• Contact
  • SPONSORS
  • Cummings at Silver Lake Weekend July 2015
  • Celebration Sites
    • Frank Lyman’s place
    • Hurricane Point
    • Jess Shackford’s farm
    • Joy Farm
    • Madison Church
    • Madison Historical Society
    • Memorial Lighthouse
    • Sam Ward’s Farm
  • Silver Lake Folk
    • Frank Lyman
    • Minnie Frost
    • Sam Ward
    • The Shackfords
  • ADVANCED TICKET RESERVATION FORM

Cummings at Silver Lake

~ A weekend of art & music

Cummings at Silver Lake

Category Archives: Painting

Young Estlin Cummings’ “Wild West Show”

24 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Painting

≈ Leave a comment

WestShowFinal.jpg.CROP.article920-large

From a collection of E. E. Cummings’s early letters, writings, and drawings, together with family portraits by Charles Sydney Hopkinson, displayed in the summer of 2013 by Massachusetts Historical Society’s Treasures Gallery at their 1154 Boylston Street headquarters in Boston.

Estlin Cummings “Wild West Show” featured a selection of E.E. Cummings’s childhood writings and drawings, showcasing the young poet’s earliest experiments with words and illustrations. Drawings and paintings include ink blots, watercolors, and sketches in pen and pencil of cowboys and Indians, boats, the “world’s tallest tower,” wild west shows, hunting expeditions, locomotives, zoos, circuses, elephants, and house plans.

RhinoSoldierFinal.jpg.CROP.article920-large

E E Cummings: “Poetandpainter”

26 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Events, Joy Farm, Madison, Painting, Silver Lake

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

E. E. Cummings, Joy FArm

“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.
This may sound easy. It isn’t.”

Many people do not know that E E Cummings’, the well-known poet who lived part of the year near Silver Lake, in Madison, NH, first ambition was to become a painter, not a poet. Born on October 14, 1894, most people know E.E. Cummings the writer. As a poet, Edward Estlin Cummings was very popular throughout the 20th century and received widespread critical acclaim. Less well-known is Cummings’ accomplishment as a visual artist.

Born to a pair of genteel Cambridge parents, Estlin’s parents (he preferred being called this) were anxious that he have the best education and environment he possibly could to be a successful and happy man. Schooled at home nearly until he enrolled in Harvard at sixteen, his parents were willing participants in enacting plays, costumed, with great drama. Many of the drama props are on view at the Madison Historical Society.

Cummings thought endlessly about visual art and its relation to the other arts. He devoted a tremendous amount of time to his art, writing copious notes on his ideas about painting, color theory, the human body, the ‘intelligence’ of painting, and the Masters. He spent several years in Europe and studied all forms of art in museums.

His father was a minister of the Unitarian Church and a teacher at Harvard, where Estlin always had access to the best educators of the times. Estlin himself never became a devout churchgoer, but more of a transcendentalist in the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who constantly apprehended spiritual truth through intellect, nature, and reading. His numerous studies of Mount Chocorua, while in the tradition of Cezanne, suggest an endless search for the truth—that of the ultimate ‘eyeball’—seeing and understanding all—which Emerson referred to in his essays.

At an early age he showed promise as a writer and an illustrator, creating his own storybooks that he also illustrated. These “ twin obsessions”—painting and poetry—were the focus of his life, but by the 1930s, he was recognized most for his poetry.

There were four major aesthetic concerns of Cummings’ adult work: perception, three-dimensional form, motion, and the interrelation of the arts were his focus in the early part of his life. Expert biographer Milton Cohen characterizes him as a ‘poet, cerebral aesthetician, and lifelong painter.’ Cummings was always struggling to earn a living, and owes much to a group of wealthy supporters who were happy to commission him to paint.

Cummings painted primarily in oils on canvas, canvas board, particleboard, cardboard, and sometimes burlap. His painting is generally divided into two phases. Between 1915 and 1928, he produced large-scale abstractions that were widely acclaimed.

Noise #13

Noise #13

Some of his early successes were a series entitled “Sounds” in which he portrayed sounds. These intrigued his cerebral friends. He was fascinated with color and often counterbalanced the colors of the color wheel in his landscapes. One of his favorite gifts as a young man was his own color wheel.

