Sculptor Victor Riu Exhibits at Lehigh in Show Organized by Francis Quirk

 

In March of 1962, sculptor Victor Riu would have his second show in twelve years at Lehigh University Art Galleries. At the time he was 74 years old. Works were borrowed from museums  including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and private collections.

Riu made Coopersburg, Pennsylvania world-famous by promoting the igneous blue-black granite (Gabrogrannidiorite) that is eponymous with the town. Coopersburg granite is an extremely hard material generally avoided by sculptors because of the difficulty of working with it. The stone is often compared to Egyptian basalt that has endured in sculptured form for 5000 years. The beautiful granite takes a high polish and resists staining.

Riu’s sculptures include figures of mathematical concepts such as the Moebius curve, emotions, or animals such as birds and cats. In an article published at the time Riu said his aim was to create a “fluid form pleasing to the eye from every angle.” Riu went on “Sometimes it is necessary to change the form. If a line is lost or vague, I must find it. Frequently, the raw stone suggest – but never dictates to me.”

Photos of a Riu sculpture provided by a Pennsylvania collector. 

Lehigh Professor Francis Quirk was quoted as saying “Nobody has ever handled this high-density material better than Riu. His fluid moving planes of stone seem to exceed the limitations of the material.”

Born in Trieste, Italy, in 1887, Mr. Riu studied at the Scuola per Capi d'Arte in Trieste from 1899 to 1903. Afterwards he worked in his grandfather and uncle's Studio of Fine Monuments before coming to the United States in 1906 at the age of 19. He was an ornamental stone worker on projects like the New York Public Library, the new Grand Central Station, and the Chicago Court House. It would be an interesting historical tidbit if he worked on the famous lions: Prudence and Fortitude. He continued his work in Barre,Vermont where he also ran a farm and experimented with plaster sculpture.

Still later, he became superintendent of the Montpelier  (VT.) Granite Co. whose memorials and monuments were sent throughout the U.S.  In 1922 he moved to Coopersburg and bought the Coopersburg Granite Co. The famous Coopersburg “blue-black” granite was shipped to users throughout the world.

Sculptors also came to Coopersburg to see the stone and Riu worked with many of note including Wharton Esherick, Jose de Rivera and Ahron Ben Shmuel. Schmuel’s Fairmont Park sculpture of the Boxers is made of Coopersburg granite. Rui collaborated with these luminaries on monuments to Connie Mack, Sherwood Anderson, World War II heroes and other notables. Jose deRivera also exhibited at Lehigh and is on our agenda for a dedicated blog post. 

Rhythm by Victor Riu   Photo courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum 

Riu’s sculptures are in several museum collections including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Woodmere Art Museum and numerous private collections. In addition to exhibits at Lehigh University Art Galleries and the Woodmere Art Museum he showed at galleries in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. 

Victor Riu   Resurgent Harmony 1957   Photo courtesty of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art

Victor Riu’s business continues to operate and you can learn more about them at this site- Coopersburg Granite Company.

Walter Murch Exhibits at Lehigh University and Quirk Writes Review for Bethelehem Newspaper

We continue our exploration of artists whoe showed their work at Lehigh Univeersity Art Galleries in exhibitions organized by Francis Quirk. Walter Murch's work was included in the annual exhibition of contemporary works in both 1965 and 1966. But in the spring of 1966, Murch would have a solo show at Lehigh on exhibit from March 13 through April 17. Francis Quirk reviewed the exhibit for the local paper, the Bethlehem Globe-Times.

Walter Tandy Murch (August 17, 1907 – December 11, 1967) 

Walter Murch  Self Portrait

Murch was a painter whose still life paintings of machine parts, brick fragments, clocks, broken dolls, hovering light bulbs and glowing lemons are an unusual combination of realism and abstraction. 

Murch was born and grew up in Toronto, Ontario.He attended the Ontario College of Art in the mid-1920s, studying under Arthur Lismer, a member of the Group of Seven, a group of Impressionist to Post-Impressionist painters mostly active from 1910 to 1940. Murch moved to New York City in 1927 and studied at the Art Students League of New York under Kenneth Hayes Miller and later, with Arshile Gorky at the Grand Central School of Art.

In 1929 he married Katharine Scott, and from then until 1950 Murch supported himself and his family through a number of jobs on the fringes of the art world including department-store window design, book illustration, restaurant murals, freelance illustrations (notably covers for the magazines Fortune and Scientific American) and advertising commissions while he continued painting and studying contemporary art. Other paid work included windows at Lord & Taylor, and the Viennese Roof at the St. Regis Hotel. 

