HAROLD WESTON’S TREES by Joan K. Yanni

HAROLD WESTON’S TREES

by Joan K. Yanni

Harold's Weston's Three Trees—Winter (25.33) looks stark and simple, but is filled with pulsating color. One must stand and look into the darkly-outlined trees to see the vivid blues, pinks and yellows in the work. The painting is much like its author—a combination of austerity and the exotic.

Weston was born in Merion, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, in 1894.  But his life really began at the age of nine, he states in his memoirs, when his father took him to climb Mount Marcy. The Adirondacks had always been part of his family's history. Weston's grandfather had been among the wealthy Philadelphians who purchased a tract of land in 1887 that included the Ausable lakes and Mount Marcy. The group formed the Adirondack Mountain Reserve and later the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society, with the intention of preserving and protecting the land.   

After his first trip to the mountains, young Weston spent every summer hiking around St. Huberts and the lakes. He knew the land so well that at fourteen he was able to act as a guide for his father's friends. In 1911 young Weston contracted polio and was told that he would never hike again. But he was determined to enjoy his mountains, and for the rest of his life he climbed with a walking stick.

The damage from polio kept him out of the service in World War I, but he spent over three years in the Near East with the YMCA International. He had become interested in art at Harvard College, and back in NYC in 1920 he attended art school for a few months, but felt out of place and unfulfilled. He returned to the Adirondacks, where he constructed a rough, one-room house for himself and began to paint. "There I felt that if I lived alone with the woods and the mountains the technique of how to paint would work out." He lived frugally and alone, trying to paint what he felt as well as what he observed. His Near East experiences, he noted later, helped him see colors, design and patterns which he used in his work.

In 1922 he went to Vassar College where his sister was a student. There he met his future wife Faith and invited her to St. Huberts. It must have been true love: despite temperatures of 10 degrees below zero and getting lost in a blizzard, she agreed to marry him. To prove to her parents that he would be able to support her, Weston arranged his first one-person show in November, 1922—the year MAG's Trees in Winter was painted. The exhibit contained almost 200 paintings, mainly Adirondack landscapes,  and was reviewed with praise. He and Faith were married in 1923—and returned to St. Huberts to live, even though Faith had been accustomed to luxury.

Now Weston had a new subject: "Marriage brought the nude into my life, and pantheism disappeared." The series of nudes he painted also won acclaim. In a letter to Gertrude Herdle, then MAG director, Weston stated that his pictures were on view at Stieglitz's gallery when John Marin saw them. "I feel the woods and the mountains in these nudes," Marin remarked. "Synthetic American landscapes—direct primitive quality...who did them?" Weston was startled and pleased: he had carried over his love of nature into the love he felt for his wife.  In early   1926 he and Faith traveled to France, where they lived in a small cottage while Weston explored new media and two of their three children were born.

          

The 1930s was a productive period for Weston. He became a friend of Duncan Phillips, the art collector and critic, who eventually collected 34 of Weston's works. The Phillips Memorial Gallery, now The Phillips Collection, mounted four Weston shows, and the artist's reputation grew.  He painted a series of important portraits, all noted for their intuitive representations. In 1939 Weston won third prize at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. In addition, he painted a series of murals for the General Services Administration Building in Washington.

During and after World War II, committed to a family tradition of public service, he became a force behind the creation of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, founded Food for Freedom, organized the International Association of Art, an affiliate of UNESCO, was co-founder and chairman of the National Council on the Arts and Government, helped create the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities—and still he found time to paint. A series of six oil paintings from this time shows the construction of the United Nations buildings and is now owned by the Smithsonian Institution.

In his later work Weston became more interested in the abstract in nature, the design and structure of natural forms. He sought simplification and abstraction without any sacrifice of meaning.

To please his friends he wrote his autobiography, Freedom in the Wilds. He continued to paint into the final months of his life. He died in 1972.

Sources: Mackinnon, Anne: "A Passionate Nature: The Consummate Art of Harold Weston," Adirondack Life, Jan/Feb 1994: Weston, Harold: "A Painter Speaks"; curatorial files.