PENNSYLVANIA THROUGH THE EYES OF

 FERN COPPEGE PAINTINGS HIGHLIGHT THE

 ART AND EDUCATION PROGRAM OF BUCKS COUNTY

The Story Behind "Evening Local, New Hope"

One Of Fern Coppedge’s Most Famous Paintings

By Les and Sue Fox

The 54 towns of picturesque Bucks County, Pennsylvania are bordered by the Delaware River to the east, and Philadelphia, New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. All of these towns share a commitment to a well rounded, diverse academic education as well as to an uplifting spiritual journey into the arts. Fern Coppedge’s paintings have been part of the Art and Education program of the New Hope-Solebury School District and the Bucks County Intermediate Unit for nearly a century.

THE BCIU ART COLLECTION

Based on the belief that original art is an inspiration to students, the BCIU oversees a collection of 350 paintings by Bucks County artists shared with 96,000 students and 270 schools. Originally developed in the 1940’s by artist Walter Emerson Baum and Bucks County Superintendent Charles Boehm as “The Traveling Art Gallery” with only 70 paintings, this greatly expanded art program was re-named “Art On The Move” in 2001 and is now administered by the BCIU in cooperation with the Michener Museum, backed by various grants. In addition to Christmas On Canal At New Hope by Fern Coppedge (below), the collection includes work by famous New Hope School impressionists Daniel Garber, Edward Redfield, Walter Baum and other local artists. The artwork of many students is displayed in a BCIU Student Art Gallery, and one special work is selected to highlight of the students’ enthusiasm, which is presented alongside paintings by famous artists in Doylestown for a full year.

THE NEW HOPE ART COLLECTION

 Like the BCIU, The New Hope-Solebury School District encourages kids in its 13 schools to express and develop their artistic talents by observing, studying and creating paintings which emphasize the colorful history and natural beauty of Bucks County. Acquired by the New Hope-Solebury School District around 1934, Evening Local, New Hope is an iconic masterpiece by Fern Coppedge. While the BCIU art collection is much larger, it only includes one Fern Coppedge. The NHSD collection includes four important Coppedges: Evening Local, Reflections (Lambertville), The Coal Barge, and The Golden Arno, the last canvas created during the artist's trip to Europe in 1925. Evening Local was featured on the front cover of the Michener’s 1990 exhibition catalog “Fern Coppedge: A Forgotten Woman” (below) which includes a brilliant essay by art expert Michele Pavone Stricker.

On its website here’s what the Michener says about Evening Local, New Hope:

This well-loved painting by Coppedge provides historical documentation of the schoolhouses within the New Hope-Solebury School District. It features New Hope Elementary, which operated from 1859 to 1938, and served grades 1 through 10 in its two rooms. The school was located on the hill off West Mechanic Street in Village II in New Hope. The building is now the home of the New Hope Jewish congregation Kehilat NaHanar known to locals as “Little Shul by the River.”

Evening Local, New Hope represents Coppedge's favorite season—winter. She had an intense love of snowy landscapes, particularly in Bucks County. An article published in the Philadelphia Record in the 1920s notes “the worst thing that the weatherman can hand Miss Coppedge is a snowless winter. Two years ago she braved the fury of a blizzard to make a picture. Crouched in two feet of snow, and with the storm raging about her and with fingers still from the icy blasts, she painted one of the best snow pictures of her career. Her canvas was lashed to a tree, and at times it banged and fluttered like a sail. Miss Coppedge goes forth to paint the glories of winter while most folks are hugging their fires and longing for spring.”

Evening Local, New Hope was reproduced on the front cover of the Bucks County School Review in May 1935. This publication was a bi-annual cooperative periodical distributed by the Bucks County Teachers’ Association and an Executive Committee of administrators from the school system. It was noted to be “of great interest and value to everyone interested in the advancement of the cultural and educational aspects of Bucks County.” It was acquired by the High School most likely around the mid-1930s.

OUR VISIT TO THE NEW HOPE-SOLEBURY SCHOOL

In August, 2019 Les and Sue Fox were invited to a private viewing of the Fern Coppedge paintings in the New Hope-Solebury School District collection. Our gracious hosts were Dr. Charles Lentz, Superintendent, and Liz Sheehan, School Board Member and private Art Curator. Since we did not attend the 1990 Michener exhibition, this was our first opportunity to see all four of Fern’s famous paintings in person: Evening Local, New Hope, Reflections (Lambertville) The Golden Arno and The Coal Barge. Standing next to these beautiful works of art by our favorite artist was breathtaking.

