Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

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My next impulse was to show the sketches to our artist friend, Miss Har- riet D. Condon. She would have known that period and would undoubtedly be interested in the signed record of a layman’s artistic development. She was. She even recognized the locus of a tree by a sketch of it (the most carefully and wonderfully made of them all) and other scenes of Ipswich Basin and Water Street. But the people she did not recognize. She said, during the course of our conversation, that in some of the pic- tures she was reminded of the technique of the fine artist, Arthur W. Dow. She had taken some lessons from him and learned that his policy was to strive mainly for composition. He w ould draw a simple pattern, she said, on a square or oblong piece of paper and fill in trees, animals, or people wher- ever he felt that they were needed. Could G. W. F. have been a pupil of Mr. Dow’s? And who could G. W. F. have been? “George Farley’’ was the reply, “but he was not gifted in the line of art at all.” Perhaps he had hidden talent of which this book is the only record! I was sure that it was George Farley. The mystery was solved at the end of a pleasant evening. Racing home, I showed the book to my father who had been away, and I made no comments as he went through it. Telling the solution of a mystery before one has been acquainted with the mystery itself is no way to arouse a person’s interest! But before I could explain my luck, he said , “Do you know, this picture bears a strong re- semblance to Arthur Dow. His picture is in the frontispiece of Mr. Arthur Johnson’s life story of him. Perhaps it is a picture by Mr. Dow of his father.” We eagerly brought out the life of Mr. Dow. Indeed, the man in the sketchbook had the same short beard but a broader chin than Arthur Dow’s. He had the same penetrating eyes. From that moment dated our supposition that Mr. Arthur Dow himself was the artist of the sketchbook! We dismissed the initials G. W. F. as a sketch of and not by Mr. George Farley. Arthur Wesley Dow — the man who was proud to be a native of Ipswich. He graduated from Newburyport High School, studied art in Paris and Japan, became an authority on Eastern Art, a painter of wide fame, author of a universally popular book upon com- position, a teacher at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and head of the Art Depart- ment of Columbia University until his death. Yet essentially, he remained a native of Ipswich, striving to portray truthfully in bis paintings the spirit of New England as he knew it from his life in Ipswich, leaving his studio site on Bayberry Hill as a park for the Town of Ipswich, and, through the 18

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LITERARY FROM THE FALLING LEAVES OF A SKETCHBOOK A store-room of musty old books does not seem the proper birthplace of a mysterious romance. The closet where ancient school supplies were kept in the Man ' ning School, however, yielded, in 1935, a curious little 4J £ ” by 6 J 2 ” sketchbook with covers fray- ed and pages loose. A single word, “DRAWING,” had been penned in uncertain lettering upon the front cover. A perusal of the contents of the book is more pleasing. It holds a series of carefully executed pencil drawings, dating from 1877 to 1880, of Ipswich scenes, some unfamiliar scenes, and portraits of former citizens — portraits which have an air about them of being excellent resemblances of the people whom they represent. The modest creator of this delightful work left no name upon it. Somehow, the book found its way onto the bookshelves of Room 10, and was taken out and admired once or twice yearly. “What a shame it is” the admirer would say, “that a person with such a gift never rose to fame. (For the draw- ings show a definite technique and great talent.) The sketchbook moved with the rest of the high school regime to its new, shining quarters on Green Street in 1937. There, ashamed of the contrast of freshness with antiquity, it seemed to retreat to the depths of a bookshelf, until it was brought forth last May to be shown to some Latin students who were interested in art. It was in this capacity that I was fortunate to view the work; and was allowed to keep it for a weekend. I looked forward to the joy of inspecting it at my leisure, and I secretly expected to solve the mys- tery of its authorship. A hasty once-over showed me that there was indeed no name attached to the skilled work; but beneath a drawing of a man ' s back were three initials; G. W. F. G. W. F.! There was a clue that fairly bubbled over with pos- sibilities. If it had not been after hours, the town clerk ' s office would have been besieged immediately. An analysis of the subjects revealed the artist to be a man, for he drew a clock, the rear platform of a train, boats, factories, houses, church steeples, animals, woodland scenes with figures of men in them, and about ten men ' s portraits to two of a woman (undoubt- edly the artist’s mother.) What woman’s mind of that period would have run in those directions? 17

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efforts of his wife, two of his famous paintings to the high school. I so greatly hoped to find out that the sketches were the work of Arthur Wesley Dow. It seemed to me to be the only desirable solution, disproving our foolish thoughts that the drawings had been made by a man who didn’t carry on his art work beyond young manhood. Who with such decided talent could possibly have ignored it or failed to carry it on into prominence? There were, however, opposing facts which tended to disprove this theory. It was Miss Condon who pointed them out . . . Why should the sketchbook have been found in the Manning School when Mr. Dow had attended Newbury- port High School and had no contact with the Manning building? Most of the men pictured on the pages were of a very scholarly type with delicate hands. Mr. Dow’s folks were farmers and laborers with strong, hard hands that had known what it was to do difficult physical work . . . The windows in the interior scenes had large panes of glass and tasseled draperies, luxuries which undoubtedly were not found in the humbly-situated Dow family. There followed an interview with Mr. Johnson, who thought it quite prob able that the book was Mr. Dow’s work, for he noticed that the writing of the dates beneath the sketches resem- bled samples that he had of Mr. Dow’s. There was also another talk with Miss Condon, who felt quite sure that Mr. Dow had not drawn the pictures, but that they might be the work of Mr. Everett Hubbard, an Ipswich poet, who had had considerable artistic talent, also. It was then that I turned in earnest to jMr. Johnson’s Life story of Mr. Dow. I took also the sketchbook (which I’ve kept for many weekends) and referred to it from time to time as I ran across congruent dates. Arthur Wesley Dow was born in the Norton-Cobbet House in 1857. He early showed a sensitive, poetic nature, coupled with a love for doing hand- work. He was fascinated by clocks of all kinds and spent many hours of his boyhood in tinkering with them and in taking them apart. (I referred to a sketch of a banjo clock.) Dow graduated from Newburyport High School in 1875. (I noticed a sketch of the rear platform of a train, possibly made while commuting to and from school) . There followed a time of disappointment at not being able to attend Amherst College. Instinctively his love of handwork developed more and more into a keen love for drawing, which filled the empty hours of uncer- tainty. He turned, not to copy the il- lustrations of others, but to the marshes and dunes and the wealth of old houses about him. The houses especially fas- cinated him, for he realized that they were the expression of the art of two- hundred and fifty years of the people of New England. (I turned again to 19