January Issue 2002
Will Henry Stevens' Work Shown at the Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC
Nine pastel drawings and watercolor paintings by Will Henry Stevens make a rare public showing in the Folk Art Center's Focus Gallery in Asheville, NC, through February 26. This prolific southern artist, while regarded as one of the great pioneers of Modernism in the American South, is also highly respected for his Impressionist landscapes and realistic depictions of rural life. Stevens has been lauded for his lyrical use of color, his ability to integrate abstract fantasy with realism, and for the development of his own unique pastel pigments. This exhibition, taken from a body of work donated to the Southern Highland Craft Guild by the artist's daughter, Janet Stevens McDowell, represents the mountain countryside of North Carolina and Tennessee during the 1930s and 40s.
While not native to the South, Will Henry Stevens spent most of his adult life in southern states, including a 27-year career at Newcomb College of Art at Tulane University in New Orleans. Born in Vevay, Indiana, along the banks of the Ohio River in 1881, Stevens showed an exceptional aptitude for drawing by the age of ten. His parents encouraged his artistic leanings, and after years of observing his love of drawing and nature, allowed him to enroll in the Cincinnati Art Academy in 1901. Several years into his studies at the Academy, he won a design competition sponsored by Rookwood Pottery, makers of architectural tiles and ceramic panels. His prize gained him employment with Rookwood, where he spent several years making decorative tiles for fireplaces, fountains, and various buildings. Noted achievements came from his work with Rookwood including having a hand in the Wall Street and Fulton Street subway station tiles in New York City, still in use today. While at Rookwood, he became taken by designer Grace Hall, who worked there from 1902 - 05. In 1910, they were married.
From 1910 - 1921, Stevens taught art classes in Louisville, KY, and continued developing his style with rural landscapes, enjoying long forays into the countryside for his inspirations. His paintings and pastels began receiving attention from artists and art dealers alike. Stevens was invited to exhibit in many prominent galleries of the time, from Cincinnati and Cleveland to New York and New Orleans. Some of the prestigious exhibitions during this period were held at The National Academy, the Art Institutes of both Philadelphia and Chicago, St Louis Museum of Art, and New Orleans' Delgado Museum. During one exhibition at the fashionable Clossen Gallery in New York City, Clossen himself was quoted as saying, ".. .We believe that Mr. Stevens' paintings are the best examples of American Art we have ever been privileged to show. Their rhythmic sweep of earth and sky, their atmospheric suggestion and their color richness give them a decorative value we have never seen surpassed."
During these years, Stevens traveled frequently with his family in their leisure time, affording him new subjects to paint. Winters were spent in the Gulf Coast, and beginning in 1916, the Stevens' made summer trips to the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. Carrying sketchbooks and paints in a knapsack, he would sometimes journey for days at a time, often on foot, capturing images of farm country, wilderness, and life in rural communities.
Occupational stability added a welcomed structure to his life when he accepted an offer from a New Orleans acquaintance Elsworth Woodward to work on the faculty at Newcomb College in 1921. Until his retirement from Newcomb, Stevens was known for his temperate personality and an unusually calm carriage of his passion for painting. He often demonstrated a gentle detachment from academic life by making long disappearances into the Bayou country, making friends and subjects of the farmers, trappers and fishermen in the outlying rural areas.
Possessing an awe and respect for the natural world, Stevens' artistic approach to the wilderness he loved came forth in an ever-expanding poetic vocabulary. Throughout his career, a vital need to experiment led him to be keenly influenced by such unrelated sources as oriental landscape painters and the modernist abstract painters of the early 20th century. The direction of his work from the 1930s and beyond reveal his talents stretching to incorporate new ideas from the changing art scene around him. He became equally fascinated and facile with the disjointed language of Surrealism as he did with the serene mountain landscapes of the Chinese Sung Dynasty. Proof of his commitment and artistry in more than one genre was best noted in 1941 when, as the art world held very divided attitudes about modernism, Stevens was given exhibitions in New York by two different galleries at the same time. One gallery showed entirely realistic paintings and the other showed only abstractions, appealing to two completely different audiences. Both were favorably reviewed.
The pastels in this current exhibition were made during his many trips to the mountains during the 1930s and 40s. In one sense they are realistic; we see nature as it was, and yet the color intensities and his treatment of the images have a fantastic quality, magnifying the emotion of the scene. These pieces are examples of the pastel crayons that Stevens created himself, using earth pigments from different clays of many regions. They were uniquely fitted for his palette and need for portability. They were completely smudge proof and colorfast, and achieve the rich surface texture and color intensity he sought.
Steven's daughter, Janet Stevens McDowell, lives in Asheville and was awarded a lifetime achievement award as a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild in jewelry. Her 1998 donation to the Guild's Permanent Collection of 27 pastels and watercolors helps facilitate the Guild's mission to interpret the cultural history of Southern Appalachia through its exhibition program.
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