While the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and other notable American institutions helped aspiring artists in America to hone their skills, European schools (particularly the Royal Academy in London and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris) continued to play an important role in the lives of American artists. In fact, artists who sought success in their profession were expected to study their craft in Europe for an extended period. Potter, like so many other of his contemporaries, followed suit.
Promptly after arriving in Paris in 1896, Potter enrolled and was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. There he worked under renowned academic painter, Luc-Olivier Merson, and the equally renowned sculptor, Jean Auguste Dampt. Under their auspices, Potter’s artistic style matured, leading to the acceptance and display of his sculpture at the Paris Salon of 1899. It is also during this time that Potter would have been introduced to the work of Post Impressionist sculptor Auguste Rodin, whose preference for rough, textured surfaces seems to have inspired Potter’s style.
In addition to looking to the work of fellow artists, Potter considered contemporaneous events – specifically shifts occurring in the social and political climate. European and American interest in ethnography, provoked by colonialism, was slowly evolving into cultural anthropology. The tendency toward typing other cultures, races, and social classes (known as typology), so prevalent throughout the nineteenth century, was gradually giving way to a growing interest in exploring other cultures as a means of learning about and understanding them.
Potter’s work speaks to the shift as it occurred in the art world. Many nineteenth-century artists were intrigued by the notion of “civilized” versus “primitive” art – an aesthetic exploration that would lead to the development of Fauvism, Cubism, and other early Modern art movements. One late nineteenth-century French artist known for his exploits in the regard is Post Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin.
Gauguin traveled to French Polynesia in 1891 to explore the “primitive” cultures there. He became so captivated by the indigenous peoples he encountered that he maintained a residence in Tahiti until his death in 1903. Potter would have been familiar with Gauguin’s story and his work, which was exhibited in Paris. He would also have known that some of Gauguin’s most celebrated paintings, most of which exoticized the natives, including Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?(1897), were created while the artist was on his foreign expeditions.
Potter embarked on his own expedition, but with seemingly different motivations.