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10-K THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER Sunday, March 7, 1971 Duveneck book a treasure By OWEN FINDSEN Enquirer Art Editor NOW art [[image]] Frank Duveneck ...at age 31 in Venice JOSEPHINE W. DUVENECK'S biography of her father-in-law, is a treasure. The author married Francis Boot Duveneck in 1913. She knew his father, Frank Duveneck until his death in 1919. During those six years she questioned him about his life and his ideas and collected letters and documents pertaining to the career of Cincinnati's most famous artist. Only now, after perpetuating Duveneck's name with two grandsons and five great-grandsons, has she found time to write her book. It is a fine book. Mrs. Duveneck writes clearly and directly and presents much information that has never before been published about the artist. The book is printed in 1000 copies and published by John Howell, 434 Post Street, in San Francisco, California, 94102, at $25. Beautifully designed and printed, "Frank Duveneck; Painter-Teacher" is only the second book to be written about the artist. The first was by a Duveneck student, Norbert Heerman, and was written in 1918. This book contains a complete bibliography and chronology of the artist. DUVENECK was born Frank Decker, of north German parents living in Covington, Kentucky, in 1848. A few months after his birth a Cholera epidemic took his father and half his family. His mother Catherine then married another German, "Squire Joseph Duveneck. The child grew up during the Civil War, was a Union Army "camp rat" and was even captured momentarily by General Hunt Morgan, who confiscated the beer in his father's wagon. His mother loved art and wanted her child to be a religious painter. He was apprenticed to an artist who did church murals and so began his training in the traditional Renaissance manner. "The boy who is going to Munich" was a cause for excitement throughout Covington, as the townspeople helped Duveneck prepare for his European training. He was one of the first Americans to arrive in the city and stayed long enough to see thousands of other young artists follow him, often traveling to Europe to study with the Covington artist. His dramatic painting methods caused students to leave the official academies and to study with him. Females were not permitted to enrole in academies and so were forced to take individual instruction at home. So frank known as "the old man" before he was 30, gathered a group of students known internationally as "Duveneck's boys," as well as a number of female students who were taught separately. One of those young women was the beautiful Elizabeth Boot, a wealthy Bostonian who lived with her mother in Italy, and who was to become Mrs. Frank Duveneck for two years before her tragic death in 1838. Her letters to her friends contain extensive description of Duveneck's painting techniques. "His power to wield paint is marvelous" she reports of the "remarkable looking young man" who is "a gentleman, which I did not expect." She calls him a child of nature" - "the frankest, kindest-hearted of mortals," but thinks that he is lazy and reckless and "least likely to make his way in this world." "He seems to me a born painter, perfect in technique, too realistic to be interested ever in sentiment, perhaps in fact making things invariable uglier than they really are." "LIZZIE" decided that the "ugliness" and his use of "too much black" could be changed with exposure to her beloved Italian landscapes and people. She managed to move "Duveneck's boys" to Florence with her. It may be that it was a mistake for Duveneck to modify his internationally renowned style to suit a woman but he was in love. "This business had to be settled," he wrote, "before I could settle." So he married her... to the outrage of Boston society. "He is illiterate, ignorant and not a gentleman," wrote novelist Henry James, with a touch of jealousy, "His talent is great, though without delicacy." "For him it is all gain, for her it is very brave." Duveneck made more than one enemy among the greats. After working on etchings with James McNeill Whistler in Venice, his prints were mistakenly reviewed in London newspapers as Whistler's and some were even sold under the other artist's name. Though Duvenenk was unaware of the turmoil, Whistler devoted two chapters of his book "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" to Duveneck. He returned to Cincinnati after some 30 years in Europe. Though he was sought after as a teacher throughout the country - the Chicago Art Institute let him pick his own salary - he refused them all. "Let them use their own people" he said. His devotion was for his own town. He tried to buy back as many of his paintings as he could find to have them in the Cincinnati Art Museum. And though he had spent most of his adult life in Europe, he fought tirelessly for American art, making the Cincinatti museum one of the first to start an American collection. For the last 20 years of his life he taught at the Art Academy and gave lectures and demonstrations at the Cincinnati Art Club. It is evident that Duveneck's influence as a painter did not last as well as his influence as a teacher. The primary cause was the revolutionary developments in French art. But now that we have viewed and reviewed Impressionism and Post-impressionism over and over, attention is being turned to the other movements of the 10th century. The Munich school and the German-American variation started by Duveneck are being re-evaluated. Only the Cincinnati Art Museum has a broad collection of his paintings. Francis and Josephine Duveneck's home in Los Altos is the only repository of information about him and is the second largest collection of his work, and Josephine Duveneck's book is the only primary source of biographical information about him. It is an important book, and a highly enjoyable one. [[image]] Stanczak paints mural Julian Stanczak, internationally renowned artist, is shown above working on a mural that will be hung in the Highland Towers in Mt. Adams. The artist, who now resides in Cleveland, lived in Mt. Adams for six years while teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy, and exhibited in the studio of photographer Kazik Pazovski. The completed mural will hang in the new "Celestial 1071" restaurant. Stanczak was the only artist to have a room devoted exclusively to his work in the recent Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. Openings and Shows Paintings by Darrell Brothers and ceramics by Betty Brothers will open at the Studio San Giuseppe of the College of Mt. St. Joseph today. There will be a reception from 2 to 5 p.m. Darrell Brothers is head of the art department at Thomas More and a winner of the Cincinnati Art Museum's biennial exhibition. Bitter-sweet boyhood NOW books FEELING IT, by L.H. Whittemore. Morrow, $5.95. Apparently there will always be - at least in fiction, authentic lads who have to tell what it is they can't abide. From Fielding's Tom Jones, through Twain's Huck Finn. to Salinger's Holden, the formula is familiar [[text cut off]] timed gesture, pulled on my right ear lobe! Then I [[text cut off]]
