Authors: Ken Perenyi
Whether or not this incident had anything to do with it, one thing was for sure: as the years passed, Jimmy invited people out to his house less and less, as he became stranger and stranger. These days, Jimmy rarely went out to hunt through antique shops. Nevertheless, he still maintained contacts in New Orleans with dealers he'd known for decades who still found items that held special interest to him. Paul acted as Jimmy's representative and often went there on business for him. Through those contacts, Paul had met Marty.
The morning after I met Jimmy, I awoke to a beautiful day and decided to walk the roughly three miles from Nyack to Piermont. A sidewalk made of worn slabs of slate and lined with oak trees led right along the Hudson River, through the town of Grand View, and then into Piermont. Jimmy welcomed me at the door, wearing one of his old suits and a tie that he wore every day, whether he was shoveling snow or planting petunias. He invited me once again to sit in the drawing room and offered me an armchair as he flopped down onto the antique sofa.
I discovered Jimmy to be a master at the art of conversation. He could draw on his extensive knowledge of history. He could easily quote Plato and Socrates as well as Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams. He could entertain guests for hours with stories of how he'd made some of his greatest finds as a collector.
But Jimmy preferred to keep the focus away from himself. He was a sly old man, and he slouched down in the sofa with his fingertips pressed together as he drew me out in a discussion about art. Evidently, he had been briefed by Paul and wanted to know the details of my life as an artist in New York City. He was particularly interested in why I painted only “Dutch” pictures and what I planned to do in the future.
I satisfied his curiosity with a brief history of my unfortunate experience at Union Square and told him how the “Dutch” paintings had kept me alive at the Fergusen Club, and how my future there had ended in disappointment. I explained to him that this series of misfortunes had derailed my plans to become an artist, and at this point I didn't seem to have much choice but to continue painting fakes. Often, during the course of my sad narrative, Jimmy would close his eyes as a thin smile would appear across his lips, and he'd slowly nod his head in understanding. After he was convinced that he'd extracted every secret, every scheme, every devious plan and ulterior motive of my young life, he slowly began to reveal the reason he had invited me there.
One might assume that Jimmy, a respected collector of American paintings, would naturally be offended by anyone counterfeiting them, but, to my surprise, this wasn't the case at all. On the contrary, his purpose in having me there was to encourage me in precisely that direction. Not only was I surprised to discover the proverbial streak of larceny in the old man, but I was amazed that he delighted in hearing stories of art dealers getting screwed.
“Well, why the hell don't you start painting American pictures, if you really want to make some money?” he asked.
“Yeah, Paul wants me to paint him some Indians” was all I could say, somewhat taken aback.
“What the hell does that mean?” was his reply. “Haven't you ever heard of Catlin, Charles Bird King, or Inman?” I had to confess my ignorance and admit that I knew practically nothing about American painting except for a few names I had picked up at Sonny's.
My introduction to the history of nineteenth-century American painting began that very day. I knew that Jimmy liked me right away, and I was flattered by his interest in my paintings. Now it seemed that the old recluse had someone who could genuinely appreciate and useâin the most practical wayâknowledge that he had accumulated over a lifetime and was willing to share.
Without further delay, Jimmy led the way up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where he used the old bedrooms to store piles of paintings and a collection of Empire furniture. Desks, tables, consoles, sleigh beds, and bureaus were crammed into the rooms. We spent the rest of the morning squeezing around and climbing over furniture to get to stacks of paintings leaning against walls. Jimmy pulled out every picture he thought I needed to see and handed them over to me, and I put them out in the hallway.
We lugged the paintings down to the drawing room, and the rest of the day Jimmy lectured for me on the various schools of American painting. We covered still-life painting, one of his favorite categories, and then moved on to marine painting, portraiture, and historical painting.
Before the day was over, I was familiar with such names as John F. Peto, Raphaelle Peale, John F. Francis, and Levi Wells Prentice in the still-life school; James E. Buttersworth, Antonio Jacobsen, and James Bard of the marine genre; and Charles Bird King, George Catlin, and Henry Inman, all of whom specialized in American Indian portraiture.
