09/24/2024
HENRY FORD AND THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: Expanding a Legacy of “Impression”
It’s been a busy summer. With this weekends conclusion of Artilicious: An Annual Downtown Adrian Art Festival- It reminded me…
I haven’t had the chance to post a share lately- but as the season starts to change and the Fall colors begin to show their vibrant hues of gold, reds and brown, I thought I would take a moment to share a wonderful early twentieth century oil painting from a rather important Midwest artist, that I recently purchased from a prominent, local, multi-generational family estate.
A larger 27” x 24” canvas is quite unusual for this artist who often created works on smaller size canvas or artist board. The size and quality of the painting simply stood out!
The artist is John Adams Spelman (1880-1941), a Minnesota born artist who briefly studied at the Minnesota Museum of Art and later moved to Chicago with his family and continued his study at the Chicago Art Institute. Spelman would maintain his ties to Minnesota by purchasing a cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior, a frequent summer destination for the remainder of his life.
Spelman was known for his impressionist landscape painting. The impressionists style originated in France in 1874 with a satirical review by Louis Leroy of a Claude Monet work titled “Impression Soleil Levant” literally, titled- Impression Sunrise. Leroy inferred at most, the Monet work was merely a sketch. The Impressionism art movement generally depicts outdoor, en plein air, landscapes and scenes in life instead of in a studio. This effect allowed artists to catch the fleeting effects of light and color creating a more nuanced observation of nature.
Auto pioneer, Henry Ford had introduced the Model T in 1908 which sold at the time for $850. With Ford’s development and tweaking of the moving assembly line by 1913, Ford was producing thousands of automobiles a week. With the creation of the assembly line and interchangeable parts, Henry Ford brought the automobile to the masses and by 1921 a Model T could be purchased for $290.
In 1916, the US Government created the US Park Service to oversee the growing number of US National Parks. John Spelman began leaving the frigid Minnesota and Chicago winters by visiting a more temperate winter in Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina. The automobile had created independence and access “for the masses” to visit such beautiful and majestic regions as the Appalachian Region. John Spelman returned to the Appalachia region year after year and produced some of his most important impressionistic works.
The artist. The automobile. The National Parks. This would become a familiar theme of expansion and access from the Great Smokey Mountains to Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon to the Rocky Mountains. Many of America’s greatest artists and their legacy of the most magnificent landscapes were created during the period 1910-1940
John Spelman was one such artist.
This painting, appeared at the 1922 Chicago Art Institute Exhibition. One of four paintings by John A Spelman that year entitled, “Mountain Sunshine” and sold for $200 (almost the price of an Model T automobile- todays equivalent of $200= $3747)
I suspect that this painting was purchased by the local Adrian Michigan family, a days automobile drive to Chicago, during that 1922 Chicago Art Institute Exhibition. There are no gallery labels or indications this painting was ever sold on the open market- and perhaps stashed away in the local historic Adrian home for more than 100 years!
Note the Impressionism features of this painting with its distinct colors with minimal blending, the short brush strokes and the important contrast of light and dark. A perfect impression.
I share J A Spelman “Mountain Sunshine”, Impressionism Painting of Eastern Tennessee/North Carolina from 1921, with you….
Much PGG, my friends.
