A chronology and biography prepared by Barker's daughter, Eleanor Barker McCargar, entitled "Biographical Sketch of My Mother"; correspondence, 1890-ca. 1985, including letters from Lucy to her family, some written during her travels abroad, and other family correspondence, letters to Lucy from friends and teachers, among them Philip Hale and Edmund Tarbell; letters to Eleanor regarding her mother; and other miscellaneous correspondence; sketchbooks; color photographs of Barker's paintings; biographical materials; clippings; a photocopy of a catalog for the Portland Society of Art's 1936 annual exhibition,1936; and a video, Lucy Hayward Barker, 1892-1948 : American Impressionist Portrait Painter, by appraiser James B. Byrnes.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter; Maine. An American Impressionist portrait painter, Barker studied with Edmund Tarbell, Philip Hale and Frank Benson at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School. From 1898 to until her marriage to Roy Barker in 1906 she had a studio in Boston. After marriage and motherhood, she resumed her career in 1929 in Presque Isle, Maine.
Provenance:
Donated by Eleanor Barker McCargar, Barker's daughter, 1993-1994. Additions are expected.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
Authorization to publish, quote, or reproduce must be obtained from Lucy H. McCargar-White or Thalia Pearce.
An interview of Reed Kay conducted 1995 December 22-1996 October 4, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art over seven sessions, in Kay's home, in Brookline, Massachusetts.
The cassettes are accompanied by 54 color slides of Kay's artwork executed between 1941 and 1993, including sketches, watercolors, and paintings.
Kay talks about his childhood in an immigrant Jewish community in Boston and the great encouragement he received from teachers and librarians; his entry into the difficult Boston Latin School at age 11; and his early entry into the art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Kay continues discussion about the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School; life-long friendships there with Jason Berger, Jack Kramer, and David Aronson; and instructors, including Karl Zerbe, head of painting.
Kay talks about his service in World War II; completion of education at MFA School; his marriage in 1946; his first teaching position at the MFA School's summer sessions under Mitchell Siporin and Leonard Baskin in 1948 and Oskar Kokoschka in 1949. He discusses Kokoschka and Zerbe as teachers and colleagues; and his travelling fellowship to Paris, Italy, and Spain, 1949-1950.
Kay continues his discussion of Karl Zerbe as a teacher; talks about the difficulty of beginning a painting career and teaching, especially in a university as Kay did from 1956 until 1989; and about various teaching colleagues at the MFA School.
Kay talks about the superb teaching of anatomy by Ture Bengtz and of perspective by Peter Dubaniewicz at MFA School in the early 1940s; on the precocious abilities of upperclassmen such as Conger Metcalf and John Wilson, and the stimulation their accomplishment gave Kay; on his work, from student drawings to his cityscape paintings of the late 1950s, which he continues to make, abandoning figural, narrative, and studio subjects.
Teaching materials and methods of painting at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (summers of 1952 and 1954-1960) and the high quality of instruction and students and his decision to leave; the pluses and minuses of teaching and the toll it took on his own work; his long tenure at the School of Visual Arts, Boston University (1956-1989).
On his writings, principally, "The Painter's Companion: a Basic Guide to Studio Methods and Material," (1961) [revised editions, titled, "Painter's Guide," (1972, 1983)], which was an outgrowth of the emphasis put on craftsmanship, permanence, and mastery of media at MFA School under Karl Zerbe; on his growing concern, expressed in writings and lectures, with the toxicity of some modern artists' materials; and his relationship with art conservators. He discusses his work, from 1959 into the early 1990s while viewing slides.
Biographical / Historical:
Reed Kay (1925- ) is a painter and teacher from Brookline, Massachusetts.
General:
Originally recorded on 9 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 17 digital wav files. Duration is 12 hrs., 56 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Topic:
Painters -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- Interviews Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
REELS 826-827: 697 letters, including letters to her parents and her future husband Alan Fink, and letters from Bernard Chaet, Maxine Kumin, Tillie Olsen, Anne Sexton, Andrew Stevovich, Elbert Weinberg, and the Cober Gallery; a 15-page diary; a scrapbook containing photographs, clippings, catalogs and miscellany; and many loose clippings and catalogs.