After familiarizing me with these artists, Jimmy lectured on the history of painting in nineteenth-century America. He explained that most of these artists had had their studios in the Northeast: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. Some, like George Catlin, traveled west to paint the Indians from life in their natural surroundings, while others, like Charles Bird King, resided in Washington, DC, and preferred to paint Indian representatives when they came to the capital to receive peace medals or sign treaties. Another interesting painter of the nineteenth century who Jimmy made a point of bringing to my attention was Martin Johnson Heade. Heade specialized in painting haystacks in the New Jersey meadows. Eventually he traveled all the way to Brazil, where he painted orchids and hummingbirds.
Next we dealt with the technical aspects. We turned the pictures around and carefully examined the weave of the canvas and the types of stretchers used, some still bearing the labels of their nineteenth- century manufacturers.
Then Jimmy pointed out something that I found exceptionally interesting. One of the still-life paintings we were studying was painted on a curious piece of cardboard. Jimmy explained that many nineteenth-century paintings were executed on a patented cardboard panel known as
academy board
. He said it was a product of the Industrial Revolution and had become an economic replacement for the wood panel.
“Do you have any more pictures on these boards?” I asked.
“Yeah, up in the attic. Let's go,” he said, and I followed Jimmy out of the drawing room through a hall and into the kitchen. Disguised in a panel of wainscoting was a small door that Jimmy swung open, revealing a steep wooden staircase that led up to the attic. The attic, I discovered, was Jim's secret placeâa place, I later heard, to which no one had ever been invited. Jimmy pulled a string connected to a single lightbulb. Through the dim light I noticed piles of books surrounding an old desk where Jimmy did his research.
“Here,” Jimmy pointed. “Come over here.” I followed him to some old file cabinets. They were filled with small beautiful paintings. He pulled out a few pictures on academy board. One was the finest little picture of a sailing yacht I'd ever seen. The ripples on the water looked so real and fluid, the sails of the yacht so light and translucent as they caught the wind, that I expected to see the boat sail right off the thin board it was painted on.
“That's James E. Buttersworth,” Jimmy said. “He's a guy you should be able to do.” I agreed. The other pictures were still lifes, one by John F. Peto and another by John F. Francis. When I turned them around and studied the backs, I realized that I had indeed seen panels like these before, at Sonny's and lying around antique shops. The back of the panel was coated with a dark gray paint called “slate paint” because, not surprisingly, when it dries it resembles slate. Each panel displayed an old manufacturer's label. The Buttersworth had a Winsor & Newton label on it, the Peto had one by Devoe, and yet another had one by Weber.
“You can find them all over the place,” Jimmy said. “All the artists used them in the nineteenth century.”
The next day, I was back at Jimmy's again with a notebook and Paul's 35-millimeter camera, fitted with a close-up lens. I took a number of paintings outside on the columned porch. I photographed the front, the back, close-ups of signatures, and other details of each painting done on academy board. I recorded the measurements and made notes on brushstroking, thickness of impasto, patina, and something I found most interesting: long (and straight) cracks peculiar to the academy board. These cracks were slightly elevated and often ran diagonally across the board. As soon as I saw these cracks, I remembered the cracks I had inadvertently produced on cardboard when I was first experimenting with old man Jory's formula for gesso.
Jimmy lost no time in putting me to work around the house. There was always another painting to hang or a piece of sculpture to move. Although he owned many beautiful paintings, Jimmy's real pride and joy was his collection of nineteenth-century American sculpture, a collection accumulated over forty years and regarded as the single most important one in the country.
Jimmy had me follow him down to the basement of the house. “I want you to help me get a marble up from downstairs and put it on a pedestal in the hall,” he said. Jimmy went down first and pulled at a string, illuminating the second lightbulb I'd seen in the house. Through the yellowish glow of its twenty-five watts, I was astonished to see row after row of priceless marble busts resting like tombstones on the dirt floor.
