“This was found among the papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker.” So began one of America’s favorite ghost stories. The setting is on the Eastern shore of the Hudson River, in a town named Tarrytown. Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was one of his 34 essays and short stories published in 1820 in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, (a pseudonym). Many artists have illustrated the famous tale and have done Washington Irving credit. 

Ichabod Crane was from Connecticut, and he “tarried” in Sleepy Hollow for a while to teach in the school and give music lessons. The title character in the print “Ichabod Crane” (1892) (unknown artist) was according to Irving “tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.” Like his creator, Ichabod was well read and delighted with the local tales of witches, ghosts, and goblins. 

Ichabod Crane also fell in love with the daughter of the wealthy Dutch land owner. Katrina is described by Irving as “a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations.” “Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel” (1928), by the famous English book-illustrator Arthur Rackham, has captured Irving’s characters perfectly. Katrina is dressed in a manner to show her beauty, described by Irving as wearing a “tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat.” Rackham has dressed her and posed her as the perfect coquette. The gangly Ichabod, wearing an ill-fitting suit and large buckled shoes, is charmed.

Rackham’s illustration of the story includes the gnarled and twisted trees of Sleepy Hollow that frightened Crane as he walked home at night. In the daylight these things were not on his mind. However, Rackham included them in this daylight scene and added to the scene a few nasty goblins and a wicked looking bird. Irving wrote that Ichabod “would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was—a woman.” 

The woman in question was Katrina Van Tassel, not only beautiful but an heiress to the vast fortune of her father Baltus Van Tassel. The fortune also interested Ichabod. At a harvest party at the Van Tassel’s home, Ichabod decided to make his move. At the end of the party, he sought out Katrina, and they had a discussion that Irving does not disclose. “The Courtship in Sleepy Hollow” (1868) (Parian ceramics) (14’’x12’’x7’’) was made by the American sculptor John Rogers (1829-1904). The couple is seated on a Dutch settle. Ichabod’s hat is hung at the back. The ungainly suitor holds Katrina’s right hand, and appears to be proposing. A contemporary writer described Katrina’s look as “a mixture of coquettish shrewdness and real good nature.” Katrina holds onto her pet cat with her left hand, and the viewer is left to decide which is more important: her cat or Crane. Irving writes, “Something, however…must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen.”

From his childhood, Rogers always was interested in literary themes from Shakespeare to Dickens, Robinson Crusoe, Frair Tuck, and Pocahontas. “The Courtship in Sleepy Hollow” is the first surviving work based on literary themes. Rogers had thought about making a Sleepy Hollow sculpture as early as 1862, when the story was published. However, the artist F.O.A. Darley’s illustrations in 1849 were so popular that Rogers said, “I am afraid I can make nothing very original out of it.” Six years later, he chose to carve the wooing scene. Rogers created 85 different sculpture groups in his thirty-year career. His sculptures were internationally popular, and they were made into plaster casts numbering somewhere between 80 and 100 thousand. Many American and European homes contained a Rogers work, including the home of President Abraham Lincoln.

“Ichabod Encounters the Headless Horseman” (1849) (hand-colored print) by Felix Octavius Carr Darley was the start of his long successful career. Darley, a self-trained artist was commissioned by the American Artists Union to illustrate The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The prints were so popular with the public that a system of mail-order subscriptions was offered for the hand-colored lithographs. Darley’s career lasted 50 years, and he was commissioned to draw illustrations of many American writers’ work. 

Ichabod Crane had a rival for Katrina’s affections: Abraham van Brunt. Irving describes him as “broad-shouldered and double jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage.”

Irving tells of Ichabod’s ride home on an old horse named Gunpowder: “The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal.” Ichabod encountered an imposing figure in black, carrying a pumpkin. 

 

“The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane” (1858) (27’’x34’’) is the work of John Quidor (1801-1881), an American artist from Tappan, New York. There are 35 extant paintings by Quidor, mostly depicting scenes from Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and a story by James Fenimore Cooper. Quidor was trained in New York by painter John Wesley Jarvis, but most of Quidor’s work was painting banners, decorating steamboats and New York fire engines. 