April 1949 Scientific American Magazine Cover by Walter Murch

October 1949 Fortune Magazine Cover by Walter Murch

June 1947 Fortune Magazine Cover - Fine Chemicals by Walter Murch

Viennese Roof at the St. Regis Hotel New York, NY

In 1941 Betty Parsons presented Murch's first one-man exhibition at the Wakefield Gallery in New York City. When Parsons established her own gallery in the mid-1940s, Murch moved with her, mounting one-man shows every two years until his death in 1967. After 1950, he also began teaching at Pratt Institute and later at New York University, Columbia University and Boston University. In 1966, Murch had a one man show at Lehigh University under the aegis of Francis Quirk. Later that year Daniel Robbins at The Rhode Island School of Design organized Murch's first major retrospective, a year before his death from a heart attack on December 11, 1967.

Murch's style remains difficult to classify, although he has been variously described as a Magic Realist, Surrealist, Romantic Realist or just plain Realist. For subjects, he favored motors, tools and scientific equipment which would often be incongruously arranged with more traditional still life elements such as fruit, bread and fragments of rock. These mysterious and eccentric juxtapositions seem to imply poetic associations although Murch himself tended to dismiss this sort of interpretation of his work, saying of the objects he chose to paint that they were simply an excuse to paint. This response seems perfectly appropriate because the broken surface of his work gives it a visibility equal to the virtual image (the objects depicted), which themselves are depicted with undistorted clarity and geometric precision. This creates a fascinating ambiguity.

Murch's works are in numerous museum collections around the country. Both his personal art and his business commissions occasionally come up for auction.

Through the catalog published by the the Rhode island School of Design at the Walter Murch Retrospective, we were able to trace down images of two Murch paintings that were exhibited at Lehigh.

Radio by Walter Murch

Doll by Walter Murch

Portrait of the Artist's Father Ed Quirk

A relative of Francis Quirk provided us with an image of the painter's portrait of his father Edward. The painting depicts him sitting in the pew at St. Mary’s Church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Pawtucket is located just North of Providence and was a prosperous town with a healthy middle class. It still retains a great deal of charm. 

Edward was a church stalwart, regularly taking the same place at mass, so the location is fitting. We estimate that the painting dates from around 1940 when Francis Quirk was 33 years old.

Portrait of the artist's father Ed Quirk in St. Mary's Church. Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Ed Quirk had great faith in two things: the Church and the Union. The ray of light shining in highlights a union-pin on his lapel.  One of his sons would go on to hold a significant position in the AFL-CIO.

Since Pawtucket is not too far, we decided to capitalize on the geographic proximity to go and visit this location. The Deacon at St. Mary’s graciously opened the beautiful church and allowed us to explore the space. We sought to recreate the location of the painting, which provided some interesting insights into Quirk’s technique.

The Church had changed a bit in the intervening years as the interior paint had been lightened considerably from a dark green in the painting to a more subdued, and esthetically pleasing, palette of light pastel hues. Thanks to the arrangement of windows and the station, we were able to find the site of the seating with little difficulty.

Side-by-Side Images of Portrait and Location 

When we compare Quirk’s painting with the image of the space we can see the similarities. Quirk captured the pillar perfectly and the alignment of the window and station of the cross. The light does stream in through the windows in those powerful white beams.

But there also were a number of differences. We thought the angle of our photo was too high, but the camera was held fairly low, so it seems that the painter chose to exclude the pew rails receding into the painting. Quirk modified the station of the cross relief to make it more ornate. He also simplified the shape of the pew end pieces.  

Close up of Portrait Detail  Church Pew End Pieces

Quirk changed the stained glass of the window; adding in considerably more red than in the original window. If one imagines the windows as being painted with the more translucent clear glass, the affect of the light beam illuminating the pin would have been diminished. All four of these changes were discretionary acts as none of these structural features have changed during the interim.

We looked to see if we could find the source of the image used for the window. In the back of the church there was one window with some similarity. In the image on the right one can see how the light streams in and how Quirk effectively captured it in the portrait.

Close up of Portrait Detail  Stained Glass

This visit gave us insights into Quirk's technique in that he was not ironclad in holding to a view to paint reality. Instead he added, subtracted and tweaked the world to enhance its beauty. 

