When Jonathan and Faith Trumbull sent John off to Harvard in 1771 they expected their son to study religion and law, as had been decided. Jonathan was, after all, the Royal Governor of Connecticut and Faith was a direct descendant of John and Priscilla Alden. They expected great things from their fifteen-year old son. But things didn't turn out quite the way they planned. Seems young John Trumbull had an eye for painting and I do mean "an" eye as he lost the use of one eye due to a childhood accident. The first thing he did upon arriving in Boston, from his home in Lebanon, Connecticut, was to seek out John Singleton Copley, the leading portrait painter in the American colonies.

Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley, 1778

Trumbull graduated from Harvard with the Class of 1773 and taught school a bit before the start of the American Revolution. As Adjutant of the 1st Connecticut Regiment, he marched to Boston, and witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he made drawings of the British defenses. Trumbull's sketches attracted the attention of General George Washington, and he served for a time as Washington's aide-de-camp. In 1779, armed with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, he left for London. There he sought out American expatriot Benjamin West, an artist who was commissioned by King George III to paint historical works. Trumbull studied under West, and through this relationship, decided to paint the American Revolution and the people involved in the birth of the new nation.

Battle of Bunker Hill

On September 23, 1780, British agent Major John André was captured in America and hanged as a spy. News reached Europe and, as an officer of similar rank as André in the Continental Army, Trumbull was imprisoned for seven months in London's Tothill Fields Bridewell. Afterwards, back working under West, Trumbull painted his Battle of Bunker Hill and Death of General Montgomery at the Attack on Quebec.

Death of General Montgomery at the Attack on Quebec

In 1785 Trumbull went to Paris, where he made sketches of French officers for Surrender of Lord Cornwallis and, with a hand from Thomas Jefferson, he began his painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This painting, along with his Surrender of General Burgoyne, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and Washington Resigning his Commission was purchased by the United States Congress and all now hang in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. His catalog of paintings is well known as they are hanging in many museums, or on currency, as is his portrait of Alexander Hamilton.

Declaration of Independence

In 1794 Trumbull acted as secretary to John Jay in London during the negotiation of the treaty with Great Britain. Upon his return to America, with wife Sarah Hope Harvey, he settled in New York, and in 1816 was appointed president of the American Academy of the Fine Arts. By 1825, his lack of support for the students led to the downfall of the Academy with the students rebelling and founding the National Academy of Design.

John Trumbull painted by John Singer Sargent

Trumbull sold a series of twenty-eight paintings and sixty miniature portraits to Yale University in 1831 for an annuity of $1000. This is by far the largest single collection of his works. The collection was originally housed in a neoclassical art gallery designed by Trumbull on Yale's Old Campus, along with portraits by other artists. He died in New York City in 1843 at the age of 88. He was originally interred (along with his wife) beneath the Art Gallery at Yale University that he had designed. In 1867, the collection and the remains were moved to the newly built Street Hall. The Trumbull Gallery was later razed.

Trumbull Gallery

Samuel F. B. Morse graduated from Yale University in 1810. It was his dream to "be among those who shall revive the splendor of the fifteenth century; to rival the genius of a Raphael, a Michel Angelo or a Titian; my ambition is to be enlisted in the constellation of genius now rising in this country; I wish to shine, not by a light borrowed from them, but to strive to shine the brightest." To this end, he studied painting in England from 1811 to 1815 where he also worked under Benjamin West.

Samuel Morse

Upon his return to New Haven in 1821, Morse decided, like Trumbull, to be a painter of history. His House of Representatives was a great seven by eleven foot painting containing more than eighty portraits of congressmen and Washington dignitaries. The painting, as was popular in England, toured several American cities where viewers paid twenty-five cents to view his work. Ironically, he helped establish the National Academy of Design in New York and was elected first president in 1825.

Morse went to Paris in 1831, and began another great painting, Gallery of the Louvre, which is populated with friends (such as James Fennimore Cooper) and family members, as well as thirty-eight of the masterpieces for which the Louvre is famous. He exhibited the finished painting in New Haven and New York. And while a few critics praised his work, the public, once again, was not interested. Morse was appointed the first professor of art history at the University of New York and later, after giving up on his art career, ran unsuccessfully for the office mayor of the city. In 1838 he demonstrated the telegraph to president and congressmen, and in 1844 sent the first intercity telegraph message from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore: "What God Hath Wrought." He was also the co-inventor of the Morse code and died on April 2, 1872.