“The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane” picks up the story as Ichabod tries several ways to escape the dark rider, but his horse was not up to it, and the dark rider kept apace. Quidor’s painting aptly depicts Ichabod’s situation. Ichabod’s horse Gunpowder “seemed possessed with a demon.” Irving continues, “The girths of the saddle gave way, and Ichabod felt it slipping from under him. He had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck when the saddle fell to the earth.” The bridge that led to the church was in sight and, as the legend said, the headless horseman could not cross the bridge. Ichabod looked over his shoulder, but the horseman did not vanish. Instead, he stood up in his stirrups and threw his head at Ichabod. The pumpkin hit his head and “he tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider passed by like a whirlwind.” 

Ichabod’s saddleless horse was found eating grass at his owner’s gate. Irving continues: “After diligent investigation they came upon the saddle trampled in the dirt. The tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered.” 

The mystery was never solved. However, Irving opined, “The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means.”

Note: All quotes from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from Created for Lit2Go on the web at etc.usf.edu

Happy Halloween.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Teresita Fernandez was born in Miami in 1968. Her Cuban parents and relatives came to American in 1959 after the Castro takeover.  Fernandez spent much of her childhood learning from her aunts and grandmother, who had been highly skilled couture seamstresses in Havana. She received a BFA from Florida International University in 1990 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992. Her art is inspired by the geological structure of the landscape, the natural phenomena of storms, fires, and hurricanes, as well as history and culture.

“Bamboo Cinema” (2001) was commissioned during the second year of the project to revitalize Madison Square Park in New York City. The work consisted of plexiglass tubes of different diameters and heights up to 8 feet that were silk-screened in bright colors of greens and yellows. The tubes were embedded in concrete in concentric circles. As visitors walked through the circles, their experience constantly changed. The bamboo-like poles acted as a shutter in an early movie camera, giving the appearance of flickering, thus the title of the work. The installation used both the landscape and the experience of watching early films. 

The Madison Square Park revitalization project has continued since 2000, and it has included such artists as Maya Lin, Alison Saar, and in 2023 Shahzia Sikander. Fernandez returned to Madison Square Park in 2016 with “Fata Morgana,” a 500-foot-long sculpture consisting of six sections. Hundreds of mirror-polished metal discs with perforated patterns suggesting foliage were suspended like a canopy over the park pathways. Fernandez’s title came from the Latin phrase meaning mirage, and it referenced Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s half-sister who possessed magical powers. 

Fernandez said, “I see the park as a system of arteries reflecting and distorting urban life. It [“Fata Morgana”] will reflect the landscape on a grand scale, as your own reflections are seen from above and are shaped by other people and by the environment. It takes the whole park and unifies it. Like a horizontal band, it becomes a ghostlike installation that both alters the landscape and radiates golden light. It also will be a visual barometer of what changes around it during different seasons and times of day.”  Over 10 million people have walked under its canopy.

“Fata Morgana” was the largest public art project placed in Madison Square Park. Fernandez’s piece inspired the Madison Square Park Conservancy to create a partnership with the Ford Foundation to organize the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium. Latinx artists, museum directors, curators, educators, and others gathered to discuss the omission of Latin artists from art institutions. The Whitney Museum of American Art hired the first curator for Latinx art as a result of the Symposium.

 

Fernandez’s works present her visualization of the elements of nature. She explored the image of water in a 2009 commission titled “Stacked Water” that covered 3,100 square feet of wall with blue cast aluminum strips. “Drawn Water” (2009) (121”x43”x86”) consists of a steel armature made to flow downward like a waterfall. Machined graphite rocks provide an image of the water flowing into a river. On a long wall behind “Drawn Water,” “Epic I” (2009) (131.5”x 394”x1”) consisted of 27,000 small pieces of raw mined graphite attached to the wall with magnets. 

 

“Epic I” was inspired by another natural phenomena observed by Fernandez: “It was inspired by a meteor shower. Oftentimes, I use materials that are mined to refer to cosmic references. Graphite is mined, and it is a very lustrous material. It catches the light in a certain way.”

