1911 Verna Wood Painting Water Color
NORWALK MINERVA CHAPMAN and Baekland Roll are names as alien as they are imposing. However, the accepted exhibitions by both artists should advice to actual the imbalance.
A baby alternative of the backward Miss Chapman's oils is on appearance at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, in Norwalk (295 West Avenue, through May 30); Mr. Roll's watercolors can be apparent at the Richard Greene Gallery, in Guilford, area they allotment amplitude with copse reliefs by Jill Disque (closing today).
Beyond the actuality that her paintings accord to a accessory descendant, Morse Dial Jr. of Redding and New York City, Miss Chapman seems to accept had no ties with Connecticut. She was built-in in Altmar, N.Y., in 1858, and afterwards accessory Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., advised at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Academie Julian, in Paris. Though primarily a miniaturist, the artisan apparent with assorted types of groups, mostly in Chicago and Paris, as able-bodied as in California, area she spent the closing allotment of her life. She died in Palo Alto in 1947.
Plans for a New York appearance are beneath way and apparently it will action added advice than has been accessible so far. To adjudicator from this alternative dating from the backward 1880's to about 1912, and from a archive of a Washington appearance of 11 years ago, the artist's appearance ranged from a aphotic academism afflicted by Fantin-Latour - as in the absolutely handsome abstraction of blush and white flowers in a bottle jar - to Impressionism, bidding in several landscapes.
But clashing added artists of the time, Miss Chapman dallied with Impressionism alone to backslide to the added accepted access - or so it seems from the few clear dates to be begin on the pictures. The above annual allotment and a self-portrait were done in 1912 and 1911, while a high-keyed appearance of fields disconnected by a band of copse and address the banner of Corot and Monet, is of 1892. One of the arch works, a attenuated appearance of Parisian streets advisedly impasted in aerial but affluent colors, may represent an average date in the artist's development.
On the base of this show, which appearance some solid, aboriginal activity assets but no miniatures, Miss Chapman was a able artisan and painter, thoroughly attuned to French art, including that of Degas. Still, while there are several adorable canvases, such as the baby appearance of white-blossomed copse adjoin a brownish wall, there's no acumen to anticipate that Miss Chapman, like so abounding added artists now actuality plucked from actual oblivion, was unjustly overlooked.
A chat about the Lockwood-Mathews Abode itself, a National Registered Historic Landmark called for the two families that lived in it successively: It was congenital in 1869 by the German-born architect, Detlef Lienau, for LeGrand Lockwood, a Norwalk built-in and advance broker in New York during and afterwards the Civil War. Thanks to the efforts of Norwalk citizens, the abode was adored from abolition some 20 years ago and has been the article of conscientious but slowmoving advance - it still has to achieve its aeon furniture.
A arresting assortment of classical, Gothic, Renaissance, Turkish and added styles, the abode amount $2 actor to build. Still, its coffered, frescoed ceilings and carved woodwork, including the access that aggressive the one in ''Gone With the Wind,'' all affirm eloquently to the abilities of the Italian artisans who were alien for the job. The abode additionally sported what again was the aftermost chat in technology - a burglar anxiety and a heating arrangement involving four boilers, anniversary able of afire a ton of atramentous a day.
The octagonal accession anteroom area Miss Chapman's paintings are blind has a arresting parqueted attic inlaid with black woods. Here afraid Albert Bierstadt's huge ''Domes of the Yosemite'' back it was endemic by LeGrand Lockwood - it's now at the Athenaeum in St. Johnsbury, Vt.
The analyst has afresh encountered several artists who, like Baekland Roll, accept ''hatched'' afterwards spending best of their careers underground. An alum of New York University's Institute of Accomplished Arts and of the Art Students League, Mr. Roll has been painting in aloneness for some 30 years. He has alternate in accumulation shows in Connecticut and New York, but this appears to be the abutting he's appear to a solo.
The 30 or so watercolors are beneath abstractions than affairs and ideograms alluding to mural and figures. They are beautifully fatigued in a fine, ink band on cardboard that has been blotchy and done in bendable colors. Several are bird's eye angle of abstract area and fields and maplike images of an branch attractive a bit like that of the Connecticut River. But if the colors are not necessarily independent by the lines, the aftereffect is generally of quilts with some patches larboard plain, others blooming with dots and fine, vertical lines. Exceptions are those involving abstracts and faces or, in an abnormally admirable specimen, one of the ''White Horses'' that were cut, allegedly during the Iron Age, into the book hills of southern England.
Springing abounding blown, Mr. Roll gives no assurance of his beforehand alteration from bookish painter in oils to artisan in watercolors. Still, he does appearance affinities to the Belgian clear artist, Folon, to Paul Klee and, in his gouaches, to Miro, and his wit is not clashing Steinberg's. A actual adroit performance.
In her assemblages of amoebic shapes, corrective and otherwise, Miss Disque conveys little added than an admiration with her saber saw. Admittedly, this apparatus encourages delusions of omnipotence, but that is no alibi for essaying trompe l'oeil effects, acid copse so that it resembles collapsed dust ashore amid collapsed rocks.
Illustrations: photo of 4 paintings displayed
