Lightning Strikes in Cooperstown

We've had some turbulent weather lately here in upstate New York, and every once in a while, when it thunders and lightnings, I think of Jimmy Litz.

James C. Litz was born in Buffalo, New York in 1948. He graduated from high school in the late 1960s, but never had a chance to enter a trade or begin a career. At the age of eighteen he was drafted into the Army to serve in Vietnam. Jimmy served with Company D of the 7th Air Cavalry, the same unit, he noted, that General George Armstrong Custer lost at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Jimmy left Oakland on his nineteenth birthday and arrived in Vietnam at 1 am the next day. He spent his tour of duty with a machine gun unit in the jungles along the South China Sea coast. Here's a photo Jimmy later sent me of himself (on the right) with a buddy, Leo Parker of Dallas, Texas.

Returning to civilian life was extremely difficult. Jimmy recalled that it was impossible for him to take orders from anyone in authority, and so he moved from job to job and turned to alcohol to escape what he saw as a ruined life. His family helped whenever they could, asking Jimmy to do odd jobs that even included entertaining his nephews. At one such babysitting gig, in the early 1980s, he decided to draw some pictures in pencil and have the boys color them. Jimmy enjoyed drawing so much that he bought paints and began to create lively, colorful versions of his sketches.

Jimmy became well known as a folk artist in Buffalo thanks to a local gallery owner and artist, Tony Sisti, and even got some words of encouragement from Will Moses, the grandson of Grandma Moses. But it was a fateful day in 1986 that will forever remain in my mind when I think of Jimmy.

It was mid-afternoon on August 2, and Jimmy and his wife Beverly were enjoying a trip to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. All of a sudden a violent storm kicked up, with torrential rain, high winds, and frightful lightning. Several blocks away from their car, Jimmy and Beverly ran for their lives to the nearest house and frantically knocked on the door to be let in.

The house they entered happened to be the home of Louis C. and Agnes Halsey Jones, pioneering scholars in the field of American folk art. Lou, of course, was the retired Director of our museum, and had formed our great folk art collection in the 1940s and 1950s. Jimmy thoroughly charmed the Joneses, and neither party could believe their luck. Before long, Jimmy was at the Fenimore Art Museum with a portfolio of paintings and we had his work in the permanent collection. I show two of his works here: The Buffalo Bisons War Memorial Stadium from 1987 and Birds, Butterflies, and Survival from 1990. I got to know Jimmy well over the ensuing years, and even visited him in Buffalo. His health began to fail in 2000, when he had to stop painting, and he died of complications from diabetes in 2009.

Jimmy was one of the nicest, most upbeat people I've ever met. He reveled in his life as an artist, saying that painting was "the only real time I am able to communicate what's going on inside my head." Judging from his beautiful paintings, he had negotiated a peace with the world that served everyone well. And judging from the lightning storm, he may well have had someone else looking out for him.

A Split Personality Hotel sign

Here’s an interesting tidbit from our institutional history. Back in 1950 when the Fenimore Art Museum acquired the folk art collection of Jean and Howard Lipman, included in the many masterpieces that came our way was a phenomenal stone tavern sign. The piece, about 38 inches wide, was carved in 1816 out of unpolished marble to advertize the hotel of John Williams Jr. in Ashland, Massachusetts. It is two-sided, and features a vignette of an Indian hunting deer on one side and a stylized eagle (adapted from the Great Seal of the United States) on the other. Masonic symbols along the bottom of both sides indicate the hotel’s use as a temple for the local lodge.

The eagle is of particular interest; it is really one of the most elegantly rendered symbols of the young American Republic to be found anywhere. Our then-Director Louis C. Jones liked it so much that he made it the logo for our parent organization, the New York State Historical Association, sometime in the 1950s. When I first came here in the 1980s it was still in use as a logo on all of our stationery.

But one day I noticed something odd. On the sign itself, the head of the eagle face the bundle of arrows in the eagle’s claw. On the stationery, it faced the olive branch in the other claw. By the mid-1980s this had been corrected, as you can see in the images here. Everyone seemed to chalk it up to a printer’s error, a misinterpretation of the original sign.

What is particularly interesting is that the original Great Seal (adopted in 1782) features the eagle facing the olive branch, but still clutching the arrows in the other claw, indicating a peaceful country that was fully prepared to defend its new-found liberty. The carver of the Williams hotel sign, working in the era immediately following the War of 1812, chose to (or was asked to) emphasize the warrior side of the eagle’s dual personality by having it face the arrows.

