The Artist's Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark

By Carolyn J. Brown

Artist Kate Freeman Clark (1875–1957) left behind over one thousand paintings now stored at a gallery bearing her name in her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi. But it was not until after her death in 1957 at the age of eighty-one that citizens even discovered that she was a painter of considerable stature. In her will, Clark left the city her family home, her paintings stored at a warehouse in New York for over forty years, and money to build a gallery, much to the surprise of the Holly Springs community.

As a young woman, Clark studied art in New York and took classes with some of the greatest American artists of the day. From the start Clark approached the study of art with discipline and tenacity. She learned from William Merritt Chase when he opened his own school in 1895. For six consecutive summers at his Shinnecock Summer School of Art in Long Island, she mastered the plein air technique. Chase trained many female students, yet he recognized Clark as “his most talented pupil.” The book prints, for the first time, excerpts from Clark's delightful journal of the artist's experience at Chase's school, giving readers firsthand reporting of an artist-led school in the early twentieth century.

Clark returned to Holly Springs in 1923. Mysteriously, sadly, she never resumed painting and lived the last years of her life in quietude. The Artist's Sketch shines a light on Clark, finally bringing her out of obscurity. This book also introduces Clark's art to a new generation of readers and highlights current projects and important work being done in Holly Springs by the Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery and the Marshall County Historical Museum, the two institutions that, since her death, have worked hard to keep Kate Freeman Clark's legacy alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Feb 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781496810656

Carolyn J. Brown

Carolyn J. Brown is a retired teacher, writer, editor, and independent scholar. She is author of The Artist’s Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark and the award-winning biographies A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty and Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker and coeditor of A de Grummond Primer: Highlights of the Children’s Literature Collection, all published by University Press of Mississippi. Find her at www.carolynjbrown.net.

Book preview

The Artist’s Sketch

William Merritt Chase, Portrait of Kate Freeman Clark. This portrait was signed by Chase, and Clark made a small photograph of it. Cynthia Grant Tucker states that this painting was undoubtedly produced as a demonstration piece at Shinnecock ca. 1900 (p. 95). From the Kate Freeman Clark Collection at the Marshall County Historical Museum (MCHM).

The Artist’s Sketch

A BIOGRAPHY OF PAINTER

KATE FREEMAN CLARK

Carolyn J. Brown

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Designed by Peter D. Halverson

Copyright © 2017 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in Malaysia

First printing 2017

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brown, Carolyn J., author.

Title: The artist’s sketch : a biography of painter Kate Freeman Clark / Carolyn J. Brown.

Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016038226 (print) | LCCN 2016038660 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496810144 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781496810656 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496810663 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496810670 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496810687 (pdf institutional)

Subjects: LCSH: Clark, Kate Freeman. | Painters—United States—Biography. | Mississippi—Biography.

Classification: LCC ND237.C555 B76 2017 (print) | LCC ND237.C555 (ebook) | DDC 759.13 [B] —dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038226

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

To my grandmothers, Ruth Brooks Littman Gross and Mildred Kates (Nana and Grandma), who filled their homes with art and passed on that love and appreciation to me; and to Bea Green (first lady of Holly Springs), who lives in the artist’s home and opened it and so much more to me … with love and gratitude

The author and the University Press of Mississippi wish to thank the following individuals, clubs, and corporations for their generous support of the printing of this publication:

The Kate Freeman Clark Trust

Bank of Holly Springs

Belles and Books

The Thursday Club

Lisa and Chip Burr

Jan and Lawrence Farrington

Mr. and Mrs. John Green

Mr. and Mrs. Francis C. Lee

Sandy and John McNeal

Lisa and Mike Mitchell

Nancy and Ray Neilsen

Carla and Randall Wall

Kate Freeman Clark, detail, Work Out in Mississippi Grove, ca. 1900. Oil on canvas, 48 × 30 in. Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery. Note that dates for paintings are provided where possible; however, most of Clark’s works were undated.

IF MY LIFE WERE AS IRREGULAR AS AND DISCONNECTED AS MY DIARY IS, IT could hardly be called a whole, but would rather be parts, pieced together, a sort of patchwork quilt made of cities, people, things, sewed together wherever the broken edges happened, or could be made to fit…. My life has been cast in as many cities as there are books in which I have written of it. If in the quilt of my life a certain material should predominate, it would represent Art. That is the one unbroken thread that follows me everywhere. Even that I broke last winter, but it is knotted again, and what it will weave itself into in this city I will try to write down.

—Kate Freeman Clark, Washington, DC, 1896

AN ARTIST WAS PAINTING A BROOK, WHICH FLOWED BY THE WAYSIDE. The day was brilliantly clear & the deep blue of the zenith was even a deeper & more royal blue, when reflected from the glistening surface of the little pool beneath the bridge. The blue was thrown into startling relief by the juxtaposition of the dark reflection of the deep green trees on the banks. A country man, who habitually passed that way six times a day, was amazed into questioning the color on the canvas. Why do you paint the water blue? he asked. The artist replied, Come down & look. The man descended the bank & looking exclaimed in a dazed way, "Why, it is blue!" He had never noticed that the color of the water changed with the color of the sky above it. Nearly everyone reacts to color. Can you doubt that that there was more in that man’s daily walk, for him, after seeing the artist’s sketch?