From 2009 until 2017, during the Obama presidency, Fernandez served as the first Latina member of the United States Commission of Fine Arts. Fernandez stated, “I am quietly aware of how my personal history is everywhere in the work. But this manifests itself, like every other reference, very subtly and solemnly, and always unannounced, without being reduced to oversimplified labels or explanatory narratives. That sense of intimacy and subtlety in the work is key for me.”

 

“Hero and Leander” (2011) (49”x21”x66”) is created from handmade colored paper pulp to represent the effect of the Northern Lights. Punched holes are the glittering stars in the night sky. The title was inspired by the Greek myth and the poem by Chrisopher Marlowe. Hero was a virgin priestess of the goddess Aphrodite who Leander saw at a festival, and they fell in love. Leander, using the light Hero placed in the window of her tower, swam the Hellespont night after night to be with her. One night, during a storm, the light went out and Leander drowned. When Hero saw his lifeless body, she drowned herself. The images of the two lovers swirl together as one into the night sky to form the constellation of Hero and Leander. 

This work is from a series Fernandez titled Night Writing that uses mythology and constellations as subjects. The star holes also provide another function. They are in Braille and spell out the names of the constellations. Fernandez references the secret code “Ecriture Nocturne,” used by Napoleon’s troops to communicate silently in the dark, and it was the inspiration for Louis Brail 

“Nocturnal Navigation” (2013) (polyester resin, gold chroming, polished brass rods of variable dimensions) was commissioned by the US Coast Guard for its new headquarters in Washington D.C. The work comprises 300 constellation points, forming a golden star navigation chart on the lobby wall. 

The lobby’s large windows provide light that allows the shadows and colors of the sculpture to change daily and seasonally. Fernandez wanted “to convey a poetic aspect of the Coast Guard, by referencing the vastness of the sea and the heroic, epic qualities of celestial navigation.” 

In 2017, Fernandez directed her attention to fires that scorched parts of the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Samoa, and US territories.  The exhibition titled Fire, United States of America consists of several works. “Fire” (2005) (12’ diameter) (8’ threads of Scalamandre silk woven on steel hoops) was made when Fernandez was exploring water and other elements. In 2017, it became an essential element in this exhibition.

At the left side of the gallery is a relief map in charcoal of the United States.  Using charcoal to create the images, Fernandez reminds the viewer that charcoal is burnt wood.  Each state is represented, and the ghostly shape of Mexico appears on the left side. Around the wall of this gallery, and other galleries that housed the exhibition, Fernandez drew a continuous charcoal horizon line, punctuated by heavy areas of smoke. She spent several days in the gallery drawing this line. 

On the right wall is “Fire (America) 5” (2017) (96”x192”x1.25”) one of several large-scale images of “Fire” created with small ceramic glazed tiles. Other works in the exhibition (not shown here) are titled “Charred Landscape.” 

More recently, Fernandez has explored the phenomena of earthquakes and hurricanes. In 2020, she began a series of images using the women’s names of hurricanes: Maria, Katrina, Poloma, and Teresita. She began to think more about Latino women, and to delve more into her cultural history, while continuing to explore new materials and respond to the issues of today’s world. Fernadez is a thoughtful and relevant artist whose work is commissioned and recognized internationally. 

“What I’m after is a lingering ephemeral engagement, slow, quiet and with enough depth, kinesthetically, to be recalled by the viewers after the work is no longer in front of them.” (Teresita Fernandez)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893-1967) brought American art to a new level. His work did not fit into any existing category but was a style of modern art not seen before. He was born in Ashtabula, Ohio, but after his father died in 1898, his mother and he moved to Salem, Ohio. While a junior in high school, he was determined to make a record of all the flowering plants in the area. Constantly sketching and painting, he kept a journal of his thoughts and ideas. He said he was “gathering the material for a lifetime.” He was valedictorian at his high school class graduation in 1911. His interest in art was well established by that time. After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Art in1916, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the National Academy of Design in New York City. He left the Academy one day after attending a life drawing class, and he returned to Ohio.

