Just up the road in New Bedford is a treasure trove of visual arts: watercolors, carvings, oil paintings, and photographs, primarily depicting a place and time when the city of New Bedford was the whaling capital of the world – the 19th century.
On July 11 in the 21st century at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library, the New Bedford Free Public Library curator of art, Janice Hodson, pulled back the veil of time and shared her library’s art wonders for all to see.
Public libraries have long been seen as a place for ‘the people’ to go and learn, share information, and expand their interior horizons. Hodson believes that free libraries can also fill a special role in communities where fee-based museums hold works of art. At the public library, viewing art is free.
Beginning in late 1800s, when the New Bedford Library was subscription-based and did not have a permanent home, through 1910, when New Bedford’s Free Public Library finally had a secure location, the directors were on a mission to give the average person, in addition to books to read, the opportunity to view art freely.
From Hodson’s viewpoint, it was the second director of the library, George Tripp, who had the vision of a New Bedford library as a place for art in need of recognition. Tripp’s nearly four-decade tenure gave him plenty of time to collect important pieces and to inspire philanthropy through developing important relationships with the well-heeled of the area.
Hodson said, in the library’s recent past, there was a 10-year period when it was unable to display many of the pieces in its collection. The position of curator was not filled. It is Hodson’s joy to be filling that role and sharing the art collection with the people, free of charge.
And what a collection it is.
Between June and October, the library has on display John J. Audubon’s groundbreaking massive book Birds of America. This grand work of art is the seminal study of wild birds that set the tone for all future ornithological depictions.
The library’s copy was donated in 1866 by whaling merchant James Arnold. The library’s press release on the exhibit describes it as “four volumes of John James Audubon’s first edition double elephant folio of the Birds of America.”
Published in 1827, the over 400 pages of engravings showing birds in a naturalized environment became a top seller – in spite of the pages being an astounding 39 by 26 inches, known as “elephant paper.” Hodson said of Audubon, “He wanted to show the birds life size.”
Audubon’s artistic styling was the first time birds were shown by a scientist in dynamic settings: feeding, nesting, flying, and fighting.
“He generates emotions in many prints,” Hodson said.
As Hodson displayed Audubon’s rendition of the Carolina parrot, the only parrot native to North America, she smiled and told the audience, “You can hear the noise!”
Before Audubon, scientific drawings of birds were flat – one-dimensional and academic. Audubon believed that to fully understand the birds, one had to have a narrative and that narrative could be captured in the image. While he included text that described the subjects in terms other ornithologists would appreciate, the engravings were something the layperson could understand.
The Birds of America made Audubon rich by the standards of the day, Hodson confirmed. Each edition sold for $1,000. A princely sum indeed, and there must have been some princes of industry and commerce in New Bedford, as forty subscriptions were sold in this city alone.
Throughout the New Bedford Free Public Library, displayed high upon its aging walls, are pieces done by artists who lived in and around New Bedford throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many of whom were students or teachers at the former Swain School of Design now part of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Nearly all lived in and around New Bedford.
Hodson’s presentation in Mattapoisett included images of paintings by William Allen Wall’s 1853 “Birth of Whaling,” which shows a whaling boat being launched as well as Clifford Ashley’s 1905 Sunbeam Series, which was used in his pieces published in Harper’s Weekly. These works showed the savagery and horror of working and living on a whaling ship infested with rats and roaches. And there is Clement Swift’s “The Spar from 1879,” which was shown in the Paris Salon and was purchased by the library for $750 in 1910.
And there they were, in New Bedford on July 12, the day after Hodson’s presentation – works of art resting along walls where library patrons sat below working at computers seemingly unaware that overhead a masterpiece longed to be acknowledged.
While many of the paintings have themes reminiscent of whaling activities and waterfront scenes, there are others from the Hudson River School that show the grandeur of mountains and rolling splendor of open fields.
Especially charmingis the expressionistic piece titled “The Dancing Lesson,” a large vertical canvas painted in 1915 by one of only a handful of female artists whose works grace the library’s collection, Margaret Serena Peirce. It is a piece that has strong, classically executed lines that students of the Boston School are known for using. Peirce was a student there and with her clever use of soft tones has achieved a balance between impressionistic brushwork and more traditional painting techniques.
And then there are the arts and crafts.
Turn the corner on the library’s second floor and there you’ll find an enormous solid piece of wood with a three-dimensional carving done by Leander Plummer in 1908 titled “Bluefish.” The fish is the central theme of the piece. Articulated to give movement to its posture, the fish seems as real as any swimming in Buzzards Bay today.
During her talk, Hodson gave a brief nod to what she described as a “small but impressive Japanese collection.” She said there was work still to be done on discovering how these pieces were acquired and from where. Such is the life of a curator of art.
To learn more about the New Bedford Free Public Library art collection and current exhibit visit www.newbedford-ma.gov/library or you may call Janice Hodson at 508-979-1787 to ask about the gallery’s hours.
By Marilou Newell