Gallery of the Louvre by Samuel Morse

Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford on May 4,1826 to Joseph Church, an official and a director of The Aetna Life Insurance Company. He also developed an early interest in art, and by age sixteen was studying drawing and painting. Two years later, Daniel Wadsworth, son-in-law of John Trumbull, prevailed upon Thomas Cole to take on Church as his only student. Cole is considered the founder of the Hudson River School of painting. Within a year, Frederic became the youngest member of the National Academy of Design and began showing there. The following year sold his first major oil to Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum almost as soon Daniel built it.

Schoodic Peninsula from Mount Desert

Frederic took a studio in New York City and began a career of teaching and painting. Church also traveled widely throughout his career, absorbing what he saw in New England, South America, Europe, the Arctic, and the Middle East, to create the inspirational landscapes for which he was famous. He became the central figure of the Hudson River School and one of the nation’s most highly acclaimed artists of the nineteenth century.

Frederic Church by Matthew Brady

He married Isabel in 1860 and had two children who he lost to diphtheria, but then had four more healthy children. He also built an eclectic “Persian” residence in the Catskills called “Olana,” which endures.

Olana

By the late 1870s, severe rheumatism prevented him from painting more, though he continued to sketch at his home in upstate New York and on many trips to Mexico in the 1880's and 1890's. He died in New York City in 1900, but is buried at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Hartford.

Floating Iceberg by Frederic Church

The Wadsworth, as the Wadsworth Atheneum is most commonly known, was constructed on the site of the family home of Daniel Wadsworth in the heart of downtown Hartford. Its architects were Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town, who designed the "castle" that is the Atheneum's oldest building. Construction began in 1842 after the museum was incorporated, but the doors did not open until July 31, 1844. It has been operating continuously since then, making it the oldest public museum of art in America.

The Wadsworth family, being one of the oldest and most affluent in the city contributed numerous valuable pieces of art to the museum to be displayed at the time the Atheneum opened. The first collection consisted of seventy-eight paintings, two marble busts, one portrait miniature, and one bronze sculpture

The Weirs were an artistic family, though not from Connecticut, with various ties to the Nutmeg State. Father Robert was a member of the Hudson River School and became a professor of drawing at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Among his students was James McNeill Whistler.

John Ferguson Weir by Elihu Vedder

Both of his sons went on to be artists. John Ferguson Weir (1841-1926) was a companion of Fred Church and John Kensett, among others. He became a member of the National Academy of Design with his painting The Gun Foundry in 1866. The industrial scene, Forging the Shaft was also highly acclaimed.

Forging the Shaft by John Ferguson Weir

Upon return from Europe in 1869, Weir became Director of the Yale School of Fine Arts, a position he held for forty-four years until 1901. He also worked in sculpture creating pieces for the Yale campus and a fountain on New Haven Green. He retired to Providence in 1913. His daughter Edith Dean Weir became a well-known miniatures painter.

Yale Art class

He went to Europe in 1881 with brother Julian Alden Weir. Best known as J. Alden Weir (1852-1919), he studied with his father, and then at the National Academy of Design before enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1873. At the time, he was not a big fan of the Impressionist paintings he saw there. He also met up with James McNeill Whistler in London before returning to New York City in 1877. His work was basically still life and the human figure, not unlike the work of Édouard Manet.

J. Alden Weir by John Singer Sargent

In 1882 J. Alden moved to rural Ridgefield, Connecticut and strengthened his friendship with artists Albert Pinkham Ryder and John Henry Twachtman. He and Twachtman both taught at the Art Students League and on occasion exhibited together. Weir was also close friends with the still life and landscape painter Emil Carlsen who summered with Weir on his farm, before purchasing his own home in Falls River, Connecticut.

