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Show . The Story of a Famous Thanksgiving Picture BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON ! NOW that Thanksgiving Day will soon be here, you may be sure that you'll be looking at a certain picture rather frequently. You've seen it many, many times in books, in newspapers, in magazines, in poster displays, in school exhibits, ex-hibits, in art stores. It's one of America's favorite pictures and because it has been reproduced repro-duced or displaced so regularly around Thanksgiving time, it has become almost as much a symbol of that day as roast turkey, pumpkin pie and cranberry cran-berry sauce. The celebration of Thanksgiving Thanks-giving Day is a distinctively American institution. Therefore There-fore it would seem appropriate that all of the symbols connected con-nected with it should also be purely American. So this picture pic-ture of an early American scene should have been the product of an American artist and painted in this country. But it wasn't. It was painted by an Englishman in England, and Englishmen gazed upon it long before it had the admiring approval ap-proval of American eyes. George Henry Boughton was his name and his painting, which was destined to become such a favorite in America, was first shown in London at the Royal 1 -V J- i ' I f . . 'A h W - - ) PKISCILLA Academy's exhibit in 1867. When Boughton painted it he had no idea of associating it with the American Thanksgiving Day celebration cel-ebration nor did he ever dream that it would become a symbol of that celebration. Moreover, he gave it an entirely en-tirely different title from the name by which we know it. He called it "Early Puritans of New England Going to Worship Armed to Protect Themselves From Indians In-dians and Wild Beasts." But we Americans, preferring "something "some-thing short and snappy," even in the titles of our historical pictures, pic-tures, shortened that to "Puritans "Puri-tans Going to Church." Then with a fine disregard for the historical difference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims, we changed that title to the one by which the picture is now best known "Pilgrims Going to Church." Inspiration for the Painting. Of course, it's possible that the artist himself disregarded the difference between those two groups of Massachusetts pioneers. pio-neers. For the theme of the picture pic-ture was suggested to him by a passage in Bartlett's "Pilgrim Fathers" which reads: "The few villages were almost isolated, being be-ing connected only by long miles-of miles-of blind pathway through the wood . . . The cavalcade proceeding pro-ceeding through the forest to the church, the marriage procession (if marriage procession could be thought of in those frightful days) was often interrupted by the death shot of some invisible enemy." Other Boughton pic-"res pic-"res dealt with the Pilgrims I 7? 3f 1 Vn , xJ;'U A' ; r.'J 1 I J Jm ! ! i'-J h V -i i 1 7L, r ' -' is i 1 EARLY PURITANS OF NEW ENGLAND GOING TO WORSHIP ARMED TO PROTECT THEMSELVES THEM-SELVES FROM INDIANS AND WILD BEASTS (Pilgrims Going to Church) rather than the Puritans, so perhaps per-haps his was the original error in using the word "Puritan" rather than "Pilgrim" in the title of his famous painting and we Americans unconsciously corrected cor-rected that error for him in renaming re-naming it. In regard to those other pictures, pic-tures, it is interesting to note that Boughton painted one which might better have been associated associat-ed with Thanksgiving than his "Pilgrims Going to Church." It is the one he called "The First Thanksgiving in America" (reproduced in this article) but for some reason it has never become be-come so well known nor so popular pop-ular as any of his other paintings paint-ings of life among the Pilgrims. Perhaps the fact that there are no women in it may account for that. Boughton was especially successful in painting female figures fig-ures and the appeal of most of his pictures, notably his "Pilgrim "Pil-grim Exiles," "The Two Farewells," Fare-wells," "Return of the Mayflower," Mayflow-er," "John Alden and Priscilla" and "Priscilla," is due largely to the women depicted in them. Boughton was born in Norfolk, England, in 1833. When he was six years old his family came to America and settled in Alb.yiy, N. Y., where he passed his youth. His parents intended him for a business career but he showed little interest in that and spent most of his spare time making pen-and-ink sketches. Once when he went to a general store to buy fish-hooks his eye was attracted to some tubes of oil colors and he bought them instead. With them he produced a painting on an old piece of canvas and this marked the beginning of what was destined to become a distinguished dis-tinguished career as an artist. From that time on he continued contin-ued to paint, in an unsystematic way, however. Realizing the need for technical training, he succeeded suc-ceeded in selling several of his paintings in Albany and with the money obtained thus he went to London to study. After a few months he returned to Albany and subsequently moved to New York city where he remained for two years and soon made himself him-self known as a landscape painter. paint-er. He also worked as an illustrator, illus-trator, one of his commissions being the illustrations for Washington Wash-ington Irving's "Legend o f Sleepy Hollow." In 1858 he exhibited ex-hibited his first picture, "Winter Twilight" at the National Academy Acad-emy of Design and was frequently frequent-ly represented there, being made an academician in 1871. Returns to England. In the meantime, however, he had left New York for study in Paris and travel on the continent and in 1861 he returned to his native land and settled in London. Lon-don. But he took back with him a great fondness for the United States, where he had spent his boyhood, and this emotional at- t - , x x, 1 THE FIRST THANKSGIVING IN AMERICA tachment included not only the America of his own time but extended ex-tended back to the romantic era of the first settlement on the shores of the New World. Those adventurous days were very real to him and because oi his reconstructive re-constructive