< Winter Morning Sunrise at Monadnock, 1911. "You don't look at the painting to see what Mount Monadnock looked like. You look at the painting to see Thayer," said Richard Murray, senior curator, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, in the movie.Richard Meryman spoke on the Dublin Art Colony: A Medley of Great Gifts with pictures, lore, anecdotes and surprises on Friday, July 16 at Amos Fortune Forum.
"It’s nucleus was Abbott Thayer," said Meryman, "a major American painter who settled near Dublin Lake in 1888. He was an inspirational magnet and a thicket of peculiarities ...who believed his painting was dictation from a God who also pervaded nature. This led to a theory of concealing coloration of animals and birds, which eventually became military camouflage." Meryman continues, "Thayer's friend George de Forest Brush...
"It’s nucleus was Abbott Thayer," said Meryman, "a major American painter who settled near Dublin Lake in 1888. He was an inspirational magnet and a thicket of peculiarities ...who believed his painting was dictation from a God who also pervaded nature. This led to a theory of concealing coloration of animals and birds, which eventually became military camouflage." Meryman continues, "Thayer's friend George de Forest Brush...
"...arrived in Dublin in 1901. Already noted for "his Indian paintings, he specialized in modern Madonnas modeled by his wife and children.
"In 1906 Thayer hired young Richard Meryman to copy those 'God given passages' before they were spoiled by compulsive repainting. Meryman became director of the Corcoran Gallery art school in Washington and a go-to portrait painter of dignitaries. Thayer started mentoring Alexander James, son of the philospher William James, in 1909. Alec painted superb commissioned portraits until he switched to colorful New Hampshire characters. Independent of Thayer, young Joseph Lindon Smith came to Dublin in 1890. His specialty became painting Egyptian wall carvings in newly discovered tombs." Painting of Monadnock and Dublin Lake in the fall from Meryman Road by Richard S. Meryman Sr., 1956; and painting of Peterborough hills in winter by Alexander R. James, 1940, both images from the Dublin Historical Society calendar.*
Richard S. Meryman, Jr., son of the artist, basically grew up in Dublin. In 1949 he joined the staff of Life Magazine. He was a reporter, editor and writer who specialized in written portraiture, including interviews with such iconic celebrities as Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, May West and Louis Armstrong. Following Life Magazine’s demise in 1972, he became a free lance writer. His books include a 1996 biography of Andrew Wyeth and a 1978 biography of Herman Mankiewicz, who co-wrote the film Citizen Kane.
*The Dublin calendar Monadnock, Paintings from the Dublin Side, sold out quickly but a copy is available for viewing at the Dublin Historical Society, www.DublinHistory.org, 603-563-8545. From the calendar: The Dublin Historical Society would like to thank the owners for the use of the paintings. They are for the most part in private collections and are lesser-known works of the artists. Thanks go to John Harris, Archivist, for an introduction to the archive and collections, and the calendar which was produced by Henry James and Sarah Bauhan, president and vice president.