Burchfield drew upon recollections of life in eastern Ohio: “There gradually evolved the idea of recreating impressions of that period, the appearance of houses, the feelings of woods and fields, memories of seasonal impressions….” “Song of the Katydid on an August Morning” (1917) (18’’x22’’) (watercolor, gouache, colored chalk, pastels) is one of the 400 watercolors and drawings Burchfield would complete over the next few years.  He later called this period his “Golden Years.” An accomplished artist, Burchfield was equally at ease with traditional landscape, still-life, and portrait subjects, but landscape was his principal choice. His sensitivity to the sounds of nature, the poetry he heard and felt, the colors that sprung to life in his mind, and the emotions he felt, shaped his uniquely personal style. 

Writing in his journals and on the backs of his paintings, he offers the viewer insight into his work. “Song of the Katydid on an August Morning” depicts, in his words, “a stagnant August morning during the drought season, as the pitiless sun mounts into the mid-morning sky, and the insect chorus commences, the katydids and locusts predominating. Their monotonous, mechanical, brassy rhythms soon pervade the whole air, combining with the heat waves of the sun, and saturating trees and houses, and sky.” 

 

“Cricket Chorus in the Arbor” (1917) (22’’x17.5’’) (watercolor, brush and ink, wax crayon) is typical of Burchfield’s work. He was primarily a watercolorist, but he added other media for effect.  He described his choice of watercolor in his journals: “I like to be able to advance and retreat just like a man writing a book. I doubt that very few of them ever sit down and leave a paragraph as it first comes into their head. They work over it, delete things and add things. Well, I feel that I like to do that just as they do. Or as a composer does. I mean you start a picture and I don’t know how it is going to turn out. I think I know what I want to do but, when I put it down it’s not right and it’s got to be changed. I have to find out where the idea wants to go.” 

Burchfield knew and recognized the sounds of various insects and developed a type of artistic shorthand to define those sounds: “I noticed the brilliant yellow sunlight at noon–following a clear morning–a solitary katydid, at times, while at noon the cicadas charm me. Crickets are notorious for chirping nonstop in the evenings.” 

Burchfield painted the same subject over and over, each time changing the image to create another interpretation of that same subject. He described “The Insect Chorus” (1917) (20’’x16’’) (opaque and transparent watercolor, graphite, and crayon): “It is late Sunday afternoon in August. A child stands alone in the garden listening to the metallic sounds of insects. They are all his world, so, to his mind, all things become saturated with their presence–crickets lurk in the depths of the grass, the shadows of the trees conceal fantastic creatures, and the boy looks with fear at the black interior of the arbor, not knowing what terrible thing might be there.” Burchfield said ‘‘terrible things that might be there’’ perhaps because of the recent discovery that mosquitoes transmitted yellow fever and malaria. 

The trees and ferns are drooping as a result of the sweltering heat; their colors are dull green and beige, and their black trunks and branches are distorted. The rounded arbor is a sickly yellow-green, and the entrance to the arbor is a black hole. The V-shapes are the jumping crickets. Burchfield wrote that the crickets’ chirping is a ”high shrill pin-point cricket chorus.” 

Burchfield served in the US Army’s camouflage unit, using his painting skills to hide tanks and artificial hills. He was honorably discharged in 1919. He designed wall paper at M.H. Birge & Sons from 1921 until 1928.  He married in 1922, had five children, and lived in West Seneca, New York until his death in 1967. Life Magazine named him one of America’s 10 greatest painters in 1926. Beginning in 1929, he was represented by the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York City.  Commissions, sales, and teaching positions in several universities supported his family from 1928 onward.  Election in 1954 to the National Academy of Design in New York was among the many acknowledgements he received during his career.

 

He wrote about “Wild Geese and Poplars” (1956) (39’’x26.5’’) (watercolor) in his journal on October 18,1956: “About mid-morning a flight of wild-geese going straight south–As they passed by the poplar trees an extra hard puff of wind scattered leaves over the sky–The sight and sound of wild geese affects me in a way that is hard to understand–My heart begins to pound, and breathing is difficult–It is an elemental event.” Popular trees lined one side of his garden. He worked on the sky for most of the day, but he recognized that the “wild geese cannot be put in without disturbing the sky–which is more important?” He made at least two versions of the subject. The subject would seem to be a simple one, but with only a few strokes of his brush, Burchfield captured the essence of this moment in time.

