roswell morse shurtleff art show 1914-the folsom galleries

7/28/2019 Roswell Morse Shurtleff Art Show 1914-The Folsom Galleries

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Exhibition of PaintingsBy

Roswell Morse Shurtleff

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A Painter of the Adirondacks

mTH all due respect to art that comes fromacross the seas, we must still recognize thatthis continent teems with natural beauty asinspiring to painter or poet as any the world affords.

We may treasure the products of past times andfar climes, but only by cultivating its own garden ofart can America hope to affect vitally the tastes ofits growing millions, or to achieve a worthy placeamong the nations that humanity delights to honor.

As we cherish the remembrance of the pioneers wholed the way in taming a new continent, rendering itmaterially fruitful, so should we revere those whohave led the van in an esthetic sense, and amongthem, those artists who have recorded in pictorialform the grandeur and charm of mountain and valley,forest and field, through the brilliant seasons of thisWestern world.

When some phases of European art are develop-ing signs of decadence, through all manner of in-coherences and aberrations, it is gratifying to findin the paintings of so true a lover of nature as


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Roswell Morse Shurtleff the wholesome delight we feelin visiting the silent woods or breezy mountain-sides.Coming of "Mayflower" and New England ancestry,the painter was born at Rindge, New Hampshire, onthe 14th of June, 1838, and while, with his seventysixth birthday approaching, we might venture toplace him among the "old" masters, the buoyancy ofhis spirits and the freshness of his later works savorof a youthfulness such as was manifested by thatdelightful painter-poet, Corot, whose art never grewold.

It was my privilege to visit Shurtleff at his comfortable lodge and studio in Keene Valley, Adirondacks, during the autumn of 1 9 1 ~ . Near by, theartist has preserved an ample area of virgin forestwith the primeval rocks and boulders scattered hitherand thither, and where, without going far from hisown doorstep, he can find a wealth of sympatheticsubjects.

One bright day in October, when the sunshineturned the forest into a mass of shimmering gold,Shurtleff took me for a trip up the valley to lowerAu Sable Lake, and to the wild gorge near by intowhich Rainbow Falls comes down in sheets of irides-


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cent mist and foam. As w ~ were picking our wayover the tangle of logs and rocks, the painter toldme of his first visits to the Adirondack country in1858, and of his subsequent returns with Wyant,Tryon, and others. "I shall never forget my firstglimpse of Keene Valley," said ShurtlefF. "We hadstayed over night at Elizabethtown, had an earlystart, and as we reached the top of Spruce Hill andbegan to descend, the valley, hardly yet touched bythe rising sun, the mountains beyond flecked withcloud shadows and the luxuriant foliage of earlysummer seen through the moving mists, made it seemlike a veritable fairy land." And such to the painterit has always remained.

In the interval of the Secession War, where Shurt-leff was the first Union officer wounded and capturedin a reconnoiter near Hampton, Virginia, he spent along period in the prison hospitals of the South. Hestill has in his possession the blood-stained flag he wascarrying at the time, and which was used to stanchhis wounds. I t was returned to him some twenty-fiveyears later by his captor, Colonel Sandidge of NewOrleans. A keen sportsman, his excursions with rodand gun have often resulted in suggesting fresh subjects for his pencil, and he knows the woods and hills


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as only one who has spent long seasons under canvascan know them.

I t is this close communion with nature in her variedmoods that has kept his spirit and art so young. Hestill has that precious ambition of the true artist, thehope of making each new canvas "the best he has yetdone." Represented by works that are classics inthe best sense of the word in the Corcoran Galleryand National Collection at Washington, as well as inthe art museums of a number of American cities, hispaintings are also found in many private collectionsfrom the Atlantic to the Pacific. The recipient ofmany honors, his principal delight is in the expres-sion of the natural beauty he so keenly enjoys inforest glades, and under the open sky.

This exhibition of some recent examples of hisart offers an exceptional opportunity for sharingthe artist's enjoyment of some choice vistas in theAdirondack woods and hills ; while museums and col-lectors who do not already possess "a Shurtleff"will be enabled to add one to their treasures, withoutwhich no collection of American paintings of thelater nineteenth and early twentieth century can beconsidered complete.

RoBERT J. WICKENDEN.


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LIST OF TITLES

I MOUNTAIN MISTSfJ IN THE SHADOW OF A BIG ROCK3 AUTUMN FOREST4 OLD WOOD ROAD5 THE FOREST PRIMEVAL6 THE GIANT OF THE VALLEY, EVENING7 IN THE WILD WOOD8 THE AU SABLE RIVER FROM THE WYANT

STUDIO9 FOREST NEAR UPPER AU SABLE

10 SUNLIGHT AND SHADE11 OCTOBERlfJ A SUNNY MORNING13 OCTOBER SNOW14 DOWN THE BROOK15 MOUNT PORTER16 BY THE WAYSIDE17 PATH TO THE woODS18 MOUNT BAXTER19 MORNINGfJO THE AU SABLE LAKEfJ1 AUTUMNfJfJ MORNING AFTER SNOWfJ3 SUNLIT WOODSfJ4 KEENE VALLEYfJ5 THE FIRST SNOW


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roswell morse shurtleff art show 1914-the folsom galleries

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