We cannot thank Deacon Patrick enough for his hospitality and support. If you are ever in Pawtucket and want to see a beautiful church St. Mary’s is well worth a visit.  When one is enthralled by the great beauty created in response to faith, one cannot help but feel the touch of God just a little bit. Below are a few other photos of the church.

Entrance of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Altar of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Interior of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

St Cecilia iplays the organ n center of stained glass above the entrance of St. Mary's Church  Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Penguin Painting by Francis Quirk

Through a relative of Francis Quirk, we received an image of a painting of penguins.  We were a bit surprised to see this particular painting as we had not seen cold or wintery images in his work with one exception. It seems ironic that a man who owned homes in Maine and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania seemed to have an aversion to paintings with snow. 

Adult Penguin and Chick by Francis Quirk

The painting depicts a parent penguin with a chick in an icy enviroment. The painting has four basic tones- white, beige, black and blue. The execution is typical of Quirk's painting with well executed line and attention to detail. 

We wonder if there might be some symbolism of the birds in the image that is relevant to his family.

Addendum

As it turns out the painting was executed at the request of Francis' daughter Ada-Lee. So the parental-offspring relationship may indeed reflect the personal affinity between the consignor and the artist. 

Francis Quirk's One-Man Show at the Women's City Club of Philadelphia

One thing we have learend about Francis Quirk is that he was prolific. As we have built our image library we have been amazed at how many paintings and images of his paintings have surfaced. They continue to emerge on a monthly basis. We have posted rather substantial preseentations of his work on slideshare and the production of an updated omnibus presentation is long overdue. The description of the paintings at a 1946 one man show lead us to conclude that there are many more waiting to be discovered. 

In 1946,  Quirk was 39 years old and teaching at Ogontz College, a prestigious school for girls. He was active in the Philadelphia art community.  And in February his one man show opened at the Women's City Club of Philadelphia. 

Philadelphia Inquirer Write up of Francis Quirk's one man show. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer covered the opening in its Sunday Arts Column describing Quirk as being "frequently represented at exhibitions" so he must have been actively promoting his work.  The exhibition consisted mostly of oils with protraits of boys reading, women and a military man.  He also included people painting in a landscape and a still life. We have only found one still life by Quirk, although he was adept at painting objects including plants in many of his portraits. 

The still life included two bits of Quirk humor. The first is the inclusion of an image of another  Quirk painting in the still life. He famously did this in his self-portrait of his painting of Edgar Lee Masters that is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. (You can see it and a discussion here.) The second was the nature of the painting reproduced in that it featured dogs near a car tire  and was entitled "Going for the Mail."  We have begun searching for the painting, but thus far, it has been fruitless. 

Ossabaw Island Painting by Francis Quirk

Through family members of Francis Quirk, we have received a couple more images of the master painter’s art. One post will require a visit to Pawtucket, Rhode Island to visit a location, so this post will focus on the other- a landscape.

This painting was last seen in Florida in the home of Francis Quirk’s brother. The image is from a photograph of the painting taken decades ago. We are looking into ways we can adjust the picture to produce a rectangular image from this slightly oblong view. (If you have Adobe Photoshop and are motivated, please feel free to save the image and give it a shot.)

Francis Quirk  Landscape Painting  (Possibly Ossabaw Island  1968-1972) Photo courtesy of T. Bray

Judging by the flora and egrets, we are going to jump to the conclusion that this work was executed at one of his fellowship stays at Ossabaw Island. He painted there in 1968 and 1972 and letters to friends during his stay indicate that he enjoyed the daily routine, slow pace of life as well as the ability to focus on his art.

This art work adds to our appreciation of Quirk’s work. While a technically solid portrait painter, he shows that he also can execute a nice landscape. He takes what could be a dark or monochromatic view and makes it bright and inviting through his use of color and birds. The greens have been mixed with yellow to make them brighter. The water is a lighter blue and the orange bush in the foreground adds a splash of color. 

The whereabouts of the painting today are unknown. Perhaps, it found its way to another home through an auction house or is in the hands of another relative.

To learn more about Ossabaw and see other paintings from Quirk's fellowships on Ossabaw you can visit our earlierpost here.

Bernard Arnest Exhibits at Lehigh University Art Gallery

Continuing our posts on various artists who exhibited at Lehigh University's Art Galleries, we now focus on  Bernard Arnest whom Francis Quirk brought to the University in 1964.

