Spotlight on One Work by Wylie Warren Curry
On a June day of this year, Beth Smith of Chagrin Falls, Ohio walked into a chain thrift store in North Randall, Ohio. An art enthusiast, she was keeping her eye peeled that day for interesting artistic items. Lying inconspicuously on a shelf was a painting. She picked it up, admired the colors and bold brush work, and saw the signature: Wylie Warren Curry. Immediately, she Googled the name in hopes of identifying the painter. Her hope was to possibly bring the painting together with a member of the painter's family. As luck would have it, her query was directed to the first installment of this family history blog created just the month before. Unlike his brother Noble's name, Wylie's name did not have a web presence prior to my writing about the two brothers. Beth bought the picture for half the marked price. It was 50% off day at the thrift shop.
Beth wrote to me within days of finding my grandfather's painting. "I have one of your grandfather's paintings," she typed. She asked what paintings of his I owned. I replied immediately, assuming that at sometime in her past, Beth had bought or been given one of Wylie's numerous portraits. But when she
wrote that the painting was of a mountain, and that she had recently found it in a thrift shop, I was intrigued. I didn't know of any landscape painting my grandfather had ever done. After spending time trying to identify where the mountain was located, Beth spotted a shred of paper clinging to the back of the painting. A bit of pencil writing revealed that this was a painting of Yosemite National Park's famous Half-Dome, a massive stone mountain soaring up from Yosemite Valley in California. This revelation surprised me; when had my grandfather ever been to Yosemite? When I was a child in Seattle, my Curry grandparents only visited once, and they traveled directly by train from Cleveland. Was it true, then, that my grandfather left Ohio for a time so that he could be a "vagabond" and ride the rails? Did he leave during the Depression so that he could paint his way across the great West? I had heard through a cousin and my mother that he had done this, but until now have had no evidence of it. Neither of them knew any particulars about this period of my grandpa's life, and my father never mentioned this to me. This painting provides a possible clue, some pictorial evidence, that he stood in awe of places far from his Ohio homeland, and painted them.
Soon, Beth had the painting packaged and shipped to me. What a generous act. I could not be happier to own a second painting, and such an atypical one, by my grandfather. My family now has a total of four of his oils, so I am exceedingly grateful to Beth Smith. To any future readers of this family history, please contact me if you know of any artworks by Noble Wilbur Curry or Wylie Warren Curry that are in private hands or in a museum. We all wish to locate as many as possible. Thank you.
Below is the full painting (16.5" x 20.5") of Half-Dome by Wylie Warren Curry. Please scroll down to read a commentary on the painting technique of this work and the panel it was done on .
When a painting is done in one sitting, with the paint applied wet-into-wet, it is called alla prima painting. For a brief commentary on this classic technique, click here. For a plein air (on-site, outdoor) painter, this technique is ideal. Paintings done using the alla prima approach have a fresh, impressionistic appearance with no fine, fussy detail. The painting reads well from a distance, the brushstrokes blending through the viewer's eye, the lights and darks of the image being distinct. In this painting, look closely at the row of trees at the base of Half-Dome. Confidently made with a wide brush, the strokes hardly look like trees, but from a distance, is there any question that they are trees? Where the light hits the top of Half-Dome, several warm, light colors are in each creamy stroke. The cool blues and lavenders of the shaded stone are unnatural, yet read without a doubt as cool shade.
One final note: the painting is done on a Masonite panel. This material was invented in 1924 (see a reader's comment posted below) and soon was adopted by painters as an alternative to stretched canvas. Would my grandfather have carried cut panels of Masonite with him as he explored the west? More economical than canvas, Masonite would also travel well. Ultimately, it is fortunate that Half-Dome was done on a panel. What appear to be knife slashes appear in quantity on the lower half of the painting. What befell this artwork? How did it end up in a thrift shop in North Randall, Ohio? Will I ever find out if my grandfather, who was an excellent provider, actually left home to seek adventure as far west as California?
(Postscript, May, 2013: Last month I removed the frame of this painting in order to have the image scanned professionally. With a magnifying glass I could see that what looked to be a smudge of paint under the signature was in fact a date: 1962.)
If you, the reader, can offer more clues or help locate more paintings by Wylie and Noble Curry, please email me (click at top of right column). Thank you!