Then a tectonic shift in the focus of his art was near simultaneous with the deadly car accident that his parents experienced one winter night at a railroad crossing in Ossipee, NH, in November of 1926. His mother survived but his father did not. This is not to suggest causation, but often great trauma does signal dramatic change in a person’s life. His life, once he retired to Silver Lake, was generally divided into two parts during the day: painting in the morning, and poetry in the afternoon.

Between 1928 and 1962, Cummings created primarily representational works including still lifes, landscapes, nudes, and portraits.

cummings oil on board note reflection

cummings oil on board note reflection

He produced highly popular drawings and caricatures that were published in “The Dial” journal, printed by the Dial Press, a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh. Dial Press shared a building with The Dial and Scofield Thayer worked with both. Both were friends of Cummings.

Known for cutting a dramatic though small figure when he swept through Silver Lake, his long duster swirling about him, gloves on hands, hat on head, he made an impressive figure. The gloves, of course, were to cover his highly chapped hands which were exposed daily to turpentine.

Once he settled in Silver Lake, his painting routine took the form of Mount Chocorua studies in its many attitude, poses, color, shade, and angles. They are a delight to the Chocorua lover.

E.E. Cummings-Chocorua

E.E. Cummings-Chocorua

Cummings’ touchstones of expression were his erotic poetry and line drawings which are favorites of the collector. They are inspirational, illustrating the depth of his emotion and understanding of the nature of life and the human form.

MM-Gray-GreenLater in his life, he was an invited speaker and found great success with the dramatic delivery of his poetry. These were a terrific effort for him, but he enjoyed the attention and money that they brought him.

Cummings spent the last ten years of his life traveling, and producing speaking engagements, and living at his summer home, Joy Farm, in Silver Lake, New Hampshire. He died on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire of a stroke.

His line drawings and aphorisms highlight his resistance to instruction of any kind:

“The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.”

Get to know E E Cummings through the Friends of Madison Library’s Cummings at Silver Lake Celebration Weekend, July 10 & 11, 2015. On Saturday, visit his favorite landscapes and see the view from his beloved Joy Farm. View the Cummings’ Family Collection at the Madison Historical Society and the Mount Washington Valley Arts Association art show and silent auction at the Madison Library. On Friday night at 7 pm enjoy the “nonlecture” of music, art, readings and discussion at the Madison Elementary School. All proceeds from the weekend benefit the Madison Library. Tickets are available through the Madison Library or through the Friends’ website http://www.cummingsatsilverlake.com.

Cynthia Melendy, PhD.

Cynthia lives in the Mount Washington Valley of New Hampshire and has a MA degree in American Studies and a PhD in History.

Cummings Family Collection

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Painting

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

E. E. Cummings, Madison Historical Society

During the Cummings at Silver Lake Celebration, July 10 & 12, 2015, be sure to see the new “Cummings Family Collection” exhibit at the Madison Historical Society, including two paintings by E.E. Cummings recently donated by the Shackford Family.

Among the memorabilia are a pair of Edward Cummings’ red leather sandals from a Julius Caesar costume, photos of the family at Joy Farm, and some of Estlin’s baby clothes.

Mr. Cummings, “Your poems are so hard to understand….”

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by FOML in EE Cummings, Joy Farm, Painting

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

E. E. Cummings, Joy FArm

Best known as a poet, E.E. Cummings was also an accomplished artist.  While his early work was often abstract, later in his life he frequently painted the view of the mountains from Joy Farm. “Many of the landscapes are either weirdly surreal and muted or else bursting with mad swirls of brilliant colors. His favorite (or at least most frequent) landscape subject by far was Mt Chocorua in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which often either dominates the canvas or at least makes its presence known (á la Mt Fuji in traditional Japanese painting).”  quote from Ken Lopez Bookseller.

 

In a “conversation” with himself, Cummings’ compares his paintings with his poetry.

“Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy.
Easy?
Of course—you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands.
I never met him.
Who?
Everybody.
Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting?
I am.
Pardon me?
I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational.
Not all painting.
No: housepainting is representational.
And what does a housepainter represent?
Ten dollars an hour.
In other words, you don’t want to be serious—
It takes two to be serious.

E.E. Cummings in “Forward to an Exhibit: II” (1945)

Cummings at Silver Lake WeekendJuly 10, 2015
What an incredible E.E. Cummings at Silver Lake Weekend! Thanks to all who came and supported the Friends of Madison Library.

Archives

  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015

Categories

Follow Cummings at Silver Lake on WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Cummings at Silver Lake
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Cummings at Silver Lake
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...