UNMICROFILMED: Photographs of Swan, Ellsworth Kelly, and other students of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School; letters relating to Swan's career and from friends and relatives, including Bernard and Ninon Chaet and Edwin and Rosalind Miller; Christmas cards by Swan and other artists; drafts and a transcription of a talk by Swan on Harold Tovish; exhibition announcements and catalogs; clippings; and printed material on Anne Sexton.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, illustrator, draftsman, and lithographer; Boston, Mass. Studied at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under Karl Zerbe. Ellsworth Kelly was also a student there. Swan collaborated as an illustrator with poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin.
Provenance:
Material on reels 826-827 was lent for microfilming in June of 1974 by Barbara Swan. She donated the photographs of Ellsworth Kelly in December 1974, and letters, writings, exhibition catalogs and miscellaneous printed material in 1992. Additional papers are expected.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Biographical material, correspondence, business records, extensive portrait files, sketches and drawings, notes and writings, art works, subject files, printed materials, photographs, audio-visual material and palette samples relate chiefly to Cox's career as a portrait painter.
Also included are extensive portrait files of sitters containing correspondence, invoices; some contain photographs. Sitters include Dean Acheson, Judge Bailey Aldrich, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Dean George Baker, Ann Banks, Talcot M. Banks, Barry Bingham, Sr., Eleanor Bowman, Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr., Kingman Brewster, Jr., John Nicholas Brown, Orville H. Bullitt, William A.M. Burden and sons, J. B. CanantHammond E. Chaffetz, Secretary William T. Coleman, Abram T. Collier, Mary Crocker, Nathan Cummings, Justice R. Ammi Cutter, Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dr. Derek Denny-Brown, Douglas Dillon, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Frederick M. Eaton, Daughter of Frederick M. Eaton, Dr. Frank Elliott, John Franklin Enders, Justice Felix Frankfurter, Robert Frost, Richard Glenn Gettell, Justice Arthur Goldberg, Honorable and Mrs. Gordon Gray, General Wallace M. Greene, Burton Grey, Najeeb E. Halaby, Justice John M. Harlan, Averell and Pamela Harriman, Judge William Hastie, Francis W. Hatch, Hatcher, Paul V. Hayden, Alfred Hayes, Ralph Helverson, Christian Herter, Hopkinson, V.P.H. Humphrey, R. Keith Kane, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Rev. Kinsolving, Secretary Henry Kissinger, Henry Laughlin, Martina Lawrence, Lessing, Edward H. Levi, Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, Lippman, Stacy Lloyd, Professor Louis Loss, Robert Lovett
Professor Edward Mason, Jean Mayer, Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Professor Donald H. Menzel, Hary Myers, Dr. Francis D. Moore, Maurice Needham, William Oates, John Lord O'Brian, Daniel H. O'Leary, Howard C. Peterson, Edwin H.B. Pratt, Norman S. Raab, R. Stewart Rauch, Herbert Read, Dr. Duncan Reid, Resor, Arthur Ross, Eugene V. Rostow, Dean Rusk, Dean Albert M. Sacks, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger, Sally Scott, George C. Seybolt, Dr. Howard Sprague, Justice Potter Stewart, J. Statton, Lewis Toepfer, Marian Vaillant, Margaret Vaughan, Chief Justice Earl Warren, James Webb, Fred Weed, E. A. Weeks, Professor Fred L. Whipple, Justice Byron White, George M. White, Judge Raymond Wilkins, Michael Wiseman, Professor Arnold Wolfers, and Judge Charles Wyansky.
Also found are institution files relating to activities with the American Academy in Rome, Boston Arts Festival and its revival in 1985, Massachusetts Art Commission, St. Botolph Club, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and memorials to Samuel Morison, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Robert Gould Shaw; exhibition files, containing correspondence, catalogs and announcements; and files relating to Cox's home and studio and the publication of LAWYERS PAINTED BY GARDNER COX. Also, clippings, invitations, announcements and printed material from clubs and other organizations; and photographs of Cox, his family, a bust of Cox, and many of his portraits.
ADDITION (UNMICROFILMED; ca. 12 ft.): Biographical material; correspondence; writings; notebooks; sketches and drawings; financial papers; photographs of portrait and non-portrait work; printed material; exhibition announcements; lists of work; posthumous inventory with photographs of selected work. The strength of this group lies in the abundance of studies for portraits, ranging from quick sketches in notebooks to studies of aspects of sitters to preliminary drawings, to photographs of his work, predominantly portraits but also including his paintings of forms abstracted from nature.
