A Shared Legacy by Rizzoli International Publications

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fig. 11

View of the Berks County Almshouse, 1881, by John Rasmussen (1828–1895), 1881. Oil on zinc-plated nonferrous metal; 39¼ x 46 in. (99.7 x 116.8 cm). Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York. Gift of Stephen C. Clark, N0041.1961. Photo: Richard Walker.

American, both English and German” is assumed to have largely disappeared.30 A closer look, however, reveals that Pennsylvania German material culture continued to evolve in the second half of the 1800s and was augmented by the traditions brought by a new wave of German immigrants. Many of these new arrivals, particularly those following the European revolutions of 1848, maintained strong connections with their homeland, were more urban in orientation, and more likely to be Catholic.31 Most Pennsylvania Germans, who descended from non-urban, Protestant families that had been in the area for generations, tried to keep both a real and metaphorical distance between themselves and these later arrivals. Yet the artistic expressions produced by the new immigrants demonstrate that there was at least some affinity for similar aesthetics among the old and new German Americans. German artisan John Scholl (1827–1916), a native of Württemberg, immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1853. After working as a house carpenter in Schuylkill and Potter counties, Scholl turned to wood carving later in his life. His sculptures—including Marriage of the Turtledoves and various “snowflake” tables (cat. nos. 37–38)—demonstrate the use of new tools, such as the band saw, and the proliferation of glues and metal fasteners in the early twentieth century. Scholl’s geometric snowflakes, swirls, and stars, as well as turned and applied balls, mirror the fanciful trim he applied to houses, including his own. Yet his carved birds and flowers relate to motifs found on Pennsylvania German painted chests made a century or more earlier, reflecting their origins in what Kasey Grier has called a “common European taproot.”32 The transition to life in America was difficult for some of the new German-speaking immigrants. A number, like the woodcarver Wilhelm Schimmel (1817–1890), who settled in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania, suffered from alcoholism (cat. nos. 32–35).33 Several highly talented émigré artists ended up in almshouses, including Charles C. Hofmann (1821–1882) and two other painters whom he influenced, Louis Mader (1842–after 1900) and John Rasmussen (1828–1895; fig. 11). In depicting the Berks County almshouse, Hofmann and his fellow painters documented what they saw as periodic residents of the facility (cat. no. 23). They also captured a distinctive feature of the Pennsylvania landscape when they painted the institution’s barns, which provided work spaces as well as sustenance for its residents (fig. 12). Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Pennsylvania German farmers embraced a type of

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fig. 20

An installation view of The Art of the Common Man at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art), 1933. Rockefeller Archive Center, NY. fig. 21

Unidentified artist, Baby in Red Chair, 1810–1830. Oil on canvas; 22 x 15 in. (55.88 x 38.1 cm). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA. fig. 22

Unidentfiied artist, The Preacher, c. 1870. Butternut and white pine; 21 x 17½ x 7¼ in. (53.3 x 19.1 x 18.4 cm), Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA.

Rockefeller’s focus on folk art meant that the Downtown Gallery’s financial future was assured. Moreover, Rockefeller accelerated her collecting; between 1929 and 1931, she bought at least two hundred folk objects from Halpert. With the income that Rockefeller patronage guaranteed, Halpert could add the Gallery of American Folk Art (fig. 19) in October 1931. Tellingly, the inaugural show was titled American Ancestors. All but one of the objects in The Art of the Common Man in America, the epochal folk art exhibition (fig. 20), organized by Cahill for the Museum of Modern Art in November 1932, were lent anonymously by Rockefeller. The exhibition included such touchstones of American folk art as Baby in Red Chair and The Preacher (figs. 21–22). 44 If nothing else, the presence of 175 vernacular objects in the galleries of the most advanced museum of the day validated folk art’s relevance to modernity and raised its aesthetic status. Rockefeller, who became an impassioned collector of folk art in 1929, the year that Louisine Havemeyer died, gave it ultimate respectability. She codified the taste and made it unimpeachable for everyone else. With her endorsement, as well as the vision and tenacity of the other uncommon women who went before her, folk art was no longer dismissed as American trash.