Weir Farm today

By 1891 Weir got over his issues with impressionism and adopted the style as his own. Through the remainder of his career he painted impressionist landscapes and figurative works, many of which centered on his Connecticut farms at Branchville and Windham. Other visitors to his home were Childe Hassam, Albert Pinkham Ryder and John Singer Sargent. His style varied from traditional, vibrant impressionism to a more subdued and shadowy tonalism. Weir spent time at the Holley House - center of the Cos Cob art colony and visited the art colony at Old Lyme. He was a member of "The Ten," a loosely-allied group of artists dissatisfied with professional art organizations which led to them exhibiting their works as a stylistically-unified group. Weir is now considered one of the nation's leading Impressionist painters.

J. Alden Weir

In 1912 Weir was selected the first president of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, but resigned a year later following the association's sponsorship of the infamous modernist Armory Show. Weir later became president of the National Academy of Design. He died in 1919

Factory Village by J. Alden Weir

Artists had been coming to Cos Cob to paint since the 1870s, but when John Twachtman settled there in 1889 and brought along J. Alden Weir to teach classes in the summer of 1892, the nucleus of an art colony was established at Holley House, an old saltbox boarding house outside of Greenwich. The artists experimented with colors and light, as was usual in these settings.

Old Holley House by John Twachtman

Soon close friend of Twachtman and Weir, Childe Hassam began to frequent Cos Cob, bringing with him his Impressionist style and soon established Cos Cob as a center for American Impressionism.

Oyster Sloop, Cos Cob by Childe Hassam

Other artists included: Theodore Robinson, Henry Fitch Taylor, Robert Reid, Elmer MacRae, Ernest Lawson, Allen Tucker, Charles Ebert, Mary Roberts Ebert, Alice Judson, Genjiro Yeto, Leonard Ochtman, Mina Fonda Ochtman, Dorothy Ochtman, Edward Clark Potter, Emil Carlsen, George Wharton Edwards, and Kerr Eby.

The Anchorage, Cos Cob by Theodore Robinson

They formed the Greenwich Society of Artists in 1911 and began showing at exhibitions in the Bruce Museum.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the state in Old Lyme, prominent landscape and marine artist Henry Ward Ranger, was looking for a place to paint. As a young man he visited Barbizon, France, where he experimented in the tonal style. Ranger was looking for an idyllic place and he found it in Old Lyme.

Henry Ward Ranger

Florence Griswold ran a boarding house in 1897, when Ranger came to visit and it proved to be the perfect place for him to start an Art Colony such as those he found in Europe. He called it American Barbizon and centered on his Tonal leanings. Without getting into too many details, Tonal featured dark paintings of earthy colors. The light in the work was small and directed. When Childe Hassam arrived in 1903, the focus shifted from Tonalism to Impressionism

May Night by Willard Metcalf

Griswold House by Matilda Brown

Griswold House by Harry Hoffman

Griswold House by William Howe Foote

Old Lyme appealed to a great many artists, it turns out. The rolls show that ninety-five artists, men and women, spent time at the boarding house between 1903 and 1920. Among the resident artists included the other giant of American Impressionism, Willard Metcalf. They called themselves the “Hot Air Club,” and the “Knockers,” but officially they were called the School of Lyme.

The Hot Air Club on the side porch

While most of the artists stayed at the Griswold House, some eventually purchased homes in the area. Among the artists that were part of this group, were: Louis Dessar, Alonzo Kimball, Louis Betts, George Newell, Frederic Ramsdell, Maurice Braun, Arthur Heming, but especially Theodore Robinson, Allen Butler Talcott, Willard Metcalf, Gifford Beal, and Emil Carlsen. Edward F. Rook settled permanently in Old Lyme in 1903 and William Chadwick was another who purchased his own home there.

Childe Hassam

William Howe Foote

Others included William Henry Howe, William Howe Foote, Matilda Brown, Walter Griffin, Alphonse Jongers, Henry Rankin Poore, Bessie Potter Vonnoh and husband Robert, Frederick Church, Edward Rook, Henry Kenyon, and Ivan Olinsky.

Florence Griswold in front of panels painted by boarders

The Lyme Artists Association was formed in 1914 and in 1921 they built their own gallery adjacent to the Griswold House.

Before we progress too far along the timeline, I want to explore the artistic involvement of Hartford legend, Samuel Clemens. No, "Mark Twain" wasn't a painter, but, in his own way, he supported the local arts.