Interestingly, Arnest had representation from the Kraushaar Gallery in New York who represented a number of other artists who exhibited at Lehigh including Raphael Soyer and Ruth Gikow. Interestingly, there are some similarities among these three artists' styles. This, in turn, gives us an indication os the gallery owner's tastes and those of its New York clientel. We know that there was an ongoing relationship between Quirk and the gallery.

Lehigh University's Brown and White blurb on Bernard Arnest and Raymond Mintz 1964 exhibit

Biography of Bernard Arnest

Bernard Arnest 1940

Born in Denver in 1917, Arnest attended East High School, where he studied with its longtime art teacher, Helen Perry who was influential in the education of several successful artists. Herself a student of André Lhote in Paris, Perry for many years maintained a high standard in the Denver Public Schools.

Before attending East, Arnest wanted to study piano. However, in high school drawing class he discovered his aptitude for art. At Perry’s recommendation he benefited from supplemental instruction at the newly founded Kirkland School of Art and at the school of fine art and design operated in downtown Denver.

The initial public recognition of Arnest’s artistic talent occurred at East when he was the first-place winner of the Charles Milton Carter Memorial Prize. The prize earned him a prominent place in an exhibition—along with fellow runners-up—at Chappell House, the first home of the Denver Art Museum.

Following graduation from East, Arnest enrolled at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs, where he studied with Boardman Robinson and Henry Varnum Poor from 1935-37 and 1938-39. It was the state’s leading art school with a national reputation, and it attracted a diverse student body, including a large percentage of women artists.

Several of Arnest’s small-format paintings from this time depict scenes of harvesting and cattle ranching. He was a skilled draftsman emphasizing the subjects’ rhythmic curves and movements. 

The institution’s leading mural instructors were Robinson and Mechau, had an enviable success record in winning government mural competitions. From 1936 to 1940 students, faculty and alumni executed 60 murals.

Settlers on the Texas Plains By Bernard Arnest 1940

A 1940 oil on canvas, Arnest’s WPA-era mural was installed in the post office at Wellington, Texas, where it can still be seen. He painted it while in Colorado Springs in the late 1930s. 

Photo by Philip Parisi for his book "The Texas Post Office Murals," 2004, courtesy Texas A&M University Press

Arnest won the commission for the post office in Wellington, Texas, in 1939 and the following year installed the completed mural, where it remains in its original location. Titled Settlers on the Texas Plains and executed in a combination of tempera and oil on canvas, the mural shows Texans building a shelter and sowing crops on the area plains, “fundamental activities,” in his words, “of opening and using a new land.”

He also submitted a mural design of a cattle drive in the Texas Panhandle to the Amarillo post office competition but did not get the commission. In addition to his own mural painting, he and two other students assisted Robinson with his eighteen-panel mural for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., depicting portentous moments and leading figures in the history of law. After completing his studies, Arnest briefly served as Robinson’s teaching assistant. 

Bernard Arnest on ladder working on a mural for Boardman Robinson

Boardman Robinson’s students at the school of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center assist him in the mid-1930s with his murals collectively titled "Great Events and Figures of the Law." The murals were installed at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. The student on the ladder is Bernard Arnest; standing is David Fredenthal. Photo by Laura Gilpin.

© 1979 Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1940 the John SimonGuggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded Arnest a fellowship in painting. He used it to do creative painting in San Francisco and to experience the city’s thriving art scene that included the San Francisco Museum of (Modern) Art. There Arnest visited the Picasso retrospective in 1940. That same year the museum mounted Arnest’s one-man show, the first of a number in his professional career.

After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Arnest enlisted with the Army Signal Corps. Commissioned a Second Lieutenant a year later, he served for nine months in Iceland in 1943 and then with the Tenth Replacement Depot in England before joining a five-man team of artists in 1944 attached to the History Section of the US Army’s European Theater of Operations. The section was established to collect information for use in the official American history of the war to be written and published after the end of hostilities.

Arnest served as the section’s Chief War Artist through the war’s end. He worked in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, sketching and painting vignettes of American Army life, the famous bridge at Remagen, Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners, the meeting of Soviet and American troops at Strehla on the Elbe River in 1945, and the ruins of bombed-out cities in which civilians tried to survive. He also won a Bronze Star for helping a rescue mission near a minefield in Aachen, Germany.

Untitled (Wounded Soldier) pen and ink wash by Bernard Arnest  

After the war he worked for two years in New York City, believing that every artist should spend at least one year there. During that time, he began a thirty-nine-year affiliation with Kraushaar Galleries. In addition to acquainting himself with the new postwar developments in American art, he traveled up and down the East Coast painting scenes from North Carolina to New Hampshire. 