The Charles E. Burchfield Center at Buffalo State College was opened in his honor in1966.  His paintings can be found in over 109 museums in the United States and Europe. Burchfield’s watercolors are his distinctive response to nature through all seasons of the year: “Often I say to myself, ‘This is the best time of the year.’ I say it every day the year thru. And it is true. Every season is the best. I cannot conceive of a true lover of nature despising winter but liking summer or vice versa.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

If you were born in the month of August, your flower is the gladiola. It symbolizes strength of character, victory, and pride. It was named after the gladius, the sword used by Roman legions and gladiators, because of the flower’s tall stalk and the pointed petals. The gladius had a sharp pointed blade, 30 to 33 inches long, double-sided and two inches wide, and two pounds in weight. It was excellent for the close hand-to-hand combat. 

“Bouquet of Gladiolas, Lilies, and Daisies” (1878) (32.5’’ x 24.5’’) is by Claude Monet. He moved with his wife and son to Vetheuil, a small village 37 miles from Paris because he could not afford to live in Paris. His flower paintings appealed to a wider audience. From 1878 until 1881, his reputation grew and his commercial success increased with the backing of Parisian art dealer George Petit, who brought Monet’s work to the attention of the Parisian art market. 

The red and white gladiolas are placed with an unruly bunch of daisies to create a casual bouquet. Two white lilies center the composition. The white oriental vase and the colorful patched cloth on the table add to the rich color palette of the canvas. Monet’s choice of soft blue for the wall behind the vase and bouquet has a calming effect. Complementing the colors and shapes of the flowers and greenery, the round vase has two handles and two visible feet, and it is decorated simply with the colors in the painting.

“Vase with Red Gladiolas’’ (1886) (26’’x16’’) is by Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh had the opportunity in 1886 to see the fifth Exposition Internationale of works by the Impressionists. His first impression was the works were “careless, ugly, badly painted,” but by the autumn of 1886, he wrote, “I have much admired certain Impressionist pictures–Degas, nude figures–Claude Monet, landscapes.” Although the two never met, Monet’s landscape “Tulip Fields” (1886), in the Exposition, is considered to have been a strong influence on Van Gogh’s work. The intense color of the tulips, painted with a thick impasto, were very different from Van Gogh’s then current style that followed Dutch painting, with its realism and earth tones. 

The colors, including those of the red gladiolas, are potent, and the brush work is vigorous. Van Gogh’s red gladiolas, symbols of the intense passion and strength of the gladiator, are powerful. In the rich green background, the two complementary colors red and green, have been used to best advantage. The green and white pattern of the vase, the pop of white flowers, the brick wall, and the rich wood tones of the table, would become the style that made Van Gogh famous.

 

 

If you were born between August 22 and September 21, your Native American Totem Animal is the bear. The bear is the guardian of the West. Bears are symbols of strength, vitality, courage, and health, to name a few. Bears are considered the ultimate protectors, and many tribes always carry the bear symbol to keep the powerful spirit of the bear with them. One example is the Zuni Bear Totem (3.35’’x 1.5’’), a fetish carved by Bernard Homer, Jr., grandson of a famous Zuni fetish carver and follower of a long tradition of carvers. 

The bear carries a medicine bundle with turquoise, coral, a mussel shell arrow head. The bear has inlaid coral eyes. Turquoise, a popular stone with Native Americans and with ancient cultures around the world, brings good luck. Its bright blue color is the color of a clear sky. Coral has a long history as a symbol of the ocean. To native Americans it represents the lifeblood of Earth Mother. Coral and turquoise represent the unity of the earth and water. A valued food source, mussels live in both fresh and salt water. Mussels were a part of the sacred water world. The arrowhead represents courage and determination, important human characteristics for a successful hunt.

The bear has been a symbol in ancient cultures such as China, India, and Greece. The constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, also known as the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper or the Big Bear and the Little Bear, combined are the largest constellation in the northern sky. In the Greek myth of Callisto,

Zeus, married to Hera, had a roving eye and seduced many beautiful women. When Hera discovered his relationship with the nymph Callisto, she changed Callisto into a bear made to roamed the earth and hunted for 15 years.  Johann Wilhelm Baur’s etching “Callisto Hunted by Arcas” (1639) (Metamorphosis,1639) depicts the conclusion of the myth. By chance, Callisto’s son Arcas came upon her in the forest, and not recognizing her, drew his sword to kill the bear. Zeus, seeing this from above, swept down as a whirlwind and set them in the sky as the constellations Ursa Major and Minor. Callisto could watch over her son forever.

