Figure 1. William <strong>Starkweather</strong> in his studio. Peter A. Juley & Son, photographer. Courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection. Negative number: J0094994. 2
WILLIAM E. B. STARKWEATHER MAINE AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES OF CANADA ANTHONY PANZERA “The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has past, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present. Life if well spent is long.” R 1174 [1] Leonardo wrote these words as a way of describing the ebb and flow of generations, the helter-skelter of life, as though we as humans are all spinning tops, occasionally bumping into one another and then spinning off in opposite, undetermined directions. It is this existential component of life that is totally unexplainable and unpredictable. Thus it was that almost concurrently with my appointment to a teaching post at Hunter College in 1969, William E. B. <strong>Starkweather</strong> quietly passed away at a nursing home in New Haven, Connecticut, two days before his 90 th birthday. I of course knew nothing about <strong>Starkweather</strong>, or he of me. He began teaching at Hunter College in 1936 and retired in 1948. Shortly after I began at Hunter, I met a graduating senior, Peter Falotico, whose father passed on to him a body of work acquired at auction. It was a portfolio of watercolors and oils by William <strong>Starkweather</strong>, many of them works of Eastport, Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. It was due to the confluence of these totally coincidental events that this exhibition, the latest in a series of <strong>Starkweather</strong> exhibitions, was born. WILLIAM EDWARD BLOOMFIELD STARKWEATHER William E. B. <strong>Starkweather</strong> lived a full, rich and prolific life. [2] He was an accomplished artist, museum curator, lecturer, author, [1] Richter, Jean Paul, The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Unabridged ed. first published in London, 1883, 3rd ed. New York: Phaidon Publishers, 1970, vol. ii, p. 244, R 1174. and beloved teacher. He was also an itinerant traveler – visiting Bermuda, Mexico, Italy, France, and Spain and eventually finding his way to Eastport, Maine and the Maritime Provinces. There, he would return again and again to visually record the craggy coasts, surging seas and dramatic vistas. While details of <strong>Starkweather</strong>’s early years are sketchy, he is thought to have been born on May 16, 1879, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father died some four or five years later, in 1883 or 1884, and his mother, along with William and his sister, immigrated to the United States, settling in New Haven, Connecticut. Soon after the family arrived, Mrs. Bloomfield also died and the children were placed in an orphanage, from which they were adopted by John Henry and Hannah Elizabeth <strong>Starkweather</strong> of Winchester, Connecticut, and raised in New Haven. <strong>Starkweather</strong> attended high school in New Haven, where he apparently developed his artistic bent, and following graduation, in 1897, he decided to enroll at the Art Students League in New York, New York. According to a recorded interview with him, his adoptive parents did not offer encouragement, either morally or financially, for his artistic endeavors. Despite their lack of support, he managed to make his own way and was soon immersed in his studies at the League. <strong>Starkweather</strong> studied with Kenyon Cox, one of the founders of the school, J. Carroll Beckwith and John Henry Twachtman. From Cox, who followed the rigorous and disciplined approach taught in the [2] All of the biographical information on <strong>Starkweather</strong>’s life stems from my research completed at the Hispanic Society of America and elsewhere, for the exhibition of his work held at Hunter College in 1988 entitled, William E.B. <strong>Starkweather</strong>, 1879-1969, The Travel Pictures, and from the thesis of Tracy Myers submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts Degree from Hunter College, 1990, entitled, Bright Light and Bitter Wind: A study of William <strong>Starkweather</strong>. 3
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