The New York Years
(1873 to 1909)
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Preface
Opening Comments about the artist by Professor William H. Gerdts, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Graduate School of the City University of New York |
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This document was produced because a great body of knowledge about Gegoux's early years in New York has only recently been discovered in digitized copies of old newspapers. New York news Articles about the artist Gegoux, totaling more than 876 in number, are complied in this document for future generations. In about the year 1909 Gegoux departed New York for points West, Oregon and California, closing out the New York years. It is our intention to cover Gegoux's time in the West in a Part 2 of this work.
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In 1999 we asked Professor William H. Gerdts of City University of New York for his opinion about Gegoux, which are happy to have been authorized to share with you here:
The world of portrait investigation consists of; lost identities; undocumented portraits; and 100 year old cold trails. This project was undertaken in an effort to document the portraits of Theodore Gegoux. Our generation of researchers is blessed as the first one with access to both the internet and television. These modern tools can point us to sources of original material faster than ever before. By themselves, these two tools would not be sufficiently rigorous or definitive for formal research. But when combined with social media these tools suggest new methods for researching portrait origins. First, across the entire country, books; magazines; and old newspapers are being digitized and uploaded to the internet on an unprecedented scale. It is not necessary for a researcher to find the entire work on line. It is enough to discover that a specific document, which contains information of interest, exists and can be located. The source can then be contacted and document acquired in the old fashioned way. It is like having a worldwide resource locator at your finger tips. Second, expert commentary is increasingly available via multi-media sources such as television and social media. One such example of these modern information sources is Antiques Roadshow, which has become increasing popular since the last decade of the 20th Century. One of the most interesting and useful aspects of Roadshow is the expert commentary. One such expert is Kathleen Harwood, proprietor of Harwood Fine Arts in Montrose, Pennsylvania. In a 2009 Roadshow episode (1), Ms. Harwood could have been speaking directly about Gegoux when she said,
Ms. Harwood was speaking generally of portraits and artists. But, she succeeded in capturing the essence of this specific artist, Gegoux. Beyond Keyword Searches The central aspect of this new method of portrait investigations involves using the print media of the late 19th century, which is now digitized and key word searchable. The primary challenge is finding sources. Gegoux.com has been lucky in that regard. Two excellent sources are operating in Northern New York. Both the Northern New York Library Network and Old Fulton Postcards have old news print on the order of tens of millions of pages. Google books is also available for many printed documents. Another challenge is developing the new skills for the new methods. Most modern readers are well aware of key word searches and experienced in their use. Some readers will even have Boolean and fuzzy logic search skills. But this new world of digitized Newspapers makes use of a special combination of optical character recognition (OCR) and high speed Wicks and Wilson Microfilm scanners. Developing Boolean keyword searches for more than 19 million pages of old newspapers, is not for the faint of heart. A keyword search for "Gegoux" is simple enough, and generates 852 hits out of 19 million pages on one site. However, searches for more common names create too many hits for the system to handle. For example, no one will ever know how many hits that a "Smith" keyword search will generate; since the system blanks out at 5,000 hits. Even a name like Lowell will max out the system at 5,000 hits. That is where Boolean can be useful. For example , search for the exact phrase "Lemuel L Lowell", who is an artist contemporary with Gegoux, and the hit count becomes only seven (7) pages out of 19 million. Suffice it to say that all seven of these pages relate directly to the desired artist, but this precision casts too small a net. To get more results, try a Boolean search which requests all news pages that contain the name Lowell within 6 words of artist (Lowell w/6 artist) that type of query generates 415 hits out of 19 million pages, most of which pertain to the artist. Designing Boolean searches to optimize the accuracy of your returns is an art in itself. The final challenge involves a very esoteric aspect of optical character recognition. Remember that when you are dealing with old newspapers, several potential sources of error are present which might impede your success in finding all of the available news about your artist or portrait subject. These are some obvious issues: 1) The original reporter may have spelled the name incorrectly 2) The type setter may have mistaken the name spelling 3) The proof reader may not have caught the error 4) The photographer could have misaligned the image, when sorting the newspaper 5) There is a transfer process when the photographed newspaper is put on microfilm 6) The microfilm is often a third generation print which can greatly reduce clarity All of this is obvious when you think about it. Now comes the fun part. Here is perhaps the most interesting and at the same time frustrating aspects of digitized newspapers. The high speed Wicks and Wilson Microfilm scanners are used to digitize the newspapers from microfilm. They rely on a state of the art optical character recognition software. This character recognition process is not perfect. It can introduce character errors, which are neither obvious nor intuitive. So if you are intending to drill down as far as possible to extract every available news story about your artist or portrait subject, you must conquer your fears and try things that at first might seem crazy. Remember the software is looking for characters, not just alpha numeric. This creates all sorts of interesting results when the scanners go off the rails. For example a query using this keyword .. (.goux .. was used and this query returned news articles with the following text: · Prof, (re- goux · Iheodore (f-goux · l'rof. Ci.-goux's · w h o m Mr. U -goux · floiabed by (i*goux · T. Oo- goux's Although you may not have guessed it, each of these news articles contained actual information about the artist Gegoux. We were lucky to find them. There are thousands of such examples and it will be left to the reader to puzzle out the implications. The entire approach is comprised of the following:
At Gegoux.com these techniques have yielded some amazing successes in identifying portrait subjects. One such story involves Miss Libbie Kapfer of Carthage New York. Libbie specialized in Dress-Making and Sewing of all kinds at reasonable rates, she would sew at her home or yours. We see her advertisements in both the Carthage and Lowville newspapers between the years 1876 and 1879. Libbie passed very suddenly on April 12, 1881 of a very brief fever illness. Then just over two years later her sister (Anna) died of the same illness. Here is that news:
There have been many such successes with the Portrait of Agnes and Helen Flanders, cover photo, being the most notable. See the news story in Chapter Twelve .. (12.057). In 1988 a Portrait of Two Girls signed T. Gegoux and dated 1908, was offered for sale at an upstate New York auction house. A young couple was taken by the image and resolved to acquire the portrait, even though the cost was more than they expected. The young couple had noticed that like so many other anonymous portraits there was no other identifying marks beyond the signature and date. In every way, this was the typical unidentifiable portrait spoken of by Ms. Harwood. The story could have ended there, as many have, but it did not. The discovery occurred over the course of more than ten years. It all started when a private party found Gegoux.com; emailed us; and expressed an interest to share information. Since Gegoux.com is all about sharing information we agreed and eventually posted the photograph of the portrait that you see on line today. We also posted the story about the young couple bidding, what seemed like allot of money at the time, and coming to own the painting. Gegoux.com posted both the photograph and the story of the auction. As luck would have it, years later, the original family also found Gegoux.com; recognized the family portrait; and emailed us. They shared that the portrait was auctioned for sale at a low point when money was needed by the family. The original family went on to state that they had now recovered financially and wished to reacquire the family portrait. "Oh and by the way, the family has another portrait by Gegoux" and would we desire a photo of the second portrait for Gegoux.com. The two girls were identified as Agnes and Helen Flowers. Some genealogy netted the birth dates and bio sketches that you see on line today. In the end the new owners were so in love with the portrait that they declined to sell it back to the family. But the family now knows what became of the portrait and that it is well cared for in a loving home. The upshot, is that the original contributor went from having an unknown portrait, to having an improved provenance for a painting with known subjects. Looking at the painting I imagine the day that those two girls sat before the artist for their portrait .. it could have gone something like this:
It was with this in mind that Gegoux.com has maintained a presence on the internet since 1996. Many are the folks who have dropped in to share information about a Gegoux portrait subject or painting. The method is indirect and not for people on a deadline, but it does work. At Gegoux.com we have embraced a multi-generational approach. Like the crew of a sub-light star ship travelling to a distant solar system, our work will be finished by others. In fact, many discoveries will likely be made by our descendants. We continue to hope that with each generation, more information about Gegoux will come to light. How Obscurity Happens It is a small wonder that Gegoux's work remains obscure even today. The artist had himself, later in life, chosen solitude in the West. He ducked out on his New York family, without so much as a word. Then he shuttled between Oregon and California as if to avoid his own demons. Under the best of conditions, most portrait artists from rural America tend to have only fleeting fame. Exceptions do occur, but usually only when the artist or the portrait sitter are notable beyond their locale. Portraits by their very nature tend to get lost to history "because they are usually undocumented", according to Kathleen Harwood, and "the identities have been lost .. the artist's are not well known". (1) But, there almost seems to have been a conspiracy of concealment regarding Gegoux. One factor contributing to lost portrait identities is that portraits are usually kept in one family for generations; unseen by the outside world. Many times the last person, that knew anything of the subject, passes on without writing anything down. Another factor is that unsigned portraits abound in America; second perhaps only to unsigned photo albums. Painting Not Signed The lack of the artist's signature is one route to obscurity. Why artists would not sign their work is beyond me. But we do see many unsigned examples from Gegoux. Perhaps Gegoux was trying to explain when, in 1923 he told a reporter, ".. many are the partly finished pictures awaiting the last touch of the brush, but I refrain from using up nerve forces. Always I am in the hope of feeling more vigorous tomorrow." Even when Gegoux did sign his work, he was subject to use any variety of moniker. It was through the sheer variety of his signatures that Gegoux seems to have gone out of his way to remain unknown to history. For example, his cursive script Theo Gegoux looked like theolsegoux to Grogans & Company in 1993, see Davenport. Another example is from a 2003 auction, where Du Mouchelles either missed Gegoux's signature entirely or was just not willing to hazard a guess. Either