In 1947 as his money was running out, he fortuitously received a job offer from the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts (since 1970, Minneapolis College of Art and Design—MCAD). Shortly after Arnest assumed his instructor of painting position in 1949, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts gave him a one-man show of rural and urban landscape paintings and drawings of East Coast and wartime European subjects.

Red Barn  Bernard Arnest 1949  Minnesota Historical Society

Arnest’s service as an artist in the US Army helped him earn the commission in 1955 to paint a three-panel mural in the west lobby of the new Veterans Service Building on the grounds of the state capitol in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He based the composition depicting modern combat conditions on his wartime sketches and paintings with texts beneath the images excerpted from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. 

Bernard Arnest Mural Veterans Service Building St. Paul, Minnesota 1955
Mural in situ.

Bernard Arnest Mural Veterans Service Building St. Paul, Minnesota
Close up of Mural

The Lincoln quote reads "It is for us, the living, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work, which they how fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."

Close up of  Bernard Arnest Mural Veterans Service Building St. Paul, Minnesota 1955

Close up of  Bernard Arnest Mural Veterans Service Building St. Paul, Minnesota 1955

Close up of  Bernard Arnest Mural Veterans Service Building St. Paul, Minnesota 1955 

We thank Mark Arnest for graciously providing the photos. We have not been able to determine if the mural is still in situ. Mark keeps a facebook page on Arnest. 

Arnest's mural is interesting as the viewer can see elements of both his technical excellence and his willingess to move into the abstract.  The figures in the mural are well drawn, yet they are placed in environments with bright to garish patches of color. These colorful abstract background patches convey the sense of damaged buildings.  There is a hint of combat in the left section, soldiers milling in the largest central portion and medics carrying a soldier on a stretcher in the third. This is not the type of mural that one would expect in a veterans building in 1955. For that era, the mural is cutting edge. It is worth noting that a "Promise of Youth" fountain that was to be placed in the building was the subject of significant controversy. So it may be concluded that the modernist architect Brooks Caven was willing to push the boundaries.

The following year the First National Bank engaged Arnest to paint an abstract mural for its bank branch (now closed) at the Southdale Center, the nation’s first indoor regional shopping mall, which opened in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota. 

After completing the spring semester at the University of Minnesota in 1957, Bernard Arnest relocated the family to Colorado Springs to join Colorado College its faculty as professor and chairman of the art department. He also was a principal consultant for the Advanced Placement in Art program developed by the College Entrance Examination Board. In the early 1960s he also served as a consultant on college and university art programs at Stanford University, Pennsylvania State University, and the Ford Foundation.

in 1960 as a US Department of State consultant for its international educational/cultural exchange program and receiving a grant to depict the landscape and people of Afghanistan under the auspices of the US Embassy in Kabul. There, he lectured in English before select groups and traveled around the country making field sketches. He executed several paintings in the country that made up his solo show at the American Exhibition at Kabul’s 1960 Afghan National Fair. Some of those works along with others he finished after returning to Colorado Springs were exhibited later at the Design Center and Art Galleries in Denver and at Lehigh University.

The 1964 Lehigh University exhibition of Aarnest's paintings from Afghanistan also included those of Raymond Mintz in an exhibition organized by Francis Quirk. This was not the first time Bethlehem, Pennsylvania saw Arnest's work. Earlier in 1957, one of his paintings joined those of Edward Hopper, James Penney and others in another Lehigh exhibition.

We provide a selection of Arnest's Afghanistan paintings below. We cannot fully confirm that these were the actual,s specific paintings exhibited at Lehigh at the time. However, we do believe that these are a representative sample.  In the works, one can again see both the technical skill and a willingness to creatively use color and shape in a more fluid manner. 

Afghans Resting by Bernard Arnest Photo courtesy of Mark Arnest

  

Afghan Family by Bernard Arnest Photo courtesy of Mark Arnest

Afghan Seated by Bernard Arnest Photo courtesy of Mark Arnest

White Wind by Bernard Arnest Photo courtesy of Mark Arnest

Wheat Field by Bernard Arnest Photo courtesy of Mark Arnest

Arnest retired from Colorado College in 1982 as professor emeritus of art, a step he felt he should have taken some forty years earlier. While he enjoyed teaching, he welcomed the lack of schedules and deadlines, leaving him free to paint and do a little writing.

He died in 1986.