Visit to New Hampshire's Ogontz Camp Blows Us Away!!

Since we had heard that many objects from Ogontz College were taken to the Ogontz Camp in 1950 when the college closed, we decided to visit the Camp to see if just maybe one of Quirk’s paintings was hanging in a lodge or barn building. 

Aerial view of Camp Ogantz in its glory. Note the two riding rings.

It was a long drive to Lyman, New Hampshire, but it was sure worth it. The beautiful camp is located on a small lake on 350 acres and has a unique rustic feel like none I had ever visited before.  The camp now hosts various camps in the course of the Summer including a Scandinavian week, dancing week and music week.



Rustic Cabin at Camp Ogontz



Camp Ogontz Cabins



The upper campus is ringed by a series of log cabin structures that once housed the girls. They are rustic and tasteful.

Camp Ogontz Dining Hall decorated for a wedding

The lower campus contains a dining hall , workshops, a lodge on the lake  for receptions and an impressive main concert hall. While that hall is not completed, it is an architectural masterpiece with massive tree trunks serving as supports and interior wood finishes.  When complete it will be stunning.  Sadly, at the moment they are short on funds. The ground floor is open and even with this limited access, it is impressive.

The Cabin on the lake is a beautiful and wonderful location for a reception party.

A wedding party on the deck of the Cabin at Camp Ogantz

Around the campus there are various buildings including stables, barns , and other spaces.  It  looked like a child’s dream to me and I could imagine no better summer for a ten year old, than rambling about the place exploring, using ones imagination and just having fun.

One of the many stables at Camp Ogantz. This one accommodated eight horses.

In its prime, the Camp must have been amazing. Stalls could accommodate at least  50 horses and there used to be a riding ring, a dressage ring and at least four tennis courts.

Beautiful Gardens at Camp Ogontz

The plantings are beautiful and the gardens were in their Summer glory.

A rustic stone stairway at Camp Ogantz- beautiful to look at, but a challenge to walk.

We ambled around the camp, poking our noses in here and there, but saw no sign of a Francis Quirk painting.  Andrew the Supervisor in the bakery was very friendly and helpful. The camp owner was rather short in explaining that paintings from Ogantz College are to be found at Penn State’s Museum.  It is too bad that she was not friendlier as I would have been happy to donate a bit to help complete the Hall or possibly find a way to come up and put in some time driving nails. (Life Lesson for non-profit executives-Groom Everyone.)



Beautiful and architecturally striking music building at Camp Ogantz





Internal view of music building at Camp Ogantz



While we found no paintings by Quirk, exploring the camp was tons of fun. It's appeal as a wedding location is obvious.

But as one door closes, another opens…. Let’s see what Penn State has…

Francis Quirk's Mail Box Goes Boom!

In our never ending quest for information on our Pennsylvanian painter, Francis Quirk, we came across the photograph below.  It appears that a mailbox has been blown up by some rowdies. It is available for purchase on EBay.



Francis Quirk and local law enforcement examine damaged mail box.

Francis J. Quirk Wins Prize at Providence Art Club

The Providence Art Club is the second oldest art club in the country. Located at 11 Thomas Street in
Providence, RI 02903. I can't believe that I have not heard of it despite my having visited the city and RISD several times. And visiting the Art Club is free!

Providence Art Club  Providence Rhode Island  If you think this looks good, go inside!

They describe themselves as follows.. 

Along Thomas Street, in the shadow of the First Baptist Church, stands a picturesque procession of historic houses, home to the studios, galleries and clubhouse of the Providence Art Club. Said to be the oldest art club in the nation after the Salmagundi Club in New York, our distinguished Providence institution has been here so long that no one can remember a time when Thomas Street was not synonymous with the Providence Art Club. In 1880 a group of professional artists, amateurs, and art collectors founded the Providence Art Club to stimulate the appreciation of art in the community. This new club would exist “for art culture” the founders proposed, and when they met to draw up their charter one February night in 1880, they inscribed that phrase on their seal. What they needed, the 16 founding men and women decided was a place to gather, and an exhibition gallery where artists could show their work and collectors could find good pictures. Within a month they had enlisted 128 members. Within six months the art club had leased an entire floor of a large building for studios and gallery space, where its first anniversary loan exhibition drew 1500 visitors in two weeks. Soon the Club had outgrown its quarters, and by the winter of 1887 it had moved to its present home on Thomas Street. Club members established a Club House in the 1790 Obadiah Brown House, where they combined its second and third floors to create a grand exhibition gallery flooded with daylight from the windows in its roof monitor. There the Art Club holds its dramatic presentations, musical evenings, and lectures. On the ground floor the founders preserved the old kitchen and dining room, where they gathered at lunch for Rhode Island jonny-cakes – a tradition still observed today. The artists furnished the Club House with tables and chairs of their own design and construction. They decorated the fresh plaster with ornamental friezes and then painted the silhouette profiles of club members on the walls. They made fantastic wrought iron andirons for the fireplace and lined the shelves with their beer steins. Paneled with the original wooden shutters saved from the old windows, the Club House is renowned for having some of the most comfortable and charming interiors in Providence.