Samuel Clemens by Edwin Larson

Charles Ethan Porter was born in Hartford around 1847 before his family moved to the village of Rockville, which is now part of Vernon. After high school, he studied art at Wesleyan Academy (now known as the Wilbraham & Monson Academy) in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and went on to study at New York's National Academy of Design, where he was one of the first African Americans to exhibit at the Academy. While in New York, Porter exhibited for the American Society of Painters in watercolor, as well as the Academy of Design. His was an exceptional talent and his still-lifes displayed astonishing luminescence.

Apples by Charles Porter

In 1878, he opened a studio in Hartford where his work was recognized by Frederic Church, among others. When it was determined that Porter would benefit from additional instruction, Clemens helped raise the funds for the trip. He left for Paris in 1881, with a letter of recommendation from Mark Twain. He enrolled in the École des Arts Décoratifs as well as the Académie Julian. Porter also spent several months in the French countryside, including the village of Fleury, near Barbizon. He returned in 1884 and opened a studio in New York City, but soon returned to Hartford, and then back to Rockville in 1889, where he briefly had a studio in the Fitch Block, and later at the remains of a tower on Fox Hill, which a family member owned.

Porter with two students

Porter shared his Rockville studio with Bavarian artist Gustave Hoffman, who sold Porter's paintings door-to-door because people would not buy art from a black artist. Nevertheless, Porter fortunes declined, even after becoming a charter member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. He died in virtual obscurity in 1923, around the age of 75, and is buried in Grove Hill Cemetery.

by Charles Porter

Another artist helped by Clemens was Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940). Born in Boston, he began his working career as a house painter in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Following a short stint in the army, he returned to Chicopee and became a machinist at Ames Foundry, where bronze cannons were cast for the Union Army. After the war, they cast memorials for the fallen heroes. Gerhardt then came to Hartford as a designer of machinery. But he wasn't yet settling down. In 1874, he went to California before returning to Hartford six years later and married Harriet Josephine Gerhardt. By 1881 he worked as chief machinist at the Pratt and Whitney Machine Tool Company, a company that was working on the Paige typesetter, an invention in which Samuel Clemens would later invest a fortune and lose it. In his leisure hours Gerhardt taught himself to sculpt.

Karl Gerhardt

His first works were a bust of his wife and a full-sized statue of her as A Startled Bather. Clemens told the story about how early one morning Hattie Gerhardt appeared on his doorstep in the affluent Nook Farm neighborhood, seeking financial help from the prominent Hartford resident. She then proceeded to repeat her request to next-door neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, editor of the Hartford Courant newspaper.

Following a visit to the Gerhardt home, where Clemens viewed the half-nude statue of Hattie, he and Mr. Warner agreed, after consultation with noted experts James Wells Champney and John Quincy Adams Ward, to finance his study in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. Gerhardt immediately began working under Francois Jouffroy, former teacher of Augustus Sainte Gaudens. Within a few months Gerhardt requested additional funding from Clemens to pay for live models. There were numerous letters of encouragement from Clemens along with the financial support. Gerhardt displayed a small medalion of Clemens at the Paris Salon of 1883. In March, Olivia Gerhardt was born, named so after Clemen's wife. In 1884 he again exhibited at the salon a statuette called Echo, and Eve's Lullaby, a life-size group sculpture. While Hattie remained in Paris teaching English, Karl returned to the United States in search of commissions and requested Clemens' aide in procuring the nod to do a statue of Nathan Hale for the state capitol building in Hartford. Then, after receiving the commission, he asked for a loan to finish the work.

Clemens medallion

Additional works included a bust of Henry Ward Beecher, and statues of General Israel Putnam, Josiah Bartlet (signer of Declaration of Independence), and General Governor K. Warren (Gettysburg battlefield), plus a tablet to John Fitch in the state capitol, and this fountain to Carrie Welton in Waterbury.

Gerhardt also did a bust of Sam Clemens, an etching of which appeared in the first edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And then, accompanied by Clemens, Gerhardt visited the home of General U.S. Grant. He did a bust of Grant, as well as a death mask, which led to much controversy. Hattie died in 1897, and by 1908, Gerhardt was living in New Orleans, then Shreveport by 1920, where he worked as a bartender. He died in 1940.

