Spectral Barn, 1995 Home, 2003
New England Classic, 1985
Home: Exploring the Life & Legacy of Loring W. Coleman
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BY ERICA LOME, Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Associate at the Concord Museum
On a cold winter’s day in 1982, Loring Wilkins Coleman (1918-2015) embarked on one of his favorite activities: driving around Massachusetts to look at old barns and houses. On the recommendation of his son Andrew, Coleman went to the town of Sterling in search of a “superb grouping of buildings,” and struck gold. “It was indeed one of the most handsome New England farms I had ever seen,” recalled Coleman. It took ten days to complete a detailed pencil drawing of the farm buildings, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Coleman finished his painting of the view. By that point, all but one of the original buildings had been demolished and Coleman used his imagination to color in the details he remembered. He called the painting Home. “The title speaks for itself, for the painting 52
Discover CONCORD
| Winter 2020
represents the old farmhouses that still remain in New England and in my thoughts,” wrote Coleman in his autobiography, published only a few years before his death in 2015. Coleman’s paintings reflect a fascination with, and a sadness over, the changing landscape and ephemeral architecture of an agrarian Massachusetts. In 2017, the Concord Museum received an anonymous gift of forty-seven works of art by Loring Coleman. A selection of the works is now on display in a new exhibition, Home: Paintings by Loring W. Coleman, which will run through January 31, 2021. This exhibition celebrates the work of an accomplished artist who had a strong Concord connection and who explored New England with a sense of wonder and authenticity.
Loring Coleman spent most of his childhood in Chicago, but some of his fondest memories were of his grandmother, who lived in Concord. Her house, Tanglewood, was on 200 acres overlooking the Sudbury River. When he was thirteen, Coleman moved to Concord and began attending Middlesex School, where he showed great promise as an aspiring artist. At Middlesex, Coleman found a teacher and mentor in Russell Kettell, who taught his students to keep an open mind when it came to art that was not strictly “traditional.” Kettell, a national authority on American antiques, was integral to the 1930 building project that put the Concord Museum on the map as a destination for history lovers. After graduating from Middlesex in 1938, Coleman continued to train as an artist