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fig. 12

Unidentified artist, The Runaway Horse, c. 1840–1850. Oil on canvas; 31¼ x 38¼ in. (79.375 x 97.155 cm). Private collection. Formerly owned by Juliana Force and donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo: Courtesy of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York. fig. 13

Samuel P. Howes, The Brown Family, 1939. Oil on canvas; 36 x 49¾ in. (91.44 x 124.46 cm). Formerly owned by Juliana Force and donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Private collection. Photo: Courtesy of David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles. fig. 14. Elie and Viola Nadelman, c. 1920. Eli Nadelman Papers, New York City.

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39–40

Attributed to George Robert Lawton, Sr. (1813–1885)

Two Horses 1840–1850 White pine, horsehair, and paint large: 9⁹/₁₆ x 11⅝ x 3⁷/₁₆ in. (24.3 x 29.5 x 8.7 cm); small: 3¾ x 5½ x 1⅜ (9.5 x 14 x 3.5 cm) Scituate, Rhode Island Provenance: Hathaway Family, Providence, RI, area; Walters-Benisek Art & Antiques, Northampton, MA; Ronald Merican, Princeton, NJ; David Wheatcroft, Westborough, MA. PuBlished: Large horse: Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, American Vernacular (Boston, 2002), frontispiece; Jane Katcher, David M. Schorsch, and Ruth Wolfe, eds., Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections for the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, Vol. 2 (New Haven and London, 2011), 185. exhiBited: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, May 1, 2009– November 1, 2014 (long-term loan).

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Between aBout 1840 and 1883, farmer George Robert Lawton, Sr., of Scituate, Rhode Island, painted some of the most extravagant ornamentation on domestic objects seen in nineteenth-century America.1 Uniting a fertile imagination with exceptional design and painting skills, Lawton created boxes decoupaged with his watercolors; painted picture frames; a birdcage; and a tall-case clock with dense, complex motifs in brilliant colors. His intricate, overlapping painted designs, drawn with a compass and straightedge, exhibit Lawton’s sophisticated spatial organization. They have no precedent in New England decorative arts. These two horses, a pair of roosters, a cow, and two oxen are the only sculptures attributed to Lawton. The painted surfaces are in excellent condition, and the fragile legs of the horses and the decorated base are intact, suggesting that they were intended as sculptures and not toys. The animals’ necks, heads, and legs are too small for their bodies. Despite the different sizes of the two sculptures, Lawton kept the animals’ proportions uniform; the smaller horse is almost a duplicate of the larger one. Viewed together, the horses’ disparate sizes, and their anatomically incorrect forms, give them an undeniably amusing, playful quality. However, based on a watercolor attributed to Lawton featuring a horse of similar form, the sculptures may have been three-dimensional realizations of interests he had explored for some time.2 As such, they show the purposeful, thoughtful evolution of Lawton’s ideas. Lawton understood the relationship between size, scale, and proportion, namely, that carefully designed and finely crafted small objects invite close scrutiny. These horses, and the few other known carvings by Lawton, may represent the bulk of his sculptural work. The imaginative designs he painted on these affecting horse sculptures may have been a precursor to the elaborate designs he painted on household items later. 1. Information about Lawton is from David A. Schorsch, “Father and Son: The Painted Furniture of George Robert Lawton, Senior and Junior,” in Jane Katcher, David M. Schorsch, and Ruth Wolfe, eds., Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections for the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, Vol. 2 (New Haven and London, 2011), 182–201. 2. See Robert W. Skinner Inc., Fine Americana, Sale 1110, July 25, 1986, lot 113. I am grateful to Donald R. Walters for bringing this watercolor and other works by Lawton to my attention.

