Sepia Saturday: The Painter

This week's Sepia Saturday post focuses on another of my wife Robin's relatives, Mary Wealthy Kimball (1876-1969), or as she was later known, Mary "Nammie" Morris.

Quotes are from newspaper articles (publication unknown). Apologies for the look of this week's illustrations, they're all photographs of photocopies of photographs!

'"All of my children were grown, and there I was in Deer Lodge with my husband, with nothing much to do but sit in the apartment and stare out the window at Mt. Powell... I saw the mountain and right then decided to paint it.'"

Glacier Park, Montana

'Mrs. Morris bought paint and brushes, ripped up some pasteboard boxes to use as canvas, and began to paint. Four months later she returned to Great Falls with a good stack of paintings.'

El Capitan, Yosemite

Near Great Falls, Montana

'She was a little skeptical as to the artistic value of her work until she discovered the man who had packed her furniture had made off with about half of them.'

High Sierras

Missouri River, Great Falls Montana

Following this episode, she studied under a local teacher, and every winter from 1937 to 1946 traveled to California to work with Jack Wilkinson Smith, "a landscape artist and close friend of Charles Russell."

'Smith...gave her Russell's corner of the studio...to work in, when he discovered she had also known Russell.'

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Ranch

'"My mother was an artist," she explained, "and when I was little I used to walk around paint so much I just absorbed it."'

'"Every minute I don't paint, I feel time is lost. I used to play cards and go to parties a lot. But not anymore.  If you want to paint, you have to give up things."'

California

'Mrs. Morris painted 8 hours a day 7 days a week for many years but on doctor's advice has cut this down to about 3 hours a day. "I get all wrapped up in my painting," she said, "and to quit is about like pulling teeth." Her favorite subjects are mountain scenes, though she has a weakness for barns and other farm buildings. But mainly she prefers scenes that are overwhelming. Pictures of cows in the pasture, and the like, are not for her.'

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Sometime in the 1930s, her first grandchild, John Martin Morris, dubbed Mary "Nammie" and the name stuck. Her family "never knew exactly when she was going [to paint], as she packed for weeks. Then one morning we would find a note on the breakfast table saying, 'Gone to California.' "

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Sheep Ranch

Mary was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Sometime before 1893, her father Joseph Freeman Kimball bought a cooperage, but soon went broke in the "panic of '93." The family then moved to St. Louis, where she eventually met her husband Martin Luther Morris.

California Desert

Mary was one of the founding members of the Women's Republican Club in Great Falls, Montanam where she had moved in 1909. She was also instrumental in organizing some of the city's first PTAs (parent-teacher associations) and the first baby clinic.

California Coast

'She would much rather paint for men than women. Men select as picture because they want to sit back with their pipe and look at it. Women always have to try to match the picture to the color scheme of a room.'

Sepia Saturday: The Great Falls Opera House

My wife just ran across this essay by an uncle.  By serendipity it totally fits the Sepia Saturday theme this week.  We were touched by the story and I, after several weeks of reading Mark Twain, I am impressed with Mr. Morris's Twainly skills despite a handful of hackneyed phrases.

 At the Opera House

by R. A. Morris

I was on a tour of inspection with the president of the Great Falls Council:  “Have to make room,” he said, “for the younger generation, you know.  I picked up the old Opera House for a song. $20,000 I think...  eyesore and all that. Urban renewal without Washington having its nose in it too."

I turned to the “improvement.”  The back half of a service staton had been leveled even with the street, with the rubble resulting from the demolition of the old Opera House. Progress 1966... Parking lot.

My mind’s eye flashed back to the dim past of over 40 years ago and to myself approaching the white glitter of the really grand Opera House with wonder and curiosity. A young gentleman of ten or eleven who would not be denied the excitement of the crowd (if not a peek at the performance, by some nefarious means or other).

The feature on this long-ago evening was a guy named Ignace Paderewski, a piano player.  Nice features and a bob haircut on display out front.  My bosom buddies departed at this point. They weren’t up to an evening of long-hair piano. I, however, had been conditioned to the classics by an older brother who played of long winter evenings until I had come to enjoy them,

The usual access of the non-paying guests was: up the drainpipe at the corner of the marquee, across the marquee to the balcony. This required very careful timing to avoid a racket.  That night, however, all entrance was barred and only I, of all the freeloaders, was left.  Everyone was inside but me; so, I sat on the hot sidewalk out front as though I lived there.

The sound, at first faint, gradually became louder until it occurred to me that they were opening the fire escape doors. I moved to the edge of the door where I might see the stage and no one but the performer could see me. There we were, the mighty Paderewski and I, face to face and not thirty feet apart.

The selections ran heavily to Rachmaninoff, my favorite.  So, I got comfortable. I lay on my belly with my chin resting on my arms. There I stayed for the entire performance, never taking my eyes from the great one, and he not taking his from me except to take bows. Through the years I have asked myself why the great future President of Poland did it. Perhaps he wanted to see if he could hold the attention of one so young or, perhaps in some mysterious way, the feeling of the good life or the endlessness of time that I felt.

Who will know? I have always said that the President of Poland played a concert just for me when I was only ten years old or so.  You see, I have always believed that because I know. The last bow he took after the finale was to the fire escape.

 

http://cataractcity.blogspot.com/2009/01/great-falls-opera-house.html

http://www.polishamericancenter.org/Paderewski.htm