After residing with the NHSD for more than 75 years, a major renovation of the administration building in 2016-2018 resulted in a collaboration between the school and the James A. Michener Art Museum to safely store and publicly display the heart of the art collection in the Doylestown museum for 2 years. “Highlights from the New Hope-Solebury School District Art Collection” was the title of the exhibition, and thousands of Fern Coppedge fans were delighted to attend. The NHSD exhibition and its educational aspects was organized by Adrienne Nesszmelyi-Romano, Director of Interpretation and Innovation at the Michener, who dedication and skill are evident in the museum’s online presentation of the collection.

Because of its size (38”x48”) Evening Local attracted the most attention at the exhibition. Adding to the fascinating history of this colorful masterpiece, there is actually a second version of the same scene: Five O’Clock Train (shown at top of page). Jim Mooney, former Headmaster of the Vermont Academy, told us that this painting was acquired by his school around 1930, suggesting that it might have been painted first. Five O’Clock Train, a gift from the family whose two sons loved the academy, was observed in the school around the year 2000 by a local art dealer who informed Mooney that the painting had appreciated in value substantially in 70 years. Appraisals indicated a six-figure price tag for the work of art and it was put up for sale at auction in 2005 in Pennsylvania. Despite a strong art market, the painting wound up selling privately after the auction. Its current whereabouts are unknown and we’d love to hear from the present owner. The proceeds of the sale went to benefit the school’s art program.

Like many of Fern’s compositions, Evening Local and Five O’Clock Train are partly figments of the artist’s imagination. Nevertheless, Fern managed to capture the flavor of a lost era with many elements in the scene taken from real life. The old schoolhouse still exists in the form of the synogague shown above, whereas the other buildings never existed in this proximity in the 19th or 20th Century. The New Hope train still runs on an elevated trestle above the Aquetong Creek at the bottom of the hill off West Mechanic Street. According to Charles Lentz of the NHSD, and Ed Hild of the New Hope Historical Society, it’s doubtful that a vintage photo of this location would resemble the pleasantly balanced paintings in the artistic creation.

Adding a bit more intrigue to the Evening Local - Five O’Clock Train tale, Joseph Pickett, the famous New Hope folk artist, painted Manchester Valley around 1914-1918, which must have inspired Fern Coppedge. Like Fern’s townscape, Pickett’s charming rendition is not a realistic three-dimensional representation. Nor is the architectural configuration accurate. But the story behind Manchester Valley is compelling. When Joseph Pickett died in 1918, he was not yet recognized as a American Primitive genius and his paintings were disposed of at auction for the insanely low price of only $1.00 apiece. They were purchased by his widow. Mrs. Pickett immediately gave Manchester Valley to the New Hope School where it remained in its new art education program until the late 1920’s. It was then was sold to a local art dealer to cover the cost of landscaping for the new high school. In 1931, the Downtown Gallery in New York City re-sold it to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. In 1939, Rockefeller gifted the painting to the Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA) where it resides today. Had Mrs. Rockefeller realized she would open her own museum in 1957, she might have kept the painting. It now holds a place of honor in one of the foremost museums in the world, along with Picasso’s Three Musicians and Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

 Rounding out the New Hope-Solebury School’s Fern Coppedge collection is Reflections (Lambertville), The Coal Barge, and The Golden Arno. We’ve seen two closely related versions of the first two paintings. But The Golden Arno, another “reconstructed” scene along the Arno River near Florence, Italy, is the only version of this scene we’ve come across. All of these paintings are as beautiful as Evening Local, but only the Italian landscape approaches the New Hope Winter Scene in terms of size at 30” x 30”. The other two are 18” x 20”. The Golden Arno was highly praised by many art critics and is another excellent example of Fern Coppedge’s “stacking” of buildings in order to add color and a sense of height to the flatter geography. By placing buildings “atop" one another, the artist abandoned the realism of traditional Impressionism and cleverly adopted a more modernist approach.

CONGRATULATIONS TO BUCKS COUNTY SCHOOLS!

Les and Sue Fox, authors of Pennsylvania Through The Eyes Of Fern Coppedge recognize the hard work and dedication of the 1,200 administrators of the top ranked BCIU and NHSD educational system. In an age dominated by computer technology, we applaud their effort to preserve the tradition of creating art with a paint brush, as well as sculpture and other art forms. The students of Bucks County and in schools across America with art education programs, can only become better citizens as a result of creating, learning from and enjoying art.