imagination and an art with which to express it, he has made them very real to later generations of Americans. In fact, it is not too much to say that Boughton's paintings, more than any other single force, have shaped the ideas of Americans concerning the kind of people who settled New England and made it easy for them to visualize visual-ize the life of those pioneer times. Certainly it is true that we get a more vivid impression of those early New Englanders from Boughton's famous painting, which is seen so often at Thanksgiving, Thanks-giving, than we do from Bartlett's Bart-lett's words which provided the inspiration for it. Boughton set to work on this picture in 1866 and finished it in time for the Royal Academy's exhibit the next year. It was his only contribution to that exhibit but it was enough to establish his reputation as a real artist. Concerning it one English critic crit-ic said: "The pathos and dramatic dra-matic strength of the composition and the vigor of the technical treatment made this work markedly mark-edly successful and put Mr. Boughton finally among the most prominent of the younger artists with original ideas and skill much above the average." But even more illuminating is 'he comment of an American critic: "It requires re-quires no art education to understand un-derstand the hold the painting has from the first had upon the public. The picture of that brave career. As a beginner in America, Amer-ica, while still doing landscapes, he was planning to sketch some snow scenes. In order to acclimate accli-mate himself to the rigors of the New England winter, win-ter, he did his drawing for a time in a fireless studio. One day while working there an elderly man visited him and became so concerned over the seemingly pitiful plight of the struggling young artist, who was apparently too poor to afford coal for a stove, that he reported the matter to a wealthy woman of the neighborhood neighbor-hood in the hope that she would help Boughton. She promptly called upon him and ordered an expensive picture, pic-ture, leaving a check for a large sum of money to bind the bargain. bar-gain. Incidentally, the subject of the painting was to be a summer landscape about as far removed from snow and ice and a fireless studio as one could imagine. A week later the kind-hearted woman wom-an returned to the studio, hoping to see for herself some cheery evidence of her benevolence. She was very much surprised to find it as cold as ever. This led to pointed inquiries which soon convinced con-vinced her that this struggling young artist was working in a THE TWO FAREWELLS company of pioneers, whose religious re-ligious fervor was so great that it brought them reverently through the snowdrifts each Sabbath morning, every man carrying a Bible and a gun, somehow appeals ap-peals irresistibly to us at Thanksgiving Thanks-giving time. "We gaze upon Mr. Boughton's picture of the firm manner in which the Puritans faced their everyday perils with some degree de-gree of thankfulness to those there represented for having the wisdom to establish a day upon which we should recall our dependence de-pendence upon God, even before we had the glory of establishing a day upon which we should celebrate cel-ebrate our independence of other oth-er nations." Boughton himself has left this record of how this famous painting paint-ing came about: "The first few small pictures which I had painted under the instruction of Edouard Frere in rural France, and afterwards in London under the same pleasant but clinging influence, had always al-ways been praised, when noticed, by the kindly critics for just their Frere qualities. This was agreeable agree-able enough but not quite satisfying. satis-fying. I got rather tired of the 'dividends' that I did not feel quite entitled to; so I left the pleasant track, and bethought me of the Puritans and the sad but picturesque episodes in which they played parts. To insure a 'pilgrimage' with another range of subjects entirely, I chose a larger canvas, and planned a composition with a greater number num-ber of figures. The picture was painted in the depths of an English Eng-lish winter and a sufficiently snowy one." Real "Atmosphere" That last sentence is significant of Boughton's method of putting "atmosphere" into his paintings, especially when taken in connection connec-tion with an incident early in his cold studio from choice rather than necessity. She was very much amused to learn how mistaken mis-taken she had been about his situation and she became a staunch friend and enthusiastic patron of the young Englishman. An International Reputation Boughton died in 1905 but before be-fore his career ended he had established es-tablished an international reputation reputa-tion as an artist of great versatility. versa-tility. Not only was he famous in both England and America for his pictures of the Puritan era and the Knickerbocker days in New York, but he was also unusually un-usually successful in painting pictures pic-tures of French peasant life. Several of Boughton's pictures have become parts of public collections. col-lections. One of his Dutch subjects, sub-jects, "Weeds of the Pavement," is in the National Gallery of British Brit-ish Art. "When the Dead Leaves Fall," an autumn allegory, was purchased by the king of Italy for the Municipal Art Gallery in Rome. The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, Wash-ington, D. C, has two of his pictures. One is a small affair on the Lord Fauntleroy order and the other is a historical painting paint-ing entitled "The Edict of William Wil-liam the Testy." Although his "Pilgrims Going Go-ing to Church" was painted in England and first won acclaim there it is now in the land where it is most beloved. It became the property of Mrs. K. L. Stuart of New York and is now in the Stuart and Lenox art collection which forms a part of the New York public library. There it is seen by thousands every year but it is a familiar picture to millions more because Thanksgiving Thanks-giving would not be Thanksgiving Thanksgiv-ing without the reappearance somewhere of this famous Thanksgiving picture which was not intended to be a Thanksgiving picture at all! Western Newspaper Union. |