And there were women, among the story of Connecticut's artists. Josephine Miles Lewis (1865-1959) was the daughter of the mayor of New Haven. Ms. Lewis was the first woman to receive a degree at Yale (BFA in 1892), where she studied with John Weir. She later went to France after college and studied at the Academie Julian as well as with Frederick MacMonnies in Giverny. She exhibited at the Paris Salon and met Paul Cézanne.

Frederika Chase by Josephine Lewis

She had shows in this country as well including a 1955 solo show in Boston, when she was 90 years old and still painting.

Haystacks in Butry, France by Josephine Lewis

Ms. Lewis was one of the original members of the New Haven Paint & Clay Club, and received a prize for her painting, Isabel, in 1941,

In 1916 the wife of Nathaniel Batchelder, headmaster of the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, died of complications after giving birth. The school's trustees decided to have a memorial included in the building that would bear her name, so, along with Batchelder, they searched for a suitable sculptor. Eventually they decided on the well-known sculptress Evelyn Beatrice Longman (1874-1954) to do the commission. Love bloomed and on June 28, 1920, Evelyn and Nathaniel were married at the estate of the renowned sculptor Daniel Chester French in Stockbrige, Massachusetts. At age 46, this was her first marriage. She picked up her life in New York and moved to Windsor, where Nathaniel had built a studio for her on campus. She called it "Chiselhurst-on-Farmington" (the school is at the mouth of the Farmington River).

The rest of Evelyn's story is not so brief, nor can I include it all here. Following a childhood of poverty, young Evelyn became enchanted with the statuary at the World's Colombian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and decided to become a sculptor. After saving her money, she was able to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Lorado Taft. Upon graduation, she went to New York where she began working for/with Daniel Chester French, who only occasionally hired an assistant, and never a woman. It helped that she came with high recommendations from the Art Institute’s director, Daniel’s brother William.

She continued doing her own pieces, including Victory, an allegorical figure that was installed on Festival Hall in St. Louis for the 1904 Exposition. In addition to helping him with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, French helped her secure several commissions. She did the great bronze chapel doors at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis and the doors to the library at Wellesley College.

Evelyn with Wellesley doors

One her most famous creations topped the AT&T building on Broadway in Manhattan. She called the twenty-four foot high, forty ton bronze Genius of Electricity; one hand holds lightening bolts, the other a coil of wire. But she covered it with forty thousand pieces of gold leaf, so he was nicknamed Golden Boy.

In 1914 she created the Fountain of Ceres, which became the centerpiece of the Court of Four Seasons of the Pacific-Panama International Exposition in San Francisco, and Consecration which was also on display at the Exposition. She was the first woman sculptor elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1919.

Following her marriage in 1920, Evelyn continued to get commissions and honors, such as the Watrous Gold Medal for best sculpture. She did Spirit of Victory in 1923, the Spanish-American War Memorial in Hartford’s Bushnell Park, and represented the United States at the 1928 Summer Olympic Games in Amsterdam, in the Mixed Sculpting division.

Evelyn and Spirit of Victory

Among other pieces that grace Hartford and her adopted state include The Craftsman or Industry which can be found outside the main entrance of the A.I. Prince Technical High School; Aenigma, for which she received a prize from the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts; the World War Memorial in Naugatuck; and the war memorial in Windsor.

Aenigma

In 1952 she did a twelve and a half foot bronze portrait bust of Thomas Alva Edison, who did not often sit for things like this. It is now at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C.

At the time of her husband's retirement, Evelyn moved her studio to Cape Cod, where she died in 1954, one of the most respected and honored sculptors in American history. What distinguished Longman from the others was her commitment to monumental public sculpture, an arena usually occupied by men. Although some women of Longman's generation created large-scale works, she was the first who built her career on that basis.

The Future by Evelyn Beatrice Longman

Alexander Calder (1889-1976) was born into an artistic family in Pennsylvania, and was very creative as a child. He studied engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology before enrolling at Art Students League in 1923. Then he worked as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette, and, inspired by a circus performance, Calder started using wire to begin his sculpting career.