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Unidentified artist

Chest over Drawers 1803 Tulip poplar, brass, iron, and paint 27 x 47¾ x 22 ½ in. (68.5 x 121.2 x 57.1 cm) Lehigh or Northumberland County, Pennsylvania Inscription: beneath the escutcheon on the front, “1803” Provenance: Joe Kindig Jr. and Son Antiques, York, PA; Dr. and Mrs. Donald A. Shelley, Oley, PA; Pook & Pook, Inc., Downingtown, PA, The Pioneer American Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Donald A. Shelley, April 21, 2007, lot 744.

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the squat, ogee-bracket feet on this chest appear as if they are being compressed under the weight of the chest. The illusion reflects the chest’s substantial weight and construction, which typifies chests made in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The design of German American chests can be traced to Northern European Renaissance furniture traditions, in which strong, heavy chests built with thick boards and strong joinery were common. Chests were built to be permanent and serve the storage needs of individuals and families for generations. Today, these are popularly called “dower” and “blanket” chests. Many had a woman’s name on the front and were made to store items needed in marriage. Other chests have a man’s name painted on them; blankets, clothing, money, jewelry, silver—even food—were kept in these chests, which were equipped with strong iron locks. Chests made in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh and Northumberland counties display superb design, construction, and painted decoration.

The date of this chest, 1803, places it near the end of the period when heavily constructed chests bearing elaborate painted designs were made. It exhibits construction features of chests made as early as the 1780s, but stamped-brass oval escutcheon plates and bail pulls are evidence of English neoclassical design elements making their way into the repertoire of Pennsylvania German cabinetmakers. The two large trefoils, parrots, compass-drawn plants, and flowers painted on the lid have been preserved nearly intact. In the twentieth century, when these chests were first sought and collected, many were used for display purposes, and the painted decoration became worn or often obliterated. Chests contained items required in daily life, and it is unlikely that decorators would have painted the lids as carefully if they had known the design would be damaged by constant use. The front is painted with arches supported by columns resembling turned balusters. These columns are inverted, which may be a signature motif of this painter. Although associated with painted chests from Lehigh

and Northampton counties, the motif may have originated in Berks County, where a group of chests with columns, arches, and hearts that wrap the corners is also found.1 The migration of these motifs from county to county shows that rather than living in isolated communities, people and ideas traveled freely; decorative traditions established in one area could appear in another. Flowering plants, parrots, and stars cover the front of the chest, leaving no space undecorated. In contrast, only a pair of parrots against a blue field is painted on each side. 2 Tulips and parrots are common motifs on furniture, fraktur, and slip-decorated earthenware made by Pennsylvania artisans. Tulips are signs of regeneration and eternal life, and the ability of parrots to “talk” gave them special significance as messengers in many cultures. The two columns supporting each arch inevitably evokes the two individuals who would enter into marriage and use this chest, with the pairs of parrots and hearts being additional references to love and fidelity.3

1. For an example of a chest from this group, see Pook & Pook, Inc., Downingtown, PA, Period Furniture, Fine Art and Accessories Sale, October 6, 2012, lot 470. 2. This graphic contrast also appears on a chest made about the same date in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and attributed to Johannes Spitler (1774–1837), where only a single white crescent is painted on each side of the case in contrast to the front, which is filled with birds, hearts, stars, and floral motifs. The migration of settlers and goods along the Great Wagon Road that connected Pennsylvania and the Valley of Virginia may account for the appearance of such formal parallels in chests from both places. See Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, Southern Furniture 1680– 1830 (New York, 1997), fig. 107.3 on p. 340. 3. Large hearts are painted on the front and sides of a chest made for Magdalena Leibensberger (1772–1844) of Lehigh County (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The chest is dated 1792, the year she married Johannes Kemmerer. The Leibensberger chest also features hearts at the corners, similar to those on this chest and ones from Dauphin (cat. no. 59) and Centre counties (cat. no. 60).