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A WVU art historian's important new book took years of sleuthing to produce. |
"Everything that has happened in American art through the
years has also happened in West Virginia," says Patrick
Conner, the director of the WVU Press. "This new book is
important in helping West Virginia break down the myths about
its culture and image."
U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a collector of West Virginia
art, notes in the book's foreword that "sophistication and
elegance have long coexisted with the state's celebrated mountain
folk culture." According to Rockefeller, Cuthbert's book
is "groundbreaking, because it establishes a foundation
upon which we can begin to elaborate the history of art in West
Virginia."
From the cover image, a portrait by Berkeley County artist William
Robinson Leigh, through the 280 full-color plates inside, the
elegantly produced volume presents a sampling of works done by
artists who either were both in the state, spent part of their
careers here, or who produced West Virginia-inspired works while
visiting.
Their works include engravings, illustrations, landscapes, and
portraits done in pen and ink, oil on canvas, and watercolors
on paper. A carefully researched narrative by Cuthbert places
each work in its historical context. The large-format, hardcover
book also includes a directory of nearly 1,000 artists who are
part of this history.
Cuthbert, an art historian who is the curator of the West Virginia
and Regional History Collection at the WVU Libraries, compiled
the works over a 17-year period of sleuthing in public and private
collections. "Fine art has been here all along," he
says, "It's a part of West Virginia's heritage that has
been too long ignored."
Decorative and functional items such as pottery and baskets are
part of West Virginia's art history, but they are not the only—or
even the most important—artistic contributions by the Mountain
State to national culture.
Martinsburg's David Hunter Strother was one of the best-known
illustrators in America during and after the Civil War. Berkeley
County's W.R. Leigh achieved fame as one of the leading artistic
interpreters of the American West, and Monongalia County's Blanche
Lazzell became one of the 20th century's pioneers of modern art.
These artists are joined in lasting greatness by noteworthy artists
from other fields, including novelists Pearl Buck and Jayne Anne
Phillips in literature, and composer George Crumb and opera performer
Phyllis Curtin in music.
"Upstate New York's Hudson River Valley, New Hampshire's
White Mountains, and the Delaware Water Gap are all well-known
meccas of American landscape painting," Cuthbert notes,
"but few people are aware that Harper's Ferry was one of
the nation's foremost points of artistic pilgrimage throughout
the 19th century." Cuthbert found that nearly a hundred
artists visited the town—including leading American artists
like Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Doughty, Thomas Anshutz, and Childe
Hassam.
The great American landscape painter T. Worthington Whittredge
owes his career to the state of West Virginia, according to Cuthbert.
Whittredge settled in Charleston to pursue the trade of portrait
painting during the early 1840s. Among his clients was the youthful
wife of a local politico, "a man of considerable influence
in Washington," in the artist's own words. His inability
to capture her stunning beauty on canvas, coupled with his growing
infatuation for her, led Whittredge to flee the city and the
field of portraiture in favor of painting the Kanawha Valley's
dramatic scenery. His paintings of the Hawk's Nest area launched
his career as one of the 19th century's most celebrated American
landscape artists.
The well-known, mid-19th century landscape painter William L.
Sonntag also painted extensively in the Kanawha Valley and elsewhere
in the state. Sonntag devoted most of the early phase of his
career—"arguably his best phase," Cuthbert contends-to
painting West Virginia's scenery.
Another discovery was the important connection between Thomas
Anshutz and the city of Wheeling. "As the leading teacher
of the Ashcan School of American artists, Anshutz was one of
the most influential figures in American art history," according
to Cuthbert. His best-known work, The Ironworkers' Noontime,
is considered to be one of the greatest paintings in American
art history: it contributed directly to the development of social
realist painting.
The famous work depicts the lunch hour break of laborers at a
Wheeling nail factory. Anshutz's mother hailed from Wheeling,
and Anshutz visited the city throughout his life, residing there
for a period of several years. Cuthbert found numerous sketches
and photographs of the Wheeling waterfront area by Anshutz in
the Archives of American Art. Included in the group are a series
of photos that formed the basis for another of the artist's well-known
works, Steamboat on the Ohio.
Cuthbert made discoveries in the field of portraiture as well.
By poring over census records and newspaper advertisements, he
was able to prove the presence of a number of itinerant portrait
"limners" in the Eastern Panhandle in the late and
early 19th centuries. He found that the majority of extant works
by two of the earliest, John Drinker and David Boudon, depict
West Virginia subjects. The only known signed work by Joshua
Johnson, America's first African American professional artist,
was likely painted in Berkeley Springs. An ad in a Martinsburg
newspaper reveals that the well-known Irish-born portraitist
John Toole began his career in that area, painting miniature
portraits while still in his teens before moving on to have a
successful career in eastern Virginia.
Cuthbert's research led to the location and identification of
a number of significant works. He found a pair of portraits depicting
a youthful Waitman T. Willey, often referred to as the Father
of West Virginia, and his wife, in a vacant house near Wellsburg
in West Virginia's Northern Panhandle. The pair were painted
by the famous Pittsburgh artist David Gilmour Blythe, who visited
Morgantown about 1850. An engaging portrait of John Davis at
Berkeley Springs, The Bath Keeper by David Hunter Strother,
was traced to descendants of the artist residing in a small town
in Connecticut. Cuthbert was able to acquire all three works
for WVU's West Virginia Historical Art Collection.
Another work, possibly depicting the West Virginia poet Danske
Dandridge, was found in an abandoned farmhouse near Middleburg,
Virginia. The artist, Shepherdstown native Elezear Hutchinson
Miller, was one of the leaders of the Washington, D.C., artistic
community during the late 19th century. Today, he is all but
forgotten. A tangled web of leads and references eventually led
Cuthbert to a Fairfax County, Virginia, woman whose father had
purchased several dozen of Miller's works from the artist's estate
back in the 1920s.
Miller is a good example of a significant native West Virginia
artist who was well known in his own day but who has almost completely
faded from memory. Another is Jefferson County's David English
Henderson. "Only a handful of Henderson's works are presently
known," Cuthbert notes. "Despite the quality of works
like his wonderful Halt of the Stonewall Brigade, no one
has bothered to undertake a serious study of his career."
Such investigations are commonly initiated in the artist's home
state, Cuthbert contends, but that has rarely happened in West
Virginia.
Part of the problem has rested in the lack of information resources
available for the study of West Virginia's art history. Indeed,
"one is hard-pressed to find even a good paragraph on the
subject," according to Cuthbert.
Until now, that is.
A noted designer of art books, David Alcorn, worked with Cuthbert
and Conner at the WVU Press to create the book. Alcorn recalls
his experience with the project: "The immediate feeling
was that this was going to be a satisfying and successful experience.
There are four people in our small book-design firm in California
who are quite proud to have been fortunate enough to have participated
in bringing this special book to fruition."
Conner is thankful to many people whose assistance is helping
make the publication of Early Art and Artists in West Virginia
a success: "Senator Rockefeller's support of the project,
including providing a foreword, was important. His personal collection
of West Virginia art is probably the best outside of our WVU
collection. The WVU community has helped in many different ways,
from printing to marketing to publicity. Books awaiting sale
are warehoused in the new Library Book Depository."
The book is being sold through the WVU Press and the WVU Bookstores
for $85 per copy, a price dictated largely by printing and distribution
costs. As Cuthbert notes, "This is not a profit-making venture.
We hope it will appeal to West Virginians who are interested
in their own heritage. It's a history that belongs to all West
Virginians."