- 61
Paul Cadmus 1904-1999
Description
- Paul Cadmus
- Lloyd and Barbara Wescott
- signed Cadmus and dated 1942, l.r.; inscribed Lloyd and Barbara Wescott/ with Mulhocoway Butterfat Favourite/ Mulhocoway Butterfat Heather/ and Eclipse of Morston/ painted in Egg Yolk Tempera, 1942/ by Paul Cadmus on the reverse
- tempera on masonite
- 22 1/2 by 36 in.
- (57.2 by 91.4 cm)
Provenance
By descent in the family
Mrs. Thaine Clark, Oxford, Florida
Middendorf Galleries, Washington, D.C.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1988
Exhibited
New York, Museum of Modern Art, 20th Century Portraits, (possibly) 1942
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute, Painting in the United States 1946, 1946
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Museum of Art, American Family Portraits, 1976
New York, DC Moore Galleries, Interwoven Lives: George Platt Lynes and his Friends, September-October 2001
Literature
Catalogue Note
Lincoln Kirstein wrote, "Cadmus has painted few commissioned portraits. In 1940 and 1942, however, he painted Conversation Piece and Lloyd and Barbara Wescott With Eclipse of Morston, Mulhocoway Butterfat Favorite, and Heartease Butterfat Heather. These twin intimate groups attest to the dignified and efficient professionalism, as well as cordial sympathy for friends, their animals, houses, barns and manner of life. These pictures recall English portraiture by Gainsborough, Zoffany and Stubbs. Delicate accuracy is lavished on those practical properties that are signs of the rare, enviable and luxurious simplicity with which inherited wealth endows responsible heirs."
" ...Lloyd and Barbara Wescott owned Mulhocoway, a large, model farm in central New Jersey where they pioneered artificial insemination of cattle. Their prize herds of brown-and-white Guernseys and sleek, heavy Suffolk Punch draft horses became famous. Wescott, after years in publishing, had turned serious farmer. Barbara Harrison, his wife (daughter of a Governor-General of the Philipines), had lived in Paris during the 1920s and had printed classic editions lavishly illustrated by important contemporary artists. Their acreage was later commandeered by the State of New Jersey for a new, much needed reservoir, and what was the farm pictured here is now under water. Cadmus memorialized its ample barns and silos, the immaculate efficiency of a carefully run establishment, with its plowed fields beyond. Lloyd Wescott served his state and community long and well in civic hospital, prison and cultural agencies. Barbara Wescott was a happy patron of art and collector of the work of young artists" (Paul Cadmus, New York, 1984, pp. 71, 74).