The last topic we dealt with during my indoctrination period was the aesthetics of framing American pictures. Jimmy was delighted with my love of period frames, and he was impressed with my stories of Mr. Jory (who had since passed away) and all I had learned from him. However, instead of the ornately carved European frames that Jory specialized in, I now had to develop an appreciation for the simple cove or wedge frames that had been favored in early America. Back up in the attic, Jimmy pulled out frame after frame that he placed around paintings he'd spread out along the floor, demonstrating to me the type of frames required for still lifes, marines, and portraits.
For me, meeting Jimmy was an epiphany. Jimmy had made a school of art that I'd once thought boring fascinating, even exciting. Now I had an appreciation of its beauty and importance. After a week of studying pictures, listening to Jim's lectures, moving marble busts around, and hanging paintings, I was anxious to return to Florida and get back to work.
Before I left, Jimmy loaded me down with books on Buttersworth, Charles Bird King, Martin Johnson Heade, and William Aiken Walker, plus a book on American still-life paintings authored by William Gerdts, an old friend of Jimmy's and the country's leading expert on the subject.
Paul was delighted by the way things had gone between Jimmy and me. When I told him that I needed to find some old academy boards with worthless paintings on them, he went around town and scavenged some up from his tenants. That left only one last errand to run before heading home: I went downtown to David Davis art supply and picked up some rabbit-skin glue and a few pounds of gilders' whiting.
“Please, bring me back some Indians,” Paul pleaded as he dropped me off at the airport.
When I got back home, I excitedly told José all about my visit with Paul, the introduction to Jimmy Ricau, and my plans to expand into the American school of painting.
By the next day, I was sanding off the original paintings from the academy boards. I cut the boards down to the size James E. Buttersworth commonly used: approximately eight by twelve inches. Then I mixed up the E. V. Jory recipe for gesso. After tinting it with some raw sienna watercolor, I took a wide, flat, brush and painted the creamy substance onto each board.
After it had thoroughly dried, I noticed that the gesso was hard, like the surface of an eggshell. In the nineteenth century, when these panels were originally manufactured, the gesso was applied by a patented method that produced a surface as smooth as glass. This meant that when the preparation of the boards was complete, the surface had to be perfectly smooth. Any surface irregularity could arouse suspicion to the trained eye, indicating the existence of another painting underneath or a reworked panel. So I laid each board down on a table as I carefully sanded out the brushstrokes left by the application of the gesso. After holding each panel at an angle to my eye to satisfy myself that they were perfectly smooth, I sealed each panel with a coating of shellac.
James E. Buttersworth, the first American artist I wanted to imitate, was born in England. He, like his father Thomas, was an accomplished marine artist. Their work is noted for the exceptionally fine detail displayed in the ships they painted and the coastal scenery in the background. James immigrated to America around 1847 and settled in West Hoboken, New Jersey, near where I was born. There he specialized in painting the ships and yachts that plied the Hudson River. Ultimately, he became the official painter of the New York Yacht Club and was commissioned to paint the yachts competing in the America's Cup races.
As I studied the work of Buttersworth, a very clear pattern emerged. When Buttersworth was painting for the New York Yacht Club, he executed individual images of famous racing yachts and scenes from Cup races featuring two or more yachts in competition. The pictures of Buttersworth's paintings in the book Jimmy had given me quickly made it obvious that Buttersworth had used several well-known settings over and over again. These included the East River at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; Sandy Hook, New Jersey; Boston Harbor, Massachusetts; and his favorite of allâthe area of the Hudson River off Lower Manhattan. This venue showed Castle Gardens, an ornate Victorian pavilion in Battery Park, to the left, and Governors Island to the right, where a fort dating back to the Revolutionary War remains today.
Further study revealed that many of the yachts depicted were Cup winners and appeared repeatedly in these various settings. In other words, Buttersworth was constantly making new paintings by juggling around a collection of standard boats and settings. Finally, I noted that he made numerous copies of these compositions, no doubt to satisfy the demands of yacht-club members. It occurred to me that if I could begin to think like Buttersworth, then I would have enough yachts and backgrounds to invent new compositions ad infinitum.