On Finding a Folk Art Treasure, Sue Whitman

ON FINDING A FOLK ART TREASURE By Sue Whitman

Ten-thousand pieces of American folk art were culled in selecting the exhibits for the current Flowering of American Folk Art show, according to the Whitney Museum catalogue. I marvel that we can boast of 10,000 pieces - photographed, labeled and catalogued. So careless are we with our national heritage. So indifferent we have been to our art. I recently found two new additions to our folk art legacy, bold and beautiful portraits of a minister and his wife by Ammi Phillips. The survival of these paintings is a modern miracle, considering the ignorance and disinterest surrounding them. On the off chance that you are as untutored in American folk painting as I (an unlikely assumption) let me explain that Ammi Phillips was an itinerant portrait painter who established himself and family in one after another of the communities in the New York-Connecticut borderlands, then made his way with his horse and wagon from house to house to paint the portraits of the local inhabitants. Between 1829 and 1834, he settled his family on 45 acres of good Dutchess County farmland, and sallied forth from there to paint his neighbors. The fact that his subjects were his neighbors and his friends gave him keen insight in depicting their individualities. His portraits were never mere likenesses, but compelling and penetrating character studies of a proud and independent people. He painted them with dignity, sympathy and beauty. The story of the discovery began on a hot day last July when the four of us - my daughter, son, daughter-in-law and myself - converged on the Victorian family home in Dutchess County to clear it for sale. That Friday afternoon when we arrived from Washington and Boston we found, to our dismay, that the tenants were still in the house. We had until Monday at 4 to deliver the place "broom clean" to the new owner, a young upcoming IBM executive flying in from Holland to sign the papers. He had seen in this spacious, high-ceilinged house the life style he dreamed of, and bought it on sight, with plans to renovate later the forty-year-old kitchen. I had dallied over selling Netherwood. When the last of the older generation passed away I could neither bring myself to part with the home which had meant so much to our family, nor sever ties with the community which we cherished. Nor could I think what to do with twelve rooms of furniture and artifacts, plus an attic full of who-knows-what. Our young people would soon be starting homes of their own, and bless them, shared the family affection for their heritage. But what pieces would they really want when the time came? So I had shipped some of the "treasures" home, packed others off to the barn, and rented the rest to a family desperately in need of a large furnished house. Early Saturday morning, with the tenants more or less out, we began to work fast and furiously dividing the accumulation of my parents' life time, room by room, into three piles - trash, sell or save. The attic was the last to be cleared. What to do with it all? Arena Stage, a repertory theatre company in Washington, had agreed to take old clothes,

to serve as costume models, if they were no longer usable. The feather boa and muff, the gruesome fur piece with the heads of little martins chewing their own tails, the black lace clingy from Paris, and other spectaculars from the past we saved for them. The attic was enormous - two stories high at the center topped in earlier days by a pinnacled widow's walk. There were two stairways to the attic, front and back, and windows to the floor on four sides. We plowed our way through the maze of old steamer trunks, stacked with photograph albums, decaying boxes bulging with discarded curtains, outgrown toys lovingly saved for the next generation of children. Suddenly Joanne turned around two large portraits which were facing the wall, one framed and one unframed. "Where did these come from?" she said. "Probably bought them at an auction as a joke," I said, "so we would have ancestors." By. Monday morning we had gathered on the first floor everything which hadn't been trucked to the town dump. The local auctioneer was due at noon to take things away - I thought - for sale on consignment. Two generations of his family had been in the second-hand business in the area. When I invited him to inspect the goods, however, he failed to mention that he was now only dealing in selected items. The auctioneer arrived late, very jaunty though, and nattily dressed in bright red pants, striped shirt and a straw hat cocked over his right eye. He strode through the house, picking up a piece here and there, crafty-eyed. Then he gathered up a pewter pot with a bad crack through its middle, a landscape painting, a Hudson River oil, and the two portraits. For the lot, he said, with the confidence of a man with money to burn, he would give us $200 cash - or a check. He wasn't interested in any other items. I was aghast! All our lovely things, and that was what he wanted! Still wearing my smile, I said "no thank you" and hustled him out the door. I took another look at the portraits though. They were quite extraordinary, but too large for my house and in such terrible condition. What would I ever do with them in Washington? In the pressure of the moment I decided to save them and worry about that later. Transporting them home was a problem though. My son and daughter were considered too young to rent a truck in New York State. The best we could do was to rent a monstrous station wagon. This we packed Sunday afternoon, floor to roof. The portraits floated uneasily on top of the heap headed for a Washington suburb. Finding an appraiser, if you are new to the art world, can be a hurdle. I thumbed through the yellow pages, found a large ad of a dealer and appraiser specializing, the ad said, in early American art. Having ascertained how much it would cost to have him come to the house I packed one of the portraits back in the car and took it to him. He thought it was interesting, and since he doubted that I could ever afford to have it restored, he might try to find a buyer for me, he said. His written appraisal stated "Unknown artist - Value $750." He did suggest, however, that I not move the portrait around again since every joggle was loosening more paint. A second offer to buy those battered, flaking portraits!