When he later went to Paris, Calder came under the influence of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian and Barcelona artist Joan Miró, among others, and soon created his first kinetic sculpture. Marcel Duchamp coined for him the word “mobile.” Not to be outdone, Jean Arp went on to call Calder’s non-kinetic pieces “stabiles.” In 1933, after spending several years in Paris, he and his wife Louisa Cuching James, purchased a dilapidated 18th century farmhouse on eighteen acres of rolling land in Roxbury, Connecticut where they would spend the rest of their lives. Since he had so much space, his sculptures became increasingly monumental. Besides working in the workshop/studio he had at home, he also produced with Segre and Waterbury Iron Works.

His friends have described Calder as a curious, quiet, likeable man whose hands and thoughts were always in motion. He often asked why Art had to be so serious, but he was serious about matters of the world and totally devoid of pretensions. It was that unpretentious nature that was remembered most. Because while Calder’s work can be found around the world in public and private collections, his Roxbury neighbors also became Calder collectors.

Stegosaurus outside the Hartford Atheneum

There are numerous stories from farmers to doctors about “Sandy” coming over to play a few hands of poker and perhaps giving them a piece of his work, be it mobile, twisted wire sculpture, or sketches. More than 17,000 pieces by Calder have been cataloged. After he did a sketch of friend and neighbor playwright Arthur Miller on a wall in the barn, the piece of wallboard was removed and used on the program for one of his plays.

Arthur Miller with Sandy Calder

Calder died in NYC in 1976 but is buried in Roxbury.

Miller also had a home in Roxbury, so he and his third wife, photographer Inge Morath, were regular visitors at the Calders. (Frank Lloyd Wright designed a home for Miller and Marilyn Monroe on the Roxbury property that was never built). There were lots of other creative people populating the area, many of them were Surrealist artists fleeing from the impending war in Europe. Some came to Connecticut because of their friendship with the Calders.

One such couple was Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy.

Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) was born in Paris but raised in Brittany. After his service in WWI, Tanguy returned to Paris where, in spite of his lack of training, he became a painter. He met André Breton and his circle of Surrealists in 1925, became part of the group, and had his first solo exhibition just two years later.

Yves Tanguy by Man Ray

Kay Sage (1898-1963) was born in Albany to a prosperous state senator and traveled throughout Europe. She took courses at Corcoran Art School in DC, and later studied drawing and painting in Rome. In 1937 she moved to Paris where she was inspired by the Surrealists. She was taken with Tanguy’s work from the moment she saw it, as was he with hers, and they fell in love.
At the start of World War II, Sage and Tanguy moved from Paris to the United States, and in 1940, Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy married in Nevada before returning to NY. After visiting the Calders in Roxbury, they eventually settled in Woodbury, Connecticut for the remainder of their lives.

Kay Sage

First they rented a place on the Woodbury town green before finding a place north of town. It was called Town Farm and was, in fact, the old “poor house.” Kay continued to use the "Town Farm" moniker on her stationary. They fixed up the barn into two separate studios, as they did not work together. He was a wild, passionate man, who always painted while wearing a necktie and kept his studio immaculate. She was more reserved to the point of seeming snobbish to acquaintances, and did not keep her space as neat as her husband’s, but kept the house perfect. Though friendlier, Tanguy was a notorious drunk, at times banging his head against a wall or someone else’s head, as well as verbally abusing his wife.

While in Woodbury, Tanguy and Sage helped fellow Parisian surrealists escape the war, often putting them up in their home. They often hosted parties attended by the Calders, Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Roberto Matta, Arshile Gorky, Hans Richter, André and Rose Masson, and others.

Kay Sage with Andre Breton

Tanguy died unexpectedly in 1955 from a cerebral hemorrhage and Kay became a recluse. Her last painting was titled The Answer Is No, featured blank canvases on easels. She attempted suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills in 1959 and then again in 1963, still grieving and partially blinded by a botched cataract surgery, she shot herself in the heart.

The Answer is No

In a suicide note, she wrote, “The first painting by Yves that I saw, before I knew him, was called I’m Waiting for You. I’ve come. Now he’s waiting for me again — I’m on my way.”

