[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

LOCKHART, Isobel Anne (1867-1910)

“Fishing: Crispin Creek”

ca 1909 / unsigned

oil on canvas / 15.4 inches x 19.3 inches

This simple impressionist work by Isobel Lockhart likely dates from the summer of 1909. Miss Lockhart’s origins are uncertain but she taught at Agincourt’s Charles Darwin public school from 1898 until her death on 21 March 1910, one of forty-five victims on the Green Mountain train wreck, Iowa’s most notorious rail disaster.

Adjunct to her career as a primary school teacher, Miss Lockhart was an amateur artist and reflective, we believe, of her educational perspectives. She eventually shared a home with her contemporary and fellow teacher Miss Rose Kavana(ugh). Kavana inherited the piece, which then passed to Howard Tabor, then to Rowan Oakes, from whom it came to the Community Collection. The identity of the angler isn’t recorded.

Shards of non-verbal material culture left behind, with intention or not, tell our children more about us than our words may. Sketches on the margin of a contract; doodles around the edge of a valentine; these can reveal more of what is in our minds, as well as what’s on them. So, examining Isobel’s “Fishing: Crispin Creek” as a work of art may be a disappointment: regardless of her skills in composition, color or rendition — which are worthy — we don’t know if her work was ever shown to the public, let alone be available for purchase. At best they may have become gifts to family and close friends who understand not all messages are written. Also that many cannot be.

So, what meanings attached to this visual delight by its sequence of ownership?

There is a label, handwritten, on the back of the canvas stretcher: “From Annie Isabault to Rose / Christmas 1909”

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

Unknown Artist (French; active mid-19th century)

Landscape—Barbizon School

1844 (dated but signed indistinctly)

oil on canvas (on the reverse of another painting) / 22 inches by 29 inches

A characteristic painting of the Barbizon School of the mid 19th century, this landscape is (arguably) far more interesting than the urban streetscape on the front of the canvas. The artist (whose name is illegible) made a judgment which work to show, but we modestly disagree.

This may be the only work in the Community Collection retrieved from the boulevard during Spring Clean-up. “One person’s trash….”

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

LEFLER, Heinrich [1863-1919] and Joseph URBAN [1872-1933]

“St. Georgius” / “St. Leopold” / “Returning from the Field” / “St. Stanislaus” / “St. Hedwig of Silesia”

1899

color lithographs / each 9 inches by 9 1/16 inches

Where is the line betwixt fine art and graphic design? Perhaps, in an ideal world, there is none.

From the set Österreichische Kalender Monatsbilder, each image illustrated a calendar month. These are characteristically “Secession”, the Viennese contribution to the European-wide Art Nouveau movement usually identified with France and Belgium. The contribution of each artist is still a matter of research. Agincourt has had a remarkable link with Austria through the Wassermann-Kolb family.

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

DAWSON, Nelson Ethelred [1859-1941]

“Two Sailboats at High Sea”

ca1910-1930

color etching on paper / 20.6 cm by 22.5 cm (plate)

Nelson Ethelred Dawson — does it take something special to live your life as an Ethelred? — was an English member of the Arts & Crafts. Though he worked in etching and woodcut, it’s comforting to know that his first studies were in architecture and painting. The colors of this captivating woodcut suggest the ’30s. It might easily have illustrated a novel by Herman Melville.

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

PEDERSON, E. [dates unknown]

“Jewels of the Night”

ca1930

oil on canvas / 27.4 inches x 18.3 inches (image)

Chicagoans will easily recognize this view of their city, principally the tower of the Chicago Temple, home of First United Methodist Church, at the corner of Washington and Clark Streets. Two blocks beyond is a station on the Wabash stretch of the Loop, elevated railway. For business and cultural connections—higher education, for example—America’s “Second City” may have been a greater influence than Des Moines or Omaha. This vantage, looking north, takes some liberties with the actual view when the work was painted, simplifying without actually representing its reality.

The artist, identified only as “E. Peterson”, is unfamiliar and may have been associated with the former artists’ colony at Sturm & Drang. The work itself was acquired at an estate sale.