—Kate Freeman Clark, notes for The Thursday Club, March 20, 1925

Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CHAPTER ONE The Early Years: 1875–1893

CHAPTER TWO Moving to New York: The Education of Kate Freeman Clark

CHAPTER THREE Painting Outdoors, Peconic, Long Island

CHAPTER FOUR Summers at Shinnecock and William Merritt Chase

CHAPTER FIVE The Master’s Critique: Kate Freeman Clark and Rockwell Kent

CHAPTER SIX Love, Friendship, and Art, 1894–1902

CHAPTER SEVEN Knowing the Wadsworths and Exhibiting Her Art

CHAPTER EIGHT The Death of Chase and the End of an Era

CHAPTER NINE World War I and the Deaths of Mama Kate and Cary Freeman Clark

CHAPTER TEN Moving Back to Holly Spring

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Final Years

AFTERWORD The Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery and the Marshall County Historical Museum

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHRONOLOGY AND EXHIBITION RECORD OF KATE FREEMAN CLARK

SOURCE NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CREDITS

INDEX

Kate Freeman Clark, detail, The Water Lily Pond. Oil on burlap, 34 × 38 in. Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery.

Author’s Note

HOW I CAME TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY OF KATE Freeman Clark is similar to how I found the subjects of my other two books: it started with a connection. My good friend Carla Wall reminds me that she suggested the idea years ago, but it didn’t take hold in my mind until I read about Clark in Patti Carr Black’s seminal book, Art in Mississippi 1720–1980. In 2014 I was perusing this text when I came across a color plate of Clark’s painting Work Out in Mississippi Grove. It stopped me cold; its beauty was undeniable and the colors brilliant. It reminded me of the female impressionist painters I had come to love in college when I studied art history, such as Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.

The story Black told about Clark that accompanied the painting engaged me even more: losing her father as a child; studying for years with the famous American impressionist William Merritt Chase and among many of the most influential American painters of the day; exhibiting her work with the gender-neutral alias Freeman Clark; and then returning to her hometown of Holly Springs, never to paint again. That in itself is an amazing story, but what really took hold of my imagination was that Black wrote that in Clark’s will "she left to the city of Holly Springs her house, sixty thousand dollars, and title to all of her paintings, which she had stored in a warehouse in New York." A little more research revealed that the city of Holly Springs had no idea Kate Freeman Clark ever had been a painter with such a distinguished resume and was absolutely astonished when, approximately six months later, a van delivered more than one thousand paintings to the bank. The city of Holly Springs fulfilled Clark’s wish to have a gallery built to house her paintings, but for many years the only way to see her art was to make an appointment or find someone at the bank with a key to the building.

Kate Freeman Clark’s life fascinated me. I began to do some quick online research and discovered that besides Black’s book, there were only a handful of works about the painter; the first and most significant was Cynthia Grant Tucker’s Kate Freeman Clark: A Painter Rediscovered (University Press of Mississippi, 1981). The publication, accompanying a traveling exhibition of Clark’s artwork, is in paperback with reproductions of the paintings in both color and black and white. The second study of Clark was by historian Kathleen Jenkins, who wrote a thesis about the artist and her family while working on a master’s degree in history at Delta State University. Jenkins’s work is very interesting and informative, but it was never published. Though Jenkins went on to publish a couple of essays about Clark, no one had ever produced a full-length book about Clark with illustrations of her work wholly in color that could convey the range and power of her artistry.

When I broached the subject of my next biography to my editor, Leila Salisbury, she enthusiastically embraced the idea of revisiting the artist whom the press had first introduced to the world in 1981. However, on this occasion, thirty-five years later, we decided it was time to present a much fuller picture of Kate Freeman Clark’s life and career as an artist and include many more color reproductions of her paintings.

Research builds upon research, and Dr. Tucker’s scholarship on Kate Freeman Clark opened the door for scholars such as myself to delve more deeply into Clark’s life story. Tucker’s work, combined with the scholarship of Ronald Pisano, an authority on the work of the American painter William Merritt Chase and author of several books and catalogs about the Shinnecock Summer School of Art, enables one to paint a picture of Clark’s life as a student of Chase. My research stands on the shoulders of these outstanding scholars. Sadly, Mr. Pisano died in 2000 at the age of fifty-one from esophageal cancer, but I did reach out to Fred Baker, his companion of more than thirty years, with whom he formed the Baker-Pisano Collection of American Art. While I was in the throes of research and writing, Mr. Baker sent me an e-mail which I will treasure always. He wrote:

Hi Carolyn,

… I think it so wonderful that in this awful world in which we live with bad things happening every day, that there is still some little bit of humanity at work, in your case, writing the history of a woman who, 100 years ago, studied art with Wm. M. Chase. Even though it might be a minuscule part of our cultural heritage, it fits the overall scheme of things in a very right way. I do so admire you for it, and the people who support your work.

