PETERS: MEMORIAL BRIDGE by Joan K. Yanni

PETERS: MEMORIAL BRIDGE

by Joan K. Yanni

Most docents know and appreciate Memorial Bridge (81.56). But not all who use the painting on tours are familiar with the artist who painted it.

Carl W. Peters (1897-1980) was from the Rochester area—Fairport, to be exact—and spent most of his life here and in New England.  He loved the snowy winters in western New York and summers near the sea in Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts. His love of nature and color dominates his paintings.

Peters, the son of German immigrant parents, was born on a small ten-acre farm in Fairport. He was graduated from the Mechanics Art Institute (now Rochester Institute of Technology) in the 1920s, studied at the National Academy of Design Summer School in Woodstock, New York, and trained with Charles Rosen, Harry Leith-Rose and John F. Carlson.  Carlson probably had the greatest influence on him.

In the 1930s and early 40s, he painted a series of murals, some for the WPA. (The Works Progress Administration was a government agency, created during the Depression, that put thousands of unemployed artists to work.) Some of his murals can still be seen in Rochester: The History of the Lake Ontario Region (WPA, 1940), Charlotte Junior-Senior High School; Settling of Genesee Valley (WPA 1938), Wilson Magnet High School; From Painting Men to Modern Lives (WPA 1937), Madison High School (soon to be moved to the South Wedge Middle School); and Tribute to Devotion, Rochester Academy of Medicine (1941).

In 1948, on a trip to the Rockport artists' colony to paint and teach, he met and married Blanche Peaslee, a North Shore native.  Though the two loved New England, Peters was drawn back to his home in Fairport and the house he had built, with his father's help, when he was 18. Thereafter the couple divided the year between Massachusetts and New York. Usually he painted four days a week and taught for three—in Fairport during the fall and winter, and in the Peters' Rockport home, Blue Gate Studio, during the spring and summer. He was a beloved and talented teacher. One of his students observed, "Even if I never paint, (after his instruction) I'll go through life seeing things I never saw before."

Always shy and reluctant to engage in self-promotion, Peters nevertheless won acclaim from fellow artists as well as critics.  He called oils and watercolors "the only true media," and scorned acrylics.  A dedicated naturalist, he painted his surroundings realistically and honestly.  He was known to spend hours outside in knee-deep snow, wearing huge gloves or mittens to warm his hands, as he worked to capture the colors of snow on his canvas. He believed in "emotional painting—in getting excited by what you see. Talent is really the ability to get excited."

Peters' style shows some influence of American Impressionism, but is more realistic.  His brush stroke varies from broad sweeps of color to short flecks of paint. He was able to capture the subtle colors of winter as well as vivid sunlight and sea. He believed in working and struggling to create a picture. "Struggle is good...you're trying to learn, and that's when you really paint."

Peters won many awards during his career, including three prestigious Hallgarten prizes, presented by the National Academy of Design in New York to American-born artists under the age of 35. Among his many professional associations were the Rochester Art Club, the American Watercolor Society, the Rockport Art Association, and the Buffalo Society of Artists. He died in Fairport at the age

of 83.

The National Academy of Design, New York; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago; and the American Watercolor Society, New York, have exhibited his work. His painting Little Valley has been acquired by the National Museum of American Art in Washington, and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, has recorded his paintings, murals and sketches on microfilm. A catalogue raisonné was published this year by the University of Rochester.

MAG acquired Peters' Memorial Bridge in 1981. It pictures the Veteran's Memorial Bridge under construction, with men working on scaffolding and white smoke rising vertically on the canvas. The bridge, which crosses the Genesee River at St. Paul Street near the traffic circle, was built during the Depression to provide work for the unemployed in the Rochester area. It opened in December, 1931.

Memorial Bridge can be compared with Crawford's Whitestone Bridge (51.2), Lie's Morning on the River (13.6), or Twachtman's The White Bridge (16.9).  It can also be used on the Genesee Journey tour or on any Rochester-related tour.

Sources: Curatorial files; CWA Library artist file.