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

GADEYNE, Jules Julien/Juliaan [1857-1936]

Beach / Sunset / Boats

ca1900

oil on wood panel / 9 3/4 inches by 14 1/4 inches (overall); 5 1/2 by 10.25 inches (image)

Gadeyne — a Flemish artist born at Blankenberge, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium — is known primarily for his marine subjects: boats, coastline, dramatic weather conditions. How this tiny work found its way to Agincourt is a lingering question.

Blankenberge is a community a few miles up the coast from Ostend (and just four miles from Brugge), a landscape which might well be represented in this painting.

[See: https://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/genealogie_nuijs_hoogers/I45837.php%5D

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

NORTON, Elizabeth (1887–1985)

“Lioness”

color woodcut / 3 3/16 inches by 6 inches (image)

1922

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

RUZICKA-LAUTENSCHLÄGER, Hans [1862–1933]

Cityscape / Tightrope Walker / Seiltänzer

oil on canvas / 5 inches by 7 inches / signed

pre-1900

Austrian artist Hans Růžička-Lautenschläger is recognized for his land- and cityscapes, painted in Italy, Austria, and elsewhere. His work in a late-Impressionist style has been mentioned favorably in several Austrian art journals, such as Der Merker. He exhibited in Vienna and Munich — and now in Agincourt.¹ This petite work emigrated to the United States with members of the Wasserman family, who settled in Agincourt in 1900.

“Tightrope Walker” may be a study for an intended larger work; it was likely painted at the scene. Despite the speed of execution, however — capturing the energy of the moment — there is little doubt of the wonder experienced by the spectators.

Hans Růžička-Lautenschläger / “View of the Pantheon in Rome”

Hans Růžička-Lautenschläger / “The ferris wheel in the Prater in Vienna by night”

¹ An inquiry has been made to the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien.

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

E. L. [Etienne Laurent?] [dates uncertain]

Portrait of Gaius Plinius Tennant

ca1870

oil on board / 9.6 inches by 7.3 inches

Of the three Tennant Brothers, Pliny — full name Gaius Plinius Tennant — was a true 19th century Transcendentalist. Though he was an investor in the Agincourt Enterprise and may have visited the site early in its development, Pliny Tennant pushed ever farther westward in his search for self. If this is, indeed, a portrait painted shortly before he disappeared somewhere into the southwestern states, possibly Arizona or Utah, he has struck a wistful romantic pose borne out by his life’s subsequent pattern or lack thereof. He is remembered as the namesake of “Pliny’s Purse”, the compounded return of his investment in the Agincourt townsite and the subcutaneous good it has done for the community.

The painter’s initials E. L. may stand for Etienne Laurent, a family friend from their origin in the Channel Islands.

[#1579]

[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

LLOYD, Margaret Eleanor [1867–1912]

FODE, David G. [1968–2022]

“Punch & Judy”

Design for a Stencil / original size unknown; published at 5 5/8 inches

1905 (date of publication)

Stained glass window / 30 inches in diameter

2015 (date of execution)

–

The story of this collaborative project, between two artistically talented people born almost exactly one hundred years apart, is bracketed with tragedy. In 1905, the year Margaret Lloyd’s design appeared in The International Studio, a British art periodical, a kindergarten was built on the grounds adjacent to Saint Joseph-the-Carpenter Episcopal church. Operated on a non-profit basis to bring the educational philosophy of Friedrich Fröbel to the community, the Shingle Style building may be the first work of architecture by the sixteen-year-old Anson Tennant. It included a window opening to accommodate the “Punch & Judy” window, adapted from the British artist’s design. Though documentation is lacking, it’s believed Lloyd know of our intention to adapt her “stencil” as a window. It remained a project for a hundred and ten years, however, when David Fode of Waukesha, Wisconsin brought Lloyd’s vision, literally, to light.

Researching names and dates for this entry, we encountered another layer of coïncidence: stained glass artist Fode died in November 2022 at age fifty-four, while we learned that Ms Lloyd had passed in 1912, a casualty in one of Britain’s worst train accidents. She was forty-five. The window, a lighthearted work of charm, has become a memorial to both of its creators — despite its political incorrectness.

[#1578]