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May 25--Thomas Eakins liked his paintings. He shared art juries with Andrew Wyeth. He moved easily among Pennsylvania Impressionists, New Hope Schoolers and Edward Hopperians. Harry Leith-Ross (1886-1973) made lasting ripples in many ponds.
His roaming, burrowing life is illustrated in the solo exhibition "Poetry in Design" at the James A. Michener Art Museum in New Hope, near the Solebury home he owned for five decades. The show, the latest in the Michener's series of explorations of Delaware Valley artists, is a vibrant portrait of someone who tried on styles like personalities, who stretched his wings from port to port.
Leith-Ross' exotic life began pretty much in the womb. He was born on Mauritius, a former British colony near the South African coast, to a banker father with Scottish heritage and a mother of Dutch ancestry. Three years later his family moved to a castle in Scotland, hoping a change in climate would ease his asthma. In England he studied engineering, but was more passionate about making art. He was inspired by a Dutch uncle so celebrated as a painter that the Dutch government donated one of his works to thank the U.S. government for World War I aid.
Leith-Ross flitted between jobs in the first two decades of the 20th century. He served as paymaster for an uncle's coal-mining business in New Mexico, studied art in Paris and ran an advertising company in Manhattan. In 1913, he sold his business to move to Woodstock, N.Y., largely to join a fabled art colony, partly to avoid typhoid fever. The next year he stayed in New Hope for the first time, living with his Woodstock teacher, Birge Harrison.
Born to the manner, Leith-Ross hung out in earthy places. He painted bold, brawny views of Bucks County farms, loggers and cluttered canal houses. He also filtered the region's dominant movements. The sky in "The Fredenburgh Farm" (circa 1917) is striped with Pennsylvania Impressionist green-lavender taffy. New Hope School elements appear in the deeply shaded, ruggedly veiled "Two Men on a River" (1935). Edward Hopper's urban loneliness hovers over "Flag Station" (circa 1956), a rectangular view of a solitary man waiting for a train on a snowy night. Leith-Ross excelled in watercolors. "Rain in Winter" is drenched in dreary smudges enlivened by an orange/black mist. The buildings in "Night Falls on Union Street" bleed through a beautiful blue-jean-ink twilight.
Several works here have false moves. "Meadows in Spring" is burdened by a big dose of dull sky. The waterfall sheets of gray sky in "Of Days Long Past" are melodramatic. Scenes of Canadian and Dutch harbors are too congested, although the water has confetti zest.
Leith-Ross was a core member of the New Hope art colony. He was a good friend of painter John Folinsbee, another Birge Harrison protege who in 1929 co-founded an arts center in Phillips' Mill, the English-style hamlet near New Hope. Leith-Ross exhibited often at Phillips' Mill, where the resident theater company performed plays written by his wife, Emily. In 1925, less than two weeks after meeting Leith-Ross, she accepted his proposal: "Would you have the courage to marry me?"
Leith-Ross prospered outside Bucks County, too. He exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Design. He won 11 prizes from the Salmagundi Club, a venerable center for the likes of Childe Hassam and N.C. Wyeth. In 1941 he painted a federally sponsored mural for a post office in Masontown, Fayette County. In World War II he created graphics for plane production.
Thanks to Michener curator Erika Jaeger-Smith, "Poetry in Design" is panoramic and personal. A case of memorabilia lent by Leith-Ross' daughter contains a diary of his cricket matches and wry letters illustrated by his charming cartoons.
"Poetry in Design: The Art of Harry Leith-Ross," through Oct. 1, James A. Michener Art Museum, Union Square on Bridge Street, New Hope. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday (Memorial Day to Labor Day). 215-862-7633
SPIRALING VESSELS
Lehigh University is presenting a retrospective of works by Bennett Bean, who makes architectural environments out of clay, paint and a wondrous imagination.
The most wondrous works are spiraling, nesting vessels cut from top to bottom. Inspired by everything from American Indian pots to Japanese water jars, Bean conjures everything from egg-cup rides at amusement parks to kimono screens. With its curving, footed, tug-of-warring walls, "Triple" could be a model for one of architect Frank Gehry's undulating, unfolding buildings.
Bean, who lives in Blairstown, N.J., uses 15 steps to make these sculptures. He shapes, cuts, assembles, burnishes, biscuit fires, draws with tape, coats with wax resist and patterns with acrylic paint. His spare pictures suggest the desert scenes of American Indian ceramics. His busy pictures suggest Paul Gauguin's jeweled tropical landscapes. By gold-leafing the interiors, he gives the exteriors the illusion of porous skin, which gives the vessels the illusion of illuminated lanterns.
Curators Peggy Hobbs and Dzintra Kalnins expand Bean's evolution by providing his 1978-1985 single vessels with traditional shapes and openings, darker colors and quieter patterns. His 2005-2006 "Ghost Paintings" feature figures with collaged bodies and white-clay faces peeking through cloudy red-white surfaces wallpapered by fabric samples and yellowed money orders. Reminiscent of George Segal's mixed-media reliefs, which Lehigh exhibited last year, these netherworld pieces were triggered by funerary items that Bean bought during a trip to visit relatives in Hong Kong.
Bennett Bean retrospective, painted ceramic vessels and mixed-media paintings, through Aug. 13, gallery, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem. Reception: 6-8 p.m. June 2. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. 610-758-3615, http://www.luag.org .
geoff.gehman@mcall.com
610-820-6516
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