One of a bear’s most important strengths was its nurturing and protective nature. The Chippewa, Creek, Algonquian, Huron, Hopi, Cheyenne, and others tell several versions of the bear’s nurturing and supernatural healing powers. The tales tell of the bear’s mysterious power to heal itself and to teach others how to heal. Bears are considered spirit guides, and they are closely related to tribal shamans and figure in long-practiced rituals. 

 

The cartoon by political cartoonist Clifford Berryman was first seen in the Washington Post on November 16, 1902. He was inspired by newspaper stories about President Theodore Roosevelt, a well-known big game hunter. While on a bear hunt, he could not find a bear to shoot. Some of the men with him found a young black bear and tied it up for the kill. Roosevelt refused to shoot it, to do so was unsportsmanlike. Berryman’s cartoon caught the attention of Morris Michtom, a toymaker. With the President’s approval, he started selling “Teddy Bears.” Roosevelt created the United States Forest Service, five National Parks, and conserved over 230 million acres of land.

The story of bears continued in the London Evening News in 1925, as a children’s Christmas story with writer A.A. Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepherd. Milne bought a teddy bear for his son Christopher Robin Milne for Christmas from Herod’s Department Store in London. Christopher named his bear Winnie after a Canadian black bear he saw at the London Zoo. The Canadian black bear was a gift from Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, who purchased the cub while in Canada on his way to England during the First World War. He named the bear ‘Winnie” after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg. Winnie, a female bear, was a popular attraction. Pooh was the name of Christoper’s friend’s swan. Winnie the Pooh was drawn by Ernest Howard Shepherd, an illustrator at Punch Magazine. His drawing was inspired by his son’s teddy bear named Growler. The book Winnie-the-Pooh was first published in 1926.

The book A Bear Called Paddington first appeared on October 13, 1958. The book was written by British author Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum. Bond was inspired by a solitary teddy bear on a shelf in a bookstore near Paddington Station on Christmas Eve1956. He bought it for his wife. The inspiration for the story came during his observation of Jewish refugee children and London children who were sent to the country for safety during World War II. The children wore signs saying “Please look after this child.” Bond wrote the first story in ten days. Peggy Fortnum was commissioned to make black and white drawings for the book.

Peggy Fortnum, born in north London in1919, always wanted to be an artist, and she enrolled in art school in 1939. However, she could not stay out of the War after witnessing the bombing of London in 1940. She was a member of ATS, the women’s branch of the British Army. After a long recovery from a war injury, she returned to art school and went on to became an art teacher, painter, textile designer, and book illustrator. To be as accurate as possible, she went to the London Zoo and sketched and photographed Malayan black bears. “At the beginning, I wasn’t sure of the anatomy,” she wrote. “I wasn’t sure what to do with his paws…It takes an age to get it right.” Bond said of Fortnum, “She thought very highly of Paddington, as I did of her. It was a happy combination.”

In 1942, a Japanese submarine attacked a southern California oil field next to the Los Padres National Forest. The War Advertising Council created a campaign to warn of the dangers of forest fires. On August 9, 1944, Smokey the Bear became the mascot of the U.S. Forest Service. He was drawn by the then popular animal illustrator Albert Staehle, and named after Smokey Joe Ryan, a famous New York City Fire Chief. After a discussion about Smokey’s image needing to be family and child friendly, officials selected the image of gentle bear holding a can of water and putting out a fire. Staehle designed the next two Smokey posters. During his career he drew 25 Saturday Evening Post covers, illustrated for the American Weekly, and created popular animal logos for products. Billboards using his popular animal images could be seen all over America.

Just one more bear story. In the spring of 1950, a fire in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico left a badly burned bear cub clinging to a tree. Firefighters found him and named him Smokey. Smokey was given a home at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and he became a popular resident and a national symbol of conservation and fire safety. When he died in 1976, his remains were taken back to Capitan, New Mexico, and buried in the State Historical Park.  