My curiosity was aroused. After numerous calls to art galleries, who said they were not supposed to recommend appraisers, the name emerged of a respected expert in American art in the Washington area. Since he lived in the neighborhood he said he would be glad to drop by. He instantly identified the portraits as Ammi Phillips, told me about the artist, provided names and addresses of art experts knowledgeable about Phillips, gave me before and after restoration appraisals, and finally, offered to buy the portraits in their "as is" condition for $6000. "But where," he said, "is the other frame? It is very important to have the original frame." With a sinking feeling I remembered that the odds and ends dealer who bought what was left in the house had carted off a large black frame. How could I ever retrieve it now that I was home? I thought of a friend in Poughkeepsie, a retired teacher squeaking along on a pinch penny annuity, who recently had unexpectedly inherited more money than she ever expected to see. Since her life's dream had been a Cadillac car she bought one, with all the fixings, for $12,000. I reached her by phone. Yes, she would be willing to drive to the country to find the junk shop with the frame. That night she called. Yes, she had found the frame. The shop wanted $2.00 for it. But, she said, it was shabby and had a hole in it. She certainly wouldn't want it, and didn't think I would either. She hadn't bought it: Momma Mia! If she hadn't understood the problem the first time what could I do now? My voice began to quiver. I implored her to please try again. She understood. With her second appearance in the $12,000 Cadillac the price escalated to $10 for the frame, and by the time the lumber yard crated the piece and shipped it I had paid $50 to retrieve the give-away. The Washington art galleries were less hesitant in recommending restoration specialists than they had been appraisers. They do take an interest in preserving what is found. The restoration studio which agreed to undertake the work assured me, though, that one never knew whether a painting of this vintage and this condition was, in fact, restorable. It was a risky business, and expensive. I am not a worrier by nature, so having faith in what was candidly described as an uncertain future I moved on to the next problem - namely, identifying the minister and his wife whom Ammi Phillips had portrayed. A good painting is just as good with or without the names of the sitters, but knowing the names adds interest, particularly if the sitters come from a well known family. I had reason to believe that the portraits were of Van Renssalears, by blood or marriage, since a Van Renssalear family owned Netherwood about the time the portraits were painted. I began to write letters to the neighbors at Netherwood and Salt Point, the nearby village, to historical societies up and down the Hudson River Valley, and to the Ammi Phillips specialist, Mary Black of the New York Historical Society. The Dutchess County community of which Netherwood and Salt Point are a part has not changed radically since Ammi Phillips' day. Salt Point is a modest but proud village one block long with about twenty-five well-kept white clapboard houses sitting far back on their lawns facing each