Biographical / Historical:
Portrait painter; Cambridge, Mass. Died 1988. Cox was a friend or acquaintance of many leading cultural figures in Boston and Cambridge, painted the portraits of many of them, and often developed friendly relations with his eminent sitters.
Provenance:
Papers on reels 4486-4494 were donated 1982-1985 by Gardner Cox and by his widow, Phyllis Byrnes Cox, 1989-1990. Additional papers received in 1998 from Cox's sons, James and Benjamin, and his daughter, Phyllis Koch.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Sketchbooks and sketches, photographs, letters, price lists, a scrapbook, and printed material relating primarily to Lamb's exhibitions.
The ca. 25 letters to Lamb, 1921-1976, are mainly from friends regarding her exhibitions. Also included are letters from Celia Thaxter to Lamb's brother, Horace, 1888-1892. The scrapbook (photocopy) contains newspaper clippings and exhibition announcements, 1931-1981. Printed material, 1931-1991, consists of exhibition catalogs and announcements, and source material for paintings. Artwork, 1914-1938, includes sketchbooks (12 v.), 1914-55, including one from anatomy class at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School, ca. 100 sketches, designs for stained glass, and designs and templates for stencils. Ca. 40 photographs are mainly of artwork by Lamb, but also include 2 of Lamb and a portrait of Henry James done by William James.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
An interview of John Woodrow Wilson conducted 1993 March-1994 August, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Wilson discusses his childhood as a member of a family of middle class blacks from British Guiana (now Guyana); his father's grave disappointments in the face of racial discrimination; his parents' push for their children to succeed; early urge to read and draw; encouragement by School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston students who taught at the Roxbury Boys Club; his secondary education; and friends.
He talks about his education at the MFA School, Boston, and comments on such teachers as Ture Bengtz and Karl Zerbe and compares their exacting methods with those of Fernand Leger, his teacher in Paris.
His work of the 1940s prior to going to Paris; the importance of early awards and sales received while still a student at the MFA School; the excitement of sharing a studio with fellow students, Francesco Carbone and Leo Prince; and encouragement to stay in school during WW II with the promise of a European study fellowship after the war.
The great impact of his years in Paris (1948-49); the lack of racial prejudice; the liberating effect of Leger's teaching; his awe of the work of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca during a trip to Italy; and the deep impression made on him by seeing tribal art in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris.
Continued discussion of Leger; his teaching methods; and influences on his work.
His first teaching position at the MFA School; his involvement in civil rights in Boston; his gregariousness and the use of his studio as a meeting place for artists and political activists; his involvement with socialism in Boston and New York; and working in a socialist children's camp. He remembers meeting Paul Robeson, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and Bob Blackburn, who was then setting up his printmaking atelier in New York; marriage to a fellow socialist (June 1950); move to Mexico on a fellowship to study with Jose Orozco on the advice of Leger, only to find that Orozco had died; terrors of travel as an interracial couple through the U.S.; and different racial attitudes in Mexico and the U.S.
Living in Mexico (1950-56) and anecdotes of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera; his wife's meeting with Frieda Kahlo and seeing her collection of folk art; their free and cosmopolitan, if impoverished, life in Mexico; his work in a printmaking atelier and on the production of frescoes, and a lengthy aside about his brilliant brother, Freddie, who because he was black was not allowed to pursue his first love, geology, for many years.
Continued discussion of his experiences in Mexico; the dreary year (1957) he spent doing commercial art for a meatpackers' union in Chicago, a city he disliked; his move to New York in 1958, taking on commercial work to support his family, and teaching anatomy at the Pratt Institute.
Teaching art at a junior high school in the Bronx, and his gaining respect of students through special projects; teaching drawing at Boston University (1965-86), his approach to teaching including his demanding standards, the seriousness of the students, his opposing rigid attendance and grading rules, and colleagues, such as David Aronson who had created the School, Reed Kay, Jack Kramer, Sidney Hurwitz, and the University president, John Silber.
