Our good friend and Knitting Mill dealer Wayne Summerlin is our resident expert on all things art.  He has been a professional photographer, artist and art collector for most of his eighty-something years and his knowledge of genres and techniques would easily qualify him as the Dean of the Art Department at any of the finest universities.  We are most fortunate to have him as a resource to identify and discuss the wonderful and varied works that flow through our Mall.

I have only one problem regarding Wayne.  My wife has his picture framed and sitting prominently in her office at the Knitting Mill.

If you look around her office for my picture you’ll be there for a while.  Nowhere to be found.  Our two beautiful daughters?  Nope.  Just Wayne.  There he is, circa 1940, a dashing young man with a crew cut holding his Jimmy Olsen style flashbulb camera (it’s actually a Burke & James Press Camera) staring, day after day, at my wife.  When I question Lynn about his picture sitting where mine should be, she simply explains, “He’s better looking than you”.  Ouch!  I suppose the secret to a thirty-year marriage is honesty, but really, I’d be OK with a little less of it sometimes.

Wayne has put together a wonderful display for us this month featuring Hack Art, aka Instant Art, Rapid Art, Art While You Wait, or the more formal Ala Prima, which means painting directly on the canvas without under-drawings.  As all of the names imply, it is the technique of quick work, produced on the spot for buyers (or painters) on the run.  The most famous example of Ala Prima was done by Rembrandt, when he completed a portrait of Dutch nobleman Jan Six in about two hours.  More recently, Rapid Artists in this country were often wanderers, whipping out landscapes by the dozen for the locals and then moving on to the next town.  During the Depression, when bartering was at a peak, their works would be traded for a meal, a few beers or a place to stay the night.

While this free and nomadic lifestyle conjures up romantic images of artsy hobos, there were also more stable Instant Artists who actually lived in their own homes.  One of the more well known, Marcus B. Lilly, painted right here in Chattanooga.  He was active in the trade for over fifty years, billing himself as “Chattanooga’s Lightning Artist”.  His primary subjects were mountains and lakes and he worked almost exclusively in oils.  We have several of Lilly’s works, as well as works by others, on display courtesy of Wayne from his private collection.  It will be up until the end of May.  Try to stop by.

The Face On The Barroom Floor

Ala Prima At Its Finest

At the Teller House in Central City, Colorado there is the face of a beautiful woman painted on the barroom floor.  There are both legends and facts as to how it got there.  It is fairly well documented that the face was painted by Herndon Davis in 1936 while he was in town with a commission to paint a number of works for the local opera house.  As the story goes, he had a falling out with the opera folks about the direction his work was taking and was not so politely decommissioned from the job.  In the early hours of his last night in town, he snuck into the bar of his hotel and left a memento of his visit, a woman’s face painted on the wooden floor.  The hotel’s owners, sensing opportunity, began to tie the portrait to Hugh D’Arcy’s famous 1887 poem “The Face On the Barroom Floor”, conveniently omitting the fact that it was written some forty years earlier.

Enter the legend that the face was painted by a forlorn and destitute alcoholic who had been driven to drink by the loss of his one true love.  He had wandered into the bar that night, disheveled and penniless, looking for a kind soul who might buy him a round or two.  In exchange, he would tell them the sad tale of his fall from grace over a woman, a most beautiful woman, who would remain in his heart until he took his last breath.

After several kind souls bought him several rounds or two, he wanted to share the beauty of his lover with his new best friends, and thus went about painting her face on the barroom floor.  The legend is unclear as to why he didn’t use a wall, a tablecloth or even a conventional canvas.  My guess is that by that time he was already on the barroom floor and it was just a matter of convenience.  Anyhow, the story ends when he finishes the portrait and then, overcome by the emotion of seeing her face again, not to mention a belly-full of brown liquor, keels over dead on top of his quick-drying masterpiece.

I like the legend much better than the facts.  Romance will win out over graffiti every time.  Combine the two and you’ve got one of the most visited sites in central Colorado to this day, a wonderful example of Ala Prima at its finest.