EXHIBITIONS
Founded in 1880 to stimulate the appreciation of art in the community, the Club has long been a place for artists and art patrons to congregate, create, display and circulate works of art. Located along Thomas Street, in the shadow of the First Baptist Church, the Providence Art Club is a picturesque procession of historic houses, home to studios, galleries and the clubhouse. Through its public programs, its art instruction classes for members and its active exhibition schedule, the Providence Art Club continues a tradition of sponsoring and supporting the visual arts in Providence and throughout Rhode Island.




We unearthed documentation that Quirk exhibited there in a 1932 and appears to have one the Junior Prize (or Jurors Prize?). At the time, he would have been a youthful 25 years old. 

Catalog from the 1932 Providence Art Club Annual Exhibition

Catalog Mentioning Francis J. Quirk with Annotation of Prize Win

FRANCIS J. QUIRK - Scott Adams, III

Unfortunately. We have not been able to find out much about Scott Adams III, but give us time... 

After further exploration we have learned that Quirk again exhibited portraits twice in 1935. In the spring exhibition he had a portrait of Thomas B.A. Godfrey. And again that fall with a painting of William Beck.

Thomas B.A. Godfrey later would matriculate at Harvard University and according to the Harvard Crimson was commissioned into the Naval Reserves in 1942. Interestingly, that article lists his home town as Ardmore, PA. His father was Francis Boyer, former chairman of Smith Kline & French, that became SmithKline Beecham. He went on to be Chairman of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sad Loss of Francis Quirk Painting in1992 to Vandals

In searching for paintings by Francis Quirk, we came across this sad story about vandalism at  Allentown Pennsylvania's Dieruff High School. In the senseless attack on the School's Art Museum one of Quirk's paintings, a portrait appears to have been extensively damaged.  The decision was made not to repair it.

A New Life For Ruined Works At Dieruff High's Museum Of Art

Allentown's DieRuff High School's Art Museum once housed a Quirk Portrait in its Art Museum

May 22, 1992|by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call

 

Peter Sardo felt honored. It was Dieruff High School's 1988 commencement, and his retirement as head of social studies was celebrated by the informal rededication of the permanent art collection, which he helped establish in 1965 and had more or less shepherded ever since.
Principal Michael P. Meilinger personalized the announcement by picking up Sardo, who had taught Meilinger everything from shared management of schools to rock formations to good living in New York City.
 
Two weeks later Sardo felt sick. The June morning began promisingly, with Sardo returning to
 Dieruff to discuss his dedicatory plaque with Meilinger. The day went downhill when they learned that less than eight hours earlier an alumnus, thinking he was the skipper of "Star Trek," had ruined 17 of the 70 artworks.
 
Sardo cried and cursed at canvases yanked from frames, paintings dented by feet, watercolors ripped like confetti. To make matters worse, a school employee had tossed pieces of the collection into a dumpster.
"I seldom swear, except `damn' or `hell,' but I'm sure I said a few choice words that couldn't be taped," claims Sardo, who for three decades taught geography and geology at Dieruff and Muhlenberg College. " ... It was the antonym of exhilaration: it was debilitation." He remembers only one event more terrible, and that was the death of an 18-year-old son from a brain tumor.
 
Sardo feels better these days. After a year-plus restoration, and three lengthy postponements, the Dieruff collection was finally, officially, named for him on May 7. Now when he visits the school, he feels more like himself, more like the teacher who would see an artwork in the lobby, or the library, or the sculpture garden, and be challenged "to do my best to advance the cause of education."
 
Determining the price of mutilation caused the first delay, says Dennis Danko, caretaker of the Dieruff collection since 1986. According to the head of the school's art and music departments, appraisal to reimbursement took about a year.
 
Prior to damage the 17 pieces were valued at $15,100, notes Ron Engleman, business manager for the Allentown School District (Danko's guesstimate for the whole collection is $100,000). Damaged, the 17 pieces were worth $1,025. To restore the artworks, plus such items as a freedom shrine and photos of Dieruff principals, cost $9,492. Insurance paid for everything but the $1,000 deductible. The remainder came from the school district's general fund.
Delay No.2 involved restoring the restorer. James Brewer III, a conservator from Revere, Bucks County, worked for about two months, then underwent his second and third heart-bypass operations. He recuperated for approximately a year.
 