Working with the black arts entrepreneur, Elma Lewis, in setting up a visual arts program for the Boston black community (late 1960s-1970s), including the selection of a curator, Edmund Barry Gaither, a young art historian, who eventually established a museum of African-American art; his participation in various black art exhibitions, despite his belief that art should be seen regardless of the ethnic origins of artists; his move toward sculpture, beginning in the early 1960s, as a medium most expressive of black persons, culminating in the 1980s in a series of colossal heads and a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the U.S. Capitol (1985-86); and why he makes art and will so long as he is able.
Biographical / Historical:
John Wilson (1922- ) is an African American painter, sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, and educator from Boston, Massachusetts. Full name John Woodrow Wilson.
General:
Originally recorded on 11 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 22 digital wav files. Duration is 16 hr., 2 min.
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators. Funding for the transcription and microfilming of the interview provided by the Newland Foundation.
Topic:
African American artists -- Interviews Search this
Art -- Study and teaching -- Massachusetts -- Boston Search this
An interview of Polly Thayer (Starr) conducted 1995 May 12-1996 February 1, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Thayer talks about her childhood in an upper class Boston family, thriving on drawing in charcoal from casts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under tutelage of Beatrice Van Ness; her social debut, 1921-1922; a trip in the summer of 1922 to the Orient with her mother and brother where she was caught in the Tokyo earthquake; Philip Hale's method of teaching drawing at the Museum School in Boston, 1923-1924, and, later, privately; Eugene Speicher's urging her to free herself from Hale's teaching; the difficulty of making the transition to painting; and winning of the Hallgarten Prize of National Academy of Design, 1929.
Studying with Charles W. Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the summer of 1923-1924, which countered the rigidity of her training at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School; travels in Spain and Morocco in early 1929, at the time her large painting of a nude, "Circles," won the Hallgarten Prize; the importance to her of a letter in 1929 from the critic, Royal Cortissoz, urging her to not fall into the trap of the Boston School and become formulaic in her work; her first one-person show at Doll and Richards, Boston, which resulted in 18 portrait commissions; her ease with which she did self-portraits early in her career, but not so later; and her difficulty in holding the attention of portrait sitters.
Studying with Harry Wickey at the Art Students League, who taught her by boldly re-working her drawings for "plastic" values, which Starr quickly achieved; sketching medical operations and back-stage at theatres, which gave her the dramatic subject matter she sought in the early 1930s; her portraits; getting married in 1933 and the affect on her work; and her work at the Painter's Workshop in Boston with Gardner Cox and William Littlefield. She recalls May Sarton whose portrait she painted in 1936, Charles Hopkinson, and Hans Hofmann.
The distractions from painting brought about by marriage, children, acting, an active social life and much travel; her increased involvement in social concerns through her conversion to Quakerism; the simplification of her paintings beginning in the late 1930s and her steady execution of portrait commissions, which took less time; her exhibitions in Boston and New York through the 1940s and the rarity of them after that; being a board member of the Institute of Modern Art, Boston, and its co-founder, Nathaniel Saltonstall; her approach to painting which amounts to seeking the invisible in the visual world; and the onset of glaucoma which has ended her painting career.
Biographical / Historical:
Polly E. Thayer (1904-2006) was a painter from Boston, Massachusetts.
General:
Originally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hr., 44 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Topic:
Painters -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- Interviews Search this
Women painters -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- Interviews Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
An interview of Ralph Rosenthal conducted 1997 February 10-April 7, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art, at Rosenthal's home, in Brookline, Mass.
Rosenthal discusses his childhood in the South End of Boston; first art training at age of 10 under Bill Tate, Dudley Pratt, and Anthony DiBona; attending the Boston public schools' Saturday art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, headed by Alma LeBrecht, Blanche Brink, and Alice Morse, 1924-29; his years at the School of the MFA (1929-35) and the dominant influence there of Philip Hale; his further training in education at Boston University (Ed.M., 1936); his early teaching career; receiving a Carnegie Fellowship in 1938 to study at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University; studying ceramics at Alfred University in 1940; and his founding with Herbert Kahn in 1941 of ROKA, a ceramics supply company.
Teaching in the Boston public schools, 1936-1976, rising from teacher of sculpture to supervisor of art for the entire system in 1966; his work in sculpture, painting, drawing, and ceramics; and former students at the various places he has taught.
Biographical / Historical:
Ralph Rosenthal (1912-2003) was a sculptor from Boston, Mass.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 4 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr., 27 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