way, the eventual owner was able to find the signature and correctly identify it as a Gegoux. For their part, Christies East, in 1988 mistook a cursive T. for a J., see Davenport. It is also likely that, Christie, Manson & Woods listed a Gegoux in 1980 as P. Gegoux. There was a cousin Philias Gegoux, but he was not known to paint. The artist's wife, Prudentia, was also not known to be a painter. Accordingly, with respect to modern auctions, it could be argued that more houses have gotten Gegoux's signature wrong, than have gotten it right. There were also many portraits that just were not signed. Perhaps some families did not want a signature next to their loved one's image. Gegoux did inscribe text on the backs of some paintings; sometimes just a name, but for others a description was given. But even these notes were written in the paper backing and subject to loss through wear and tear. Landscape and still life paintings are similar to portraits, in that they can also be kept in families for generations. We still believe that much of Gegoux's best work is yet to be discovered and brought to light. Occasionally, Gegoux.com will receive an email from a person that has just inherited a Gegoux painting or after owning a picture for years, looked for the first time at the signature and checked the internet. So what kind of an artist was Gegoux? Did he have talent? At Gegoux.com, we always knew great grandpa could paint. We feel that Professor Gerdts said it best "really beautifully done" and "skillfully rendered". As children, the Creek and Ocean paintings were our windows to another world. Apples and Roses paintings were like wall coverings for us. Always there .. always seen .. but not really understood in context. After all we, like great grandpa, lacked formal training. Neither art nor history held fascination for us. Not with Sputnik flashing overhead and rocket launches on television. So in 1967 when visited by Dr. Franz Stenzel, Oregon's self appointed arbiter of good taste, we hardly noticed Stenzel's proclamation of Gegoux's mediocrity. It seems that Dr. Stenzel had visited us only to confirm his conclusion that Gegoux was a less than noteworthy artist, with little sense of form. According to Dr. Stenzel, Gegoux was an artist whose work exhibited little evidence of formal training in the arts. Gegoux was, in Dr. Stenzel's estimate, essentially unremarkable. Anyone wishing to confirm this assessment may find the Franz Stenzel files at Yale's Beinecke Library. Thus availed of this "expert's" wisdom, we children went forth into adulthood only slightly less convinced of what our eyes had already told us. After all .. what did we know? What could we know? Five kids raised on a mink ranch in Maple Valley. Such was the magnitude of our ignorance, that upon seeing Gegoux's "Birth of Oregon" in our 9th grade Washington State History texts, the painting was unknown to us. After all, no one else had ever heard of Gegoux. Had not Dr. Stenzel said as much? Further, we had also always believed that the paintings our family owned were the dregs of Gegoux's work. If a painting had appeal, it would have been sold. The paintings that were handed down to us were the ones that did not sell. To us, Gegoux's best work is yet to be found. "A Young Paganini", was exhibited at the First Carnegie International Exposition in 1896. Clearly this painting was well appreciated by John A. Beatty, the exhibition curator. This was one of Gegoux's most praised works, but remains lost. In fact, the whereabouts are unknown, for many named Gegoux paintings. By the way, Gegoux.com recently found a 116 year ago clue about "A Young Paganini". The Smithsonian has a letter, from Gegoux to the Carnegie, which shows that this painting was shipped back to Gegoux in Watertown, New York via express freight for $1.90. This is significant since some of the art works were literally sold off the walls at the International Exhibition. That tells us that the painting was in fact returned to New York, so our search for this painting will now begin anew at Watertown. Many other fine examples are also referenced on our pages. It is our view that the paintings we have thus far documented at Gegoux.com, form the refutation of Dr. Stenzel's judgment. A judgment which was, in our view, hastily developed and based on few facts. In fairness, even a detailed search using available resources from the 1960s would likely have revealed little information about Gegoux. Nonetheless, we do not consider ourselves ill advised by either John A. Beatty or Professor Gerdts. It is our hope, that through Gegoux.com, eventually Gegoux's work will be better known. We hope that Gegoux achieves in posterity the acclaim that he seldom had, outside of Northern New York, during his life time. Theodore Gegoux Rancho Cucamonga, California "This work is not intended to be definitive. As more information becomes available additions and corrections will be possible and perhaps necessary." Copyright © All Rights Reserved Second Edition - Dated August 18, 2012 Acknowledgements We would like to extend our sincere thanks and gratitude to the following organizations, whose support made this project possible: · The Watertown Daily Times, Watertown, New York · Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum · The Jefferson County Historical Society, Watertown, N.Y. · The Flower Memorial Library, Watertown, N.Y. · The Thousand Islands State Park on the St. Lawrence River · The Northern New York Library Network for their Northern New York Historical Newspapers · The Old Fulton Post Cards and Thomas Tryniski, Fulton, New York Dedications This work is dedicated to Barb Mascari, Indianapolis; Thelma McCarthy, West Palm Beach, Florida; and to Alyce Smith, Watertown, New York, whose friendships spanned three generations of our family. Also a note of thanks goes out to Eugene Zubrinsky for his support and inspiration with this project. Copyright © All Rights Reserved by Copyright Holders - The compilers' use of information in this document does not imply consent of the copyright holders for any use of this information outside this booklet. Copyright issues regarding information contained in this document must be resolved directly with the copyright holders. |
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