Brewer had many opportunities to act like a surgeon during his year and a half on the Dieruff items. Some were slashed. Others were deeply dented. Many carried the vandal's blood. The assignment was nothing new for Brewer, who has sealed the "X" of an ex-wife's razor blade, rubbed off linseed oil applied lovingly but wrongly every five years, and removed everything but an artist's blood.
Ask Brewer for a sample of his Dieruff work, and most likely he will mention Clarence Carter's "Study for Over and Above, #19." Artist and restorer have been partners for 15 to 20 years. One time, Brewer refurbished a Carter painting that had spent decades in a woodshed. This time, he had to bind six pieces of gouache on cardboard without damaging the watercolor.

Brewer began by placing the torn sections face down on a sheet of Mylar. Then he ironed beeswax through the back. Over this he applied Belgian linen and more beeswax. Only unpurified, "dirty" beeswax satisfies Brewer. When an archaeologist friend gave him a nugget from an Egyptian tomb, the first thing he did was taste it. He was testing for sugar content and binding strength.
 
Brewer finished the Carter by petrolling off the beeswax and regouaching the cracks. He intends to document the process, which he compares to making a grilled-cheese sandwich, in a book on 10 case studies in restoration.
 
Every Dieruff piece was conserved except two. Brewer says the faces on Francis Quirk's oil-on-canvas could be removed from their white field, reassembled and remounted. Danko insists the price would be too high. Such a renovation, he adds, would violate the artist's goals.
 
Brewer delivered the last of three installments last summer. Danko booked the rededication of the collection for Dec. 19, 1991. The plan was wiped out by a flu epidemic.
 

Photo Portrait of President George Bush

Danko rescheduled the ceremony for May 7. The idea, he notes, was to coincide with a spring concert and a reunion of school art angels. While the rededication was a month late for President Bush's visit to Dieruff, Sardo did get to discuss the collection with a federal education official.

Francis J. Quirk Painter and TV-Star!

While seeking information on Francis Quirk and his time in Provincetown, we came upon this article in an issue of the  October 22, 1957 issue of the Reading Eagle. The piece discusses an upcoming gallery talk at the Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery.

The article also mentions that the dashingly photographed Quirk is active in two Bethlehem television shows- "Art and I" and "It's Happening There." I believe the programs were broadcast on WFIG, a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania TV station which is now longer operational under those call letters. 

The 1950's was the early days of television when they were hungry for content. The program may have even been broadcast live so tapes may not exist. It may be time to reach out and/or visit Lehigh University to see what they have.  Alas, so many leads, so little time.

Article on Francis Quirk Gallery Talk Mentioning His Involvement in Two TV Shows.

Where did Francis Quirk Sell His Art in Maine?

Map highlighting Ogunquit Maine

In our quest to learn more about Quirk, we have begun exploring the places he exhibited and sold his fine paintings. A bio lists the "Ogunquit Gallery" and we have reached out to the non-profit Ogunquit Art Association for their 75th anniversary book to see if it has any mention of him. If so, a visit to lovely coastal Maine could be on the travel itinerary to begin sorting through boxes in the archives. (We'll also stop for a nice lobster at Mabels!)

We also have learned from a helpful person at the Ogunquit Art Association that artist Chris Ritter had a gallery on Route 1 and this could be the gallery referred to in the bio. Route 1 is the coastal road with shops, housing and industry on it.

Chris Ritter was a fairly well known artist himself and had relocated from New York. His bio on Ask Art.com says that he was born in 1908 and had a gallery in New York from 1946-1951. He also taught art at Hunter College and Cornell. He died in 1976, but his wife lived on past 2000. Her holdings were auctioned in 2006.

Chris Ritter Self Portrait

.  We will see where this leads.

Francis Quirk's Wife Anna Exhibited Artistic Talent as Well

In our never- ending quest to learn more about Quirk a query on the web revealed that his wife Anna also had some flair with the brush. The article below was in the Lehigh University Brown and White on Tuesday November 23, 1964. It appears that Anna's work had been exhibited at Old Orchard (Beach) Art Association and it was also on view at Moravian College.

According to Wikipedia "Moravian College a private liberal arts college, and the associated Moravian Theological Seminary are located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, in the Lehigh Valley region. The College traces its founding to 1742 by Moravians, descendants of followers of the Bohemian Reformation (John Amos Comenius), the 17th century Moravian bishop, though it did not receive a charter to grant baccalaureate degrees until 1863.

We have not yet found any of her works... but we have not really tried that hard yet.