other across the road. The villagers know of other portraits in the neighborhood not yet listed in the art archives, and belonging to families who have farmed their land since the Civil War and are still farming it. The village is much the same too, as in Ammi Phillips' time. The store was remodeled about 15 years ago, but most of the houses stand as built about 150 years ago, and few have been added since. Ammi Phillips, the folk painter, might feel at home there. The candor, forthrightness and humanism which characterize his portraits still flow strong and deep in the blood stream of the descendants. The neighbors remembered well all the owners of Netherwood over the years, and commented on them with Ammi Phillips-like straightforwardness, yet kindly acceptance of the erring ways of man - and his woman. One occupant of the house had been "a little peculiar," they said; one impotent, they thought, "but his wife had found a way to have a son," one had burned a house down "back in the lane off Malone Road." But they didn't remember a Van Renssalear who had been a minister. I pressed the search through the Van Renssalear clan, and had high hopes for a carefully arranged rendevous with Mary Van Renssalear Thayer, the correspondent. Mrs. Thayer said she had inherited photographs of portraits of the Van Renssalears. But when the evening of our meeting arrived, at a home across the street from her Georgetown house, Mrs. Thayer regaled us with a two-hour reading from the family letters. She couldn't remember where she had put the photographs: It wasn't until April when the studio was finally ready to fit the beautifully restored pictures to the frames that we found the names, scarcely legible on the back of the frames. Ammi Phillips had painted the Baptist minister and his wife, Luman and Esther Burtch. The genealogy room at the Library of Congress confirmed by telephone that there was indeed a Burch Book, with some of the families spelling the name Burtch. I took the afternoon off from work to rush down. There it was at last. The Reverend Burtch was the minister in the small Baptist Church which bordered on our property. My mother, though never officially a member of the church, helped the church ladies, her neighbors and friends, with all of their functions - cooking for the chicken pie suppers, sewing with the Thimble Club ladies for the poor and the missionaries, washing dishes after the strawberry festivals and drying the towels on the tombstones in the graveyard outside the back door of the church. Netherwood Church in the 35 years we knew it was supported by about twelve families in the community who must have given a fair share of their modest incomes to pay the Minister and keep the church and parsonage in shape. Proposals floated in the community from time to time to combine forces with the village church a mile away. But in the end nothing ever came of them. If such a plan would save these families money it might also compromise their freedom to be themselves. The proud and independent spirit is still there. The breed Ammi Phillips painted has not died gut. If we now knew who the sitters were we still had no idea how the portraits had found their way to our attic. Mr. Buck thought they might have been left by the family before the

Van Renssalears, the Armstrongs. But another neighbor, close to the church, consulted the church treasurer, and he remembered the portraits. "They were in the church or Sunday school room for a long time," he said. "Everyone was tired of them, and the Thimble Club ladies decided to dispose of them. Your mother didn't want them thrown out so gave them a new home." The treasurer didn't remember whether the Thimble Club ladies had said "just take them," or whether my mother had paid for them. In either case that was thirty years ago, and neither the Thimble Club ladies, the church treasurer or my mother had apparently given them a thought from that day to this. Perhaps that was how we also acquired the pulpit stand which has stood in the corner of our cellar for thirty years. I abandoned that to the IBM family who bought Netherwood. And how had Netherwood Church acquired the portraits? Our neighbor again hit upon the one man who knew the story, the Reverend Erle Clark, a Baptist minister now in Pawling, New York. Elder Luman Burtch, he said, was the second pastor of the Stanford First Baptist Church, in Bangall, New York. The portraits of Luman and Esther hung there for many years. The Reverend Clark was the last pastor of the church, and when it closed asked if he could take the portraits with him to the Netherwood Church, his next pastorage. He had often wondered, he said, what happened to them. The Elder Burtch was ordained on June 14, 1806 by a council convened of the Elders of the church, though he had declined the honor a year before. From then until 1855, when, stricken with palsy he closed his labors, he preached the Gospel not only in Bangall but also in Fishkill, Amenia, Pine Plains and Netherwood. Receiving a pittance for his pastoral labors he supported himself mainly as a farmer. An inquiry to the American Baptist Historical Society in Rochester, New York turned up Luman Burtch's own record of marriages and in his own hand is the entry "July 15, 1830 Marriage was this day Solemnized by me between Ammi Phillips of Rhinebeck painter aged 20 to Jane Ann Calkins of Northeast Spinster aged 18 both to me personally known Luman Burtch $5-00" The story was complete, save only the question of the young age of Ammi Phillips who, according to history, is marrying for the second time. If the country folk of Dutchess County barely tolerated their folk paintings, with the exception, it appears, of the Reverend Clark, Americans elsewhere were even more indifferent. It was American artists in the 20's who stirred the nation's interest in folk art. But the Ammi Phillips "discovery" was much later. It was not until October 1965 that the Holdridges published their research on the painter who showed us "what people and things really looked like." This prolific painter, the Holdridges believe, may have painted a thousand pictures in his lifetime. Only about 200 are known to the art historians. In whose attic are the others? How many have passed through the hands of auctioneers or art specialists who have underestimated their importance? How many have been allowed to rot because restoration experts are scarce and the work costly? Perhaps the Flowering of American Folk Art exhibit, which is now on tour, will be the beginning of the education

of us all. The National Endowment for the Arts has also entered the picture, creating recently a new post, director of folk art, "to give recognition to indiginous American art forms in time for the nation's approaching Bi-Centennial," to quote the Washington Post. We have much to learn, quickly, before we have cause to celebrate!

As found

After restoration

restoration After