Sincerely,

Fred

In addition, I also expanded upon the research of Kathleen Jenkins, whose 1989 thesis, Kate Freeman Clark: Her Family and Her Art, provides a richer picture of Clark’s ancestry and exhibition record. My book puts all this research together in what I hope is the fullest picture (pun intended) of Kate Freeman Clark to date. I am very excited to showcase her paintings, all in color for the very first time. And I am grateful to the work of these earlier scholars and wish to fully acknowledge their contributions to this book.

Kate Freeman Clark lived and worked in two very special places: Shinnecock and Holly Springs. Both locations have been written about by several authors; they seem to have captured the imaginations of many who have lived and worked there. Clark spent six summers at Chase’s art school at Shinnecock, and she writes in her journal that these were the happiest summers of her life. Many students must have felt the same way, as there are several written accounts of the school and "the Master." Artists Rockwell Kent and Marietta Minnigerode Andrews wrote memoirs and included multiple chapters about their time at Shinnecock and studying under Chase; Elizabeth W. Champney wrote a novel, Witch Winnie at Shinnecock, that focuses on several art students at Shinnecock and their adventures during the course of one summer; and Clark wrote about her own Shinnecock experiences in an essay, which is published in this book in its entirety for the very first time.

Holly Springs, which has also fascinated its share of writers, is the hometown of the protagonist in the 1994 novel Lizzie by Mississippian Dorothy Shawhan. Shawhan’s historical novel is based on the life of Minnie Brewer, the daughter of Mississippi governor Earl Brewer, the founder of a newspaper for women in the 1920s. The thread that runs through the narrative of Lizzie’s life is her love of Holly Springs. When her father won the gubernatorial election and moved the family to Jackson, uprooting both his wife and daughter, neither mother nor child ever found the happiness in Jackson or elsewhere that she had known in Holly Springs. While writing her novel Home to Holly Springs (2007), best-selling author Jan Karon spent time in the small southern town, inhabiting the hometown of her popular character Father Tim Kavanaugh. Karon’s description is right on the mark:

In Holly Springs, I not only found the missing pieces, but something rare and wondrous. I found people who value their deep connections and shared history, and are willing to forgive each other their trespasses. Without exception, they’re proud of their town and its more than sixty antebellum homes; proud of Rust College, their century-old institution of learning; and proud of the beauty that surrounds them on every side. Beauty is important in this fragile life, and Holly Springs has no lack of it. Nor was there any lack of warmth and generosity in the welcome I received.

Karon embraced Holly Springs, and it embraced her, as I saw multiple copies of her novel in hotel guest rooms and businesses throughout the town square.

I did not know what to expect in Holly Springs when I first embarked upon this project, having heard that in the past there had been no manager at the gallery. I would have to research Clark’s life at both the gallery and the nearby Marshall County Historical Museum. However, I was delightfully surprised by my reception at both destinations and by all the assistance offered to me. It felt to me that the right people were finally in place to bring Kate Freeman Clark out of obscurity. At the Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery, Carla and I met Walter Webb, who had only recently been hired as the part-time manager and who has done a wonderful job inventorying the paintings, creating social media outlets to advertise the gallery, and attending to fundraising and restoration. At the Marshall County Historical Museum, we met director Chelius Carter and his staff, who gave us full access to the Clark Papers and allowed us to work in the museum as well as to take materials out to copy and scan. We also met Bea Green, relative of Kate Freeman Clark, who currently lives in Clark’s ancestral home, Freeman Place, and who has played an integral part in the organization and restoration of the gallery in recent times. All of these wonderful Holly Springs folk welcomed us into their homes and contributed in many, many ways to the project.

My book, The Artist’s Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark, is built on a strong foundation but also contributes something new. There are writings of Clark published here for the very first time. Clark’s earliest ambition was to be an authoress, not a painter. She loved to read and to journal. Though she seemed to struggle with her writing and lacked confidence in her abilities, she wrote throughout her life: stories, journals, and even a song. I have also expanded upon Jenkins’s and others’ attempts to put together the most complete exhibition record for Clark.

Finally, I wanted to present an alternate view of Kate Freeman Clark and an explanation for her return to Holly Springs. Many of these earlier depictions of Clark are somewhat negative, as in Shawhan’s Lizzie; Clark is a cousin of Lizzie’s best friend, Kate, and serves as a foil for Lizzie. She is featured in two chapters of the novel: in the first, set in 1913, while she was still painting and studying with Chase, Clark is depicted as child-like and unable to speak for herself. Lizzie is flabbergasted to discover that Cousin Kate signs her paintings Freeman Clark and not "Kate Freeman Clark. When she asks Kate’s mother, whom she calls Miss Meems, whether Cousin Kate is ashamed to put Kate on them, Miss Meems does not discount that suggestion, explaining, I’m afraid she may be somewhat, sad to say. I think