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

  

 

If you were born in the month of July, your flower is the larkspur. It is the symbol of positivity, dedication, a beautiful spirit, loving bonds, delight, and joy. The painting “Larkspur” (1888) by Henri Fantin-Latour is unusual in that it is a depiction of a vase entirely of larkspur. Fantin-Latour, a French flower painter, was extremely popular with English Victorian art lovers, who gave a symbolic meaning for every flower. The larkspur was introduced to England from Italy in the mid-1500’s, and it became immediately popular.  The flowers bloom on a stalk that is one to three feet tall. Most often the larkspur is used in mixed bouquets to add height. The airy blue-gray foliage is fern-like.

Fantin-Latour has painted the larkspur in three of its four colors. White larkspur represents a happy nature and purity. Purple represents first love, but pink represents a contrary and fickle disposition. As beautifully painted as it was, Fantin-Latour’s bouquet seems to send a conflicting message to a young lady.

The English sprinkled larkspur in the bath as a protection against ghosts, magic, lightning, and to ward off other evils. It was planted around stables in Transylvania to keep witches away. The larkspur’s protective qualities are drawn from various stories and myths. In Greece, after the death of Achilles, the great hero of the Trojan War, his armor was awarded to Ulysses, another hero. Ajax, a third significant hero, was so distressed at not receiving the armor, he committed suicide by throwing himself on his sword. The larkspur flower bloomed where Ajax’s blood dropped onto the ground. In medieval Italy, the larkspur flower first bloomed when three knights slew a fierce dragon, and the flowers sprung up where the knights wiped their bloody swords on the grass. The English name larkspur developed in medieval England. The pointed petals and the pointed center were likened to the claws of the meadowlark, and the spurs of medieval knights. A knight had to “win one’s spurs.” Larkspur, when eaten, is poisonous to humans and animals.

 

#2 “White Rose and Larkspur No.1” (1927) by Georgia O’Keeffe

Whatever meaning the larkspur or rose may have had in Victorian times, Georgia O’Keeffe was not concerned about its meaning in her paintings. She began a series of large flower paintings in 1927. “White Rose and Larkspur No. 1” (1927) was from a series of five with white roses; two of them with Larkspur.

O’Keeffe’s interest was two-fold: to examine the flower closely and to create different compositions with the same objects. “White Rose and Larkspur No. 1” contrasts dark versus light. The five petals of the flower are pointed and its center can be seen. Using the limited palette of blues and whites, O’Keeffe created a striking image.: “So, I said to myself…I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.  I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” At one time she said she hated flowers, but they were great models as they did not move. Nevertheless, she is well-known for her large and gorgeous paintings of flowers. O’Keeffe said, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment, I want to give that world to someone else.”

“Black Hollyhock, Blue Larkspur” (1930) was painted while O’Keeffe was in Taos, New Mexico, a visit she made every summer from 1929 until her husband Alfred Stieglitz died in 1949.  She moved to New Mexico permanently in 1949. O’Keeffe said: “When I was at Mabel’s [Dodge Luhan] at Taos…there was an alfalfa field like a large green saucer. On one side of the field was a path lined with flowers…One day walking down the path I picked a large blackish red hollyhock and some bright dark blue larkspur that immediately went into a painting, and then another painting.” 

The blue larkspur is a symbol of dignity and grace. Raised as a Catholic, O’Keeffe may well have known that blue flowers were symbols of the Virgin Mary.  In art, Mary always is dressed in blue. O’Keeffe carefully details the five petals of each flower and the pistil in the center. The Bible tells of Christ having received five wounds on the cross. In Christian iconography, the larkspur is a reference to Mary’s tears. An American Pawnee tribe story tells of “Dream Woman,” who cut a hole in the sky so she could look down. Pieces of the blue sky fell to the earth and became larkspur.

 

If you were born between July 22 and August 21, your Native American totem animal is the salmon. It is the symbol of determination, strength, perseverance, wisdom, prosperity, and renewal.  Salmon have been a major food source for Native Americans for thousands of years. The fish is revered and celebrated in rituals. Its symbolic characteristics are related to its observable life cycle. Returning each year to spawn in the same location involves swimming a long distance upstream to return home.

