
later occupied by George Aid

Soon after arriving in Tryon from New York in 1920, the young artist Homer Ellertson designed for Denison’s home an arched fireplace to be surmounted by a painted mural. Recently discovered in Ellertson’s archive of sketches, it is not known whether this project was actually executed. In any case it is not there today. Ellertson’s sketches show several avant-garde renditions of a stylized scenic landscape. They reflect Denison’s interest in artistic freedom and experimentation, and they deploy design motifs later used by Ellertson in other work, especially his Modernist wall textiles.

Like so many Tryonites he enjoyed music. He played flute and was an accomplished violinist. In 1935 he moved to the Caribbean. About 1946 he went to live with his daughter’s family in Scarsdale, New York. He died in Connecticut. His daughter Julia later returned to Tryon; she and her husband purchased the house adjacent to the original Denison home. It had originally been built by Denison for his children’s tutor.

Still Life with Apples
oil on canvas 20 x 24 in.
courtesy Robert L. Rumsey

In Tryon, Robert Lincoln Denison is remembered as a painter in oils. He was heavily influenced by Cézanne. That master’s concern with structure and form resonated with him because of his architectural inclinations. Denison’s paintings strongly emphasize structure and they delight in the juxtaposition of angularity with organic forms. He also liked the Impressionists, especially Renoir, but he felt that a painting should analyze as well as seduce.

He was brother of Katherine Gignoux, another Maine artist who frequented Tryon. Thanks to their influence, educator Miss Mima Fassett of Portland (whose architect father designed some 400 structures in Maine) came in 1923 to run a private day-school at Pine Crest, where all pupils – no matter how young — were required to study French.