A style of their own

American folk artists in the 19th century often had little formal training but produced a remarkable body of work nevertheless. An exhibit of Edward Balken’s folk art collection at the Princeton University Art Museum shows the unique styles they developed for portraits and landscapes of New England.

By: Daniel Shearer
   

"Polly Maxon of Stephentown, New York," is most likely a marriage portrait by an unidentified artist done around 1815.

   Art historians have wrangled for years over how to classify a certain genre of American painting now widely known as folk art.
   First they called it "primitive art," then "provincial art" and even "naive art." The debate continues in some circles. But after nearly 10 years of research, much of it funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), curators at the Princeton University Art Museum decided that "folk art" was a sufficient label for their latest exhibit.
   Princeton University alumnus Edward Duff Balken donated his collection to the school in 1958, mostly comprised of an extensive sampling of 19th-century portraits from the Berkshire Mountain region of New York. Exhibited publicly only twice, the art sat in storage for many years. Then, in 1990, the university nabbed an NEA grant to catalogue the works and pay for restoration of the collection’s works on paper.
   The effort yielded a 162-page, fully illustrated book detailing the careful research conducted into the history of each of the works and a newly painted gallery to display them. A Window into Collecting American Folk Art: The Edward Duff Balken Collection at Princeton is on view through June 18.
   "These artists had not been trained, at least, not in an academic sense," says Betsy Rosasco, the museum’s associate curator of later Western art. "I think the reason for that was this area in the Berkshires was quite isolated and self-contained. The people didn’t travel a great deal.
   "They lived in small communities which had been settled in the mid-to-late 18th century. They were people from the old Puritan stock that settled parts of New England. At that point, all the Indians were gone and this hilly, rolling landscape was where they settled."

While many folk artists painted portraits, the above painting by Sarah E. Harvey (ca. 1877) shows the town of Winsted, Conn., with almost topographical accuracy.

   With works from Zedekiah Belknap, Erastus Salisbury Field, Sarah Perkins and Asahel Powers, among others, the exhibit includes several landscapes, genre scenes, schoolgirl pictures and still lifes. Portraitist Ammi Phillips, with eight handsomely framed oil paintings in the exhibit, is one of the best represented artists. The traveling painter worked throughout New England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
   "Ammi Phillips was probably apprenticed with someone — we don’t know who," Ms. Rosasco says. "He started out working in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.
   "In his advertisements, he said he knew how to do shading, and that he would put people in the most recent fashions. He seems to repeat a lot of the clothes. One of the things you read is that he did the bodies first and the face later, sort of on command as the people ordered them. But one thing that works against this is that none have been found with just the body and no head."

Ammi Phillips’ austere oil painting, "Mr. Goodrich of Hancock, Massachusetts" (ca. 1812), was one of the first folk art works acquired by Mr. Balken.

   An Ammi Phillips painting, in fact, was one of the first folk art works acquired by Mr. Balken for his collection. He purchased an austere oil painting, "Mr. Goodrich of Hancock Massachusetts," in 1920.
   "When you look at the way the sitter’s arm is draped over the back of the chair in this very un-anatomical way, you know perfectly well what the pose is," says Ms. Rosasco, describing the composition of the Hancock portrait. "But it just doesn’t compute as far as where the elbow would be, and how the wrist was bent.
   "It’s a kind of stylization. So it’s clearly an artist who never drew ancient Greek and Roman casts, never drew a nude model and never studied anatomy."
   The exhibit attributes several paintings to unidentified artists, including a striking portrait, "Polly Maxon of Stephentown, New York." Curators believe the work, most likely a marriage portrait, was done sometime around 1815, when records showed Ms. Maxon was married. But often, Ms. Rosasco says, efforts to accurately date the works can be difficult.
   "The clothes are good giveaways," she says. "And then, Ammi Phillips, there are so many of them that you recognize certain poses over and over again."
   Stylistically, Ms. Rosasco says Ms. Maxon’s portrait, with its elongated nose, rounded facial features and oval eyes, bears a remarkable resemblance to paintings of the modernist movement of the early 20th century.
   "When you look at Polly Maxon, and the way her eyebrows and her nose are kind of stylized, you can see how much some of these folk artists resembled the modernists, which gained attention after 1913 and onward," she says. "It’s just reducing the elements to essentials. It’s about that time that Mr. Balken became exposed to modern art. By 1920, he was collecting folk art of this type."

"Woman with Black Paisley Shawl" shows an unidentified woman painted by Ammi Phillips.

   "I guess folk art is the right term," Ms. Rosasco says. "When you think about folk music, it developed on its own once it gets to America. Art, thought about in this way, doesn’t have to be labeled provincial or naive or anything else. You just have to try and puzzle out what the influences are and how these individual artists develop their own style."
   With the invention of photography in the late 19th century, the end of the era of the traveling portrait artist was in sight. Many prominent families sold their portraits to art dealers, filling their walls with daguerreotypes. As a collector, Mr. Balken was well positioned to take advantage of fashion’s shifting winds.
   A Window into Collecting American Folk Art: The Edward Duff Balken Collection at Princeton, an exhibition of 33 paintings and works on paper, will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, through June 18. Admission is free. Museum hours: Tues.-Sat. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sun. 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

   In addition, museum docent Frances Lange will host a gallery talk about the folk art exhibit on April 28 at 12:30 p.m. and April 30 at 3 p.m. The museum also will hold an open house, with gallery talks, tours, musical entertainment and refreshments, on April 30 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; and a children’s talk on May 6 at 11 a.m. For information, call (609) 258-3788.