Multiplication of Arcs by Yves Tanguy

Her ashes, as well as Yves’, were spread along the coast of Brittany, France by friend Paul Matisse.

As mentioned above, Ashile Gorky and his wife Agnes (usually called Mougoush) also moved to the area. Gorky (1902- 1948) was born in Armenia amid the ethnic cleansing by the Turks. His family escaped starvation and was able to emigrate to the US in 1920. Actually his name was Vosdanig Adoian, which he changed when he arrived in America. He eventually settled in New York City, and enrolled at the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central School of Art. Despite having some formal art training, Gorky was essentially self-taught, and obtained most of his education through visits to museums and galleries, and reading art books and magazines. By doing so, Gorky became familiar with avant-garde European art.

In 1941 Gorky married Agnes Magruder, who was twenty years his junior and had two daughters. As the Surrealists arrived from Europe, Gorky was in a position to get to know many of the leading artists. Isamu Noguchi introduced Ashile to André Breton in 1944, making his entry into the circle of Surrealists official. Gorky enjoyed a string of exhibitions and sales to important collectors such as Paul Hirshorn and Peggy Guggenheim, amid critical praise.

After Khorkom

Organization

As early as 1942, Ashile and Mougoush visited other artists in Connecticut, such as Hope Skillman and Saul Schary (both artists) at their home in New Milford. In 1945 they moved to Roxbury, where they stayed in David Hare’s house while he was away. Then they moved in with architect Henry Hebbeln and his wife, Jean in Sherman, where they converted a barn on the property into a studio for him. The renovation of the Glass House was the subject of an article in Life magazine titled “Old House Made New,” which included photographs of the Gorky and his family in the interior.

Tragedy struck when the studio burned to the ground, destroying most of the artist's work. And then just one month later, the artist was diagnosed with colon cancer, eventually undergoing a colostomy, which devastated his physical and emotional well-being.

Agnes Gorky

It was soon discovered that Agnes was involved in an affair with Gorky's friend, Chilean-born artist, Roberto Matta, which led to the couple's subsequent breakup and Agnes moving away with the children. Shortly after, Gorky was involved in a car accident when the New York gallery owner Julien Levy, who was driving under the influence of alcohol, brought the artist home. Gorky suffered a fractured back and neck and was put in an enormous leather neck-brace that held his head up. Shattered physically, emotionally, and spiritually, betrayed by or estranged from everyone he most loved, Gorky retreated to his house, where he hung himself from the rafters of the barn on July 21, 1948. His parting phrase was written in chalk on a crate: "Goodbye, my loveds."

Betrothal I

He is buried in a small cemetery on a grassy hill next to a church in Sherman.

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art, was born in Hartford where his mother took him to art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum. After receiving his degree from Syracuse University in 1949, LeWitt traveled to Europe where he was exposed to the Old Masters. He served in the Army (doing posters) during the Korean War then moved to New York City in 1953. He studied at the School of Visual Arts while also pursuing his interest in design at Seventeen magazine, where he did paste-ups, mechanicals, and photostats. He became a graphic designer in the office of architect I.M. Pei as well as working as a security guard and clerk in the bookstore at the Museum of Modern Art.

LeWitt taught at several New York schools, including New York University, Cooper Union, MOMA Art School, and the School of Visual Arts, during the late 1960s. He spent the 1980s in Italy before returning to the United States and made Chester, Connecticut, his primary residence. He died at age 78 in New York from cancer complications.

LeWitt looking over installation at the Whitney

Sol LeWitt

LeWitt conceived more than twelve hundred wall drawings ranging from pencil lines on white walls to complex geometric patterns painted in vibrant colors. Most serious art museums during his lifetime commissioned one of his signature Wall Drawings, sometimes painted by LeWitt with help from others, sometimes painted by others. Highly decorative and accessible, LeWitt's Wall Drawings ranged from simple stripes to complex patterns of grids, cubes, arcs, curves, and lines, usually in bright primary colors.
One of the beauties of LeWitt's Wall Drawings is that, since they are designed to be temporary and applied by hands other than the artist's, museums, galleries, and collectors can always paint over them if they need the wall and then have them re-painted at another time without destroying their authenticity.