Visit to Rhode Island

Our friend Barbara was visiting on her way from Maine to Florida on Thursday, much to our delight. We began the evening at an Art opening in the Pump House Gallery at Hartford's Bushnell Park. Gary Jacobs was the featured artist and, as always, Royal Marsala’s Indian food was a treat.

Gary Jacobs

Then we headed up to Windsor Green for a FVB concert. The best audience yet this summer. Besides Barbara, I mean.

Barbara and Marie

the Band

Saturday morning we headed for Rhode Island. First stop, Newport. Finding our way in RI was challenging as there were often no street signs and just as often no directional signs at all. But we got there only to find heavy traffic wherever we went. Turned out it was Newport Jazz Festival weekend.

We didn't stop at the Newport Art Museum, though it is an interesting building.

Newport Art Museum

Reconfiguration 2000 by Michael Hansel

Our destination was the National Museum of American Illustration in Vernon Hall, built in 1898. The architects were Carrère and Hastings (NY Public Library, U.S. House and Senate Office Building, Flagler Museum, Frick Museum). In the style of an 18th century French country chateau, Vernon Court served as a summer cottage for a young widow.  It is adjacent to Stoneacre, a park conceived by Frederick Law Olmstead.

In 1998, it was purchased by Lawrence & Judy Cutler, NYC gallery owners, to house their collection of paintings by American illustrators. While there are usually paintings by Howard Pyle (father of American illustrators) and others, they had a show featuring Norman Rockwell. This also gave the opportunity for a number of paintings by JC Leyendecker. Dr. Jennifer Greenhill says that Leyendecker's style was "rooted in its compositional elements and more decorative in nature" while Rockwell's was "focused on telling a recognizable story for the broad American audience." NMAI has the second largest Rockwell painting collection, but I prefer the Leyendecker.  Photos were not allowed, but I found these Leyendeckers online:

Our favorite was A Florentine Fete by Maxfield Parrish which was in the Rose Garden Loggia The mural panels were commission for the 175-foot cafeteria walls at Curtis Publishing in Phila (1911).  Also online:

Rose Loggia

Among the many details, there are repeated appearances of Parrish’s companion, Susan Lewin.:

I also liked Parrish's Stars for which Parrish used his daughter as a model.

Stars

As I have noted in other locations, women artists were on display at NMAI. Paintings by Violet Oakley, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Sarah Stilwell Weber, Alice Barber Stephens, and Ethel Franklin Betts.

While we were in the neighborhood, we walked around the Vanderbilt’s Breakers and took in the Cliff Walk which offered views of a more of the oceanfront mansions and the ocean.

The Breakers

neighboring cottage

We then drove to Fall River, MA to see the carousel in Battleship Cove. This carousel was originally in Lincoln Park in Dartmouth, MA and was bought, restored, and rehoused in a waterfront location across from the battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts, as well as a destroyer, a submarine and two PT boats.

The carousel is wonderful. Built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company in 1920, it was at Lincoln Park until 1986.

There was a wedding party there for pictures. Can’t resist wedding pictures:

On our drive to our next stop in East Providence, we drove through Barrington, RI. It looked like the city was filled with bicyclers and ice cream shops. Very nice, but we couldn’t stop.

Crescent Beach in East Providence on the west coast of Niantic Bay, has a rich history as an amusement park since 1886. All that remains is the carousel, built by Charles Looff, who had a nearby summer home, in 1895. Looff built the first carousel at Coney Island in 1876 and when the government took his property by eminent domain, he moved his factory to Crescent Beach in 1905. There’s lots more history that isn’t vital to our story. Here are some pics:

Next stop was the carousel at Slater Park in Pawtucket. Samuel Slater is considered the Father of the American Industrial Revolution because of his innovations in building the mills that spread throughout the Blackstone River valley. At the park we found sculpture:

Eiffel Tower by David Perola, 2006

And we found the Looff carousel built in 1894. It has forty-four standing horses and six menagerie animals (a camel, three dogs, a giraffe, and a lion, as well as a North Tonawanda band organ dating from 1910. Unfortunately for us, it was closed for the day. But pics were possible through the windows.

From there we cut across Rhode Island and headed for the southern coast and Atlantic Beach in Misquamicut. The carousel there is a Herschell-Spillman, circa 1915. Some of the horses have recently been purchased and repainted, and some of them are the original horses, completely restored.

The Wurlitzer band organ was, unfortunately, out of commission. The surrounding amusements are best described as “funky.”

Our last stop was at the oldest carousel in Rhode Island at Watch Hill – The Flying Horses. It is also the oldest continuously operated in the United States. It is believed to have been built in 1876 by the Charles W. Dare Company for a traveling carnival which, in 1879, abandoned it in Watch Hill. Unlike most carousels, there is no wooden platform to support the horses but rather, they are suspended from chains. As a result, the horses seem to "fly" as the ride increases speed, hence the carousel's name. Each horse has a tail and mane of real horsehair and a leather saddle. They wouldn’t let Marie ride, however.

On Sunday, we took it easy and just went to an Art opening at the Stanley-Whitman House in Farmington. Joanne Norr had a lovely display of her watercolor and collage butterflies.

Joanne Norr

Stanley-Whitman House

I just liked this picture.