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is most famous for his panoramic landscape paintings of the American west. “Salmon Fishing on the Cascapedia River” depicts two buckskinned fishermen steadying a dugout canoe while a third fisherman casts his line far into the lake. He has caught a salmon; its silvery body arches out of the river as it tries to escape the fisherman’s hook. Bierstadt’s landscape includes the peaceful river, autumn leafed birch trees, a forest beyond the lake, and tall mountains in the distance. The clear air and quiet peace of untouched nature is relaxing and reassuring. The Cascapedia River was and is still known as the home of some of the largest Atlantic Salmon on the Gaspe Bay coast of Quebec, Canada.

April White (b.1972) a Haida artist of the Raven Clan was born in Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia in Canada. Her Haida name is SGaana Jaad (Killer Whale Woman). She earned a BSc in geology from the University of British Columbia and became a field geologist in the North American West. While making maps, she began to paint landscape scenes in watercolor. She is self-taught but has a natural talent. “Realm of the Supernatural” displays her skill with watercolor. The top half of the panoramic waterscape depicts a small forested island set in the calm lake. As the lake flows forward, the water becomes supernatural and a fish, decorated in the “formline” style of Haida art, appears.

In the mid-1980’s, White made painting her vocation. She continued to paint realistic landscapes, but she also created paintings that were “formline” to honor her heritage. Formline is two dimensional, compact, and highly organized art. It consists of flowing lines and striking color. The three standard Haida colors are black, red, and green. The fish shape is well defined with attention to facial features, fins, and flippers. Within the fish or other animal, a face with large eyes is often a prominent part of the design. In this piece, the fish includes the image of a woman’s face, her long black hair swirling upward in simple arches. White said, “Haida women are very prominent in Haida stories and myths—understandable given our matrilineal society. So, it was very important for me to develop a representation of the water realm that reflects not only myself being a woman, but as a Haida.”

White’s “Salmon Tale” (2015) (acrylic) was the winner of the 2015 competition sponsored by the Pacific Salmon Foundation to design the Recreational Fisheries Conservation Stamp. The stamp competition began in 1989, and sportfishermen are required to buy it to support salmon fishing in British Columbia as well as other conservation efforts. Since 1989, $7.75 million have been raised to support more than 2,000 community conservation projects. 

White relates the Haida story depicted in “Salmon Tale.”  A young daughter of a powerful chief woke up crying from her dream. She saw a shining, leaping fish unlike any known fish. The village Shaman said, “We have many fish in our Inlet, but none like that. Raven, who lives among the Cedars might know.” Raven traveled far, and when he saw a leaping salmon, he caught it. The salmon was the son of the Salmon Chief. Many salmon tried to catch Raven and Salmon, but Raven returned home with Salmon and placed it before the young girl. The Shaman told the people, “Many salmon will try to rescue this young Salmon. You must weave a huge net to catch all the fish.” When the run of salmon arrived, the people caught enough to feed the village, but spared many. The salmon searched the forest streams and decided to spawn in the shallow beneath a Ts’uu-Cedar Tree. The salmon came back year after year and spawned and the humans honored them. The humans developed a ritual for preparing them to eat, and they placed the fish skeletons back into the water, believing that the Spirit of Salmon would rise again each year and regenerate. 

The salmon in “Salmon Tale” is depicted in the traditional Haida manner: a profile view, mouth open, a large eye, fin and flippers. Inside the salmon, the Raven’s profile head, open mouth, large eye, and feather patterns of both wings depicts the connection and refers to the tale of how Raven brought Salmon to Humans.

In 2016, the Royal Canadian Mint chose White to design a collection of coins for a collector’s series titled Mythical Realm of the Haida, composed of supernatural figures from the realms of water, earth, and sky. The first is a Haida image of Whale with a female head inside. White’s Haida name SGaana Jaad, Killer Whale Woman, was the inspiration. The second coin features Eagle, with a male dancer cloaked in feathers inside, and the third, Black Bear with a child on its lap.  White has also written and illustrated several books. 

“From inspiration through to artistic expression…it’s as if I am experiencing innate memories that connect me deeply to my cultural past. It’s as if my brain is really doing the seeing, not my eyes. The feeling of this cerebral vision is supernatural…magical.” (April White)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.