One day I mentioned this to Lou Jones, who was quite old by that time but still sharp as a tack mentally and every bit the Merry Prankster he had always been. He told me, chuckling, ‘Oh yes, the hotel sign. Back in the 60s we turned the head to face the olive branch as a silent protest against the Vietnam War. We never told the trustees.” Lou’s protest had an extended life, lasting at least a decade longer than the war it quietly spoke out against.

The face only a folklorist could love

Portrait painters always strive to make their subjects beautiful, but sometimes they have so little to work with that there is no hiding the unfortunate physical traits that the sitters were born with. This portrait of a young boy is perhaps the most startling example in the Fenimore Art Museum collection. Painted about 1860, and measuring about 24” x 20”, he has to be the homeliest kid I have ever seen committed to canvas. The palette and composition don’t help, either. Painted in drab tones and standing on a non-descript Victorian chair, the painting just couldn’t be duller.


And yet, more compelling. Everyone who sees this likeness is drawn to it. The reaction is instantaneously emotional. Maybe out of pity; I'm not sure.

One of the conundrums about this piece is the question of how and why it entered our collection. We know from its accession number that it came to us in 1948, along with a group of folk art pieces acquired from the estate of Modernist sculptor Elie Nadelman. I blogged about the Nadelman acquisition in a post for the Fenimore Art Museum Blog some time ago, but I’ll briefly relate the story here.

The gist of it is that our former Director, Louis C. Jones, and our great benefactor, Stephen C. Clark, went to Riverdale-on-Hudson to view the estate in 1948. There was an entire house full of folk art; hundreds of pieces. Clark asked Jones if he could choose any 12, which ones would they be? Jones took some time and made his picks, to which Clark replied “I agree with you on 11 of them. Let’s buy 13.”

Given what I know about the respective tastes of Dr. Jones and Mr. Clark, I’m guessing that this boy was the one piece Clark would not have put on his list. Lou Jones, however, saw the qualities in this picture that art connoisseurs could not. Without strong colors or patterns or important details or evidence of masterful technique, this painting captures the personality of a child in ways that much better works don’t.

So what’s the lesson? You have to be open-minded enough to see these works through the eyes of people who are not necessarily art historians. Jones was a folklorist; he saw in this piece a forthright representation of the tastes and values of ordinary people. Clark, for his part, respected Jones' taste and conceded the choice.

The other lesson? Sometimes 13 can be a lucky number.

Fireside in Virginia: An Excellent Adventure

I found out through a Google Alert for the Fenimore Art Museum that one of the artists in our folk art collection recently received a posthumous honor. Queena Stovall (1887 - 1980) was inducted into the Library of Virginia’s Women in History program in late March, joining a distinguished group of honorees from politics, business, and the arts.

The notice brought back memories of an offbeat and inspired trip in the Spring of 1995. We had received word that several important Queena Stovall paintings were to be auctioned at a small gallery in her hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. I had always wanted one of her detailed and colorful paintings for the collection, at least since I first heard about her in the Cooperstown Graduate Program when I took the acclaimed folk art course taught by Louis C. and Agnes Halsey Jones. They knew her well, and had visited her in Virginia during their trip across the United States documenting folk art in the early 1970s. We had even had an exhibition of her work at the Fenimore Art Museum in 1974 (she brought a huge baked Virginia ham to the opening!) and one of our graduate students, Claudine Weatherford, had written her thesis and a book on Queena.

The question was how to get to Lynchburg. When I mentioned the auction to Aggie Jones, then Lou’s widow, the look of excitement and adventure on her face was palpable. She not only wanted to go, but she offered to drive us to Virginia in the Jones’ van: the very one that took them across the US more than 20 years before!

I wish I could describe the look on the auctioneer’s face when we pulled up to the gallery in the old van and asked to hook up to the gallery’s power supply. Bemused? Or simply confused? At any rate, Aggie charmed her way into free electricity and we were there in plenty of time for the auction.

The painting I wanted was “Fireside in Virginia,” (done in 1950 and measuring 18” x 24”) clearly the best and most evocative of the lot. It depicts two women (including Queena’s daughter Judy and her friend) raising their skirts by the fire to warm themselves on a chilly November day. I managed to get the painting for $25,000, just about what I was authorized to spend.

What I didn’t expect was the next item on the block, a pair of fireplace andirons the artist made of the two girls lifting their skirts! How could I resist? The auctioneer made a plea for my bid, knowing that these andirons simply had to go with the painting, and I obliged, getting the andirons for about $900. Afterward, the “Aggie Wagon” managed to get us back safely to Cooperstown, ending a delightful and memorable adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Years later, Queena’s daughter Judy visited us in the museum and saw the painting with the andirons on display. Honestly, she didn’t look any older than when she was painted by her mother nearly 50 years before. She told me, “if you reproduce those andirons every Southern woman would want a pair. We still warm ourselves that way.”