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New Butler exhibits
By SEAN BARRON
Artists Stobart, Cole at Butler
Gallery
YOUNGSTOWN
When Hannah Moses conducts tours as a docent for the Butler Institute of American Art, a central focus is always a famous Robert W. Vonnoh painting.
“We talk about color, the landscape itself, and the texture,” said Moses, of Hermitage, Pa., a librarian for the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. “There’s so much to talk about with children and adults.”
Moses was at the Butler on Sunday, in part to see “In Flanders Field — Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow,” an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1890 by Vonnoh, widely considered one of the pioneers of American Impressionism.
The Butler, 524 Wick Ave. on the city’s North Side, acquired the work after Joseph G. Butler, the museum’s founder, bought it in 1919. It’s the centerpiece of the “Robert Vonnoh, American Impressionist” exhibition, one of three that premiered Sunday.
The exhibition continues through June 27.
The others are photography exhibits by Michael Cole of Kent, and Peter Ralston, who lives in Maine.
Also appreciating “In Flanders Field” was Ginny Hazy of Hubbard, a graphic designer with the Mahoning County public library system who accompanied Moses.
“We have a mutual love of art,” said Hazy, adding that Sunday was the first time she had seen any of Vonnoh’s other works, including a self portrait he painted in 1900. “He’s at the forefront of Impressionism in America.”
The touring Vonnoh exhibition, which features several dozen of his creations, is in conjunction with the Madron Gallery in Chicago.
“In Flanders Field” was painted in the fields of Grez-sur-Loing, France, and has a look of innocence, with a young woman in the foreground ready to pick poppies and two female figures in the background. The scene, however, belies the fact that the field was the site of several battles and casualties.
A poem about the painting reads in part:
“We are the dead. Short days ago
we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
loved and were loved and now we die
in Flanders’ fields.”
Patrons also were treated to a lecture and guided tour by John Stobart, an 80-year-old British artist internationally known for his detailed ships and maritime scenes — dozens of which have been at the Butler since the Stobart exhibition opened last March.
Stobart told his audience of about 50 that he performed poorly academically as a youngster, but developed a love for drawing around age 6. Stobart’s early creativity persuaded his father to enroll him in the Derby College of Art in 1946, Stobart recalled.
The guided tour consisted of Stobart’s sharing the inspiration and ideas behind many of his maritime and earlier works, one of which was a perspective painting of a series of buildings on a curvy European street.
One later painting, titled “San Francisco, The Deserted Ships of the Gold Rush in 1849,” shows 19th-century ships in the harbor, as well as an element the city is famous for.
“I wanted to put the fog in because I didn’t want to paint the whole city,” Stobart said to laughter.
Other locations that served as settings for his very detailed ships, oceans, harbors and docks include the Grand Teton mountains; Sacramento, Calif.; the Delaware River near Philadelphia; Boston Harbor; Pittsburgh and Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Another exhibit was several photographs by Cole, most of which were taken in Kent as well as Leelanau County, Mich., where Cole and his wife, Maureen visit each summer. Others were shot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Cole said.
Cole also shoots and magnifies common objects closer to home, such as an inverted mushroom in his yard that, close up, looks like a series of white undulations. In one titled “In Medias Res” (in the middle), Cole aimed his camera up and snapped a convergence of the tops of several trees with fall foliage at a park near his home.
Cole, who’s been photographing for 10 to 15 years, also has degrees in writing, and enjoys poetry, he said.
“[Photography] is a second love, but is becoming a first love very quickly,” he added.
Also exhibited were portraits by Peter Ralston, a photographer from Maine whose works have appeared in numerous publications, including The National Geographic.