Let The Light Prevail

The Life and Art of

Benjamin Clark

Forrest S. Clark

Let The Light Prevail

The Life and Art

of Benjamin Clark

by Forrest S. Clark

Dedicated to the Montclair Art Museum

©2004 Yes Books

The Public Press

Let the Light Prevail My father, Benjamin Clark, was influenced by the romantic artists of the 19th century and early 20th century, primarily the Hudson River School and the American Impressionists. His own paintings brought similar visionary and fantastic qualities, use of color and romantic perspective, to American landscapes. His paintings and sketches almost without exception exhibit his belief in an Eden in American life that was being lost in the later 20th century. Born in 1880 in Newark, New Jersey, he began his life as an artist with the “chalk artists” of the pre-WWII era who drew profiles on sidewalks. He was drawing at an early age sketches of characters from life around him, of the actors and comedians of the day, and scenes of his childhood in the industrial cities of Newark and Paterson, New Jersey. He studied art at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and the Fawsett School. Early in his life, he was deeply influenced by George Inness, E.A. Redfield, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church and other artists of the period around 1900. When he was a young man, probably in his early 20s he experienced a religious conversion when he attended a revival; while a firm believer in God, he clung all his artistic life to a pantheism in which he portrayed nature infused with a holy light, a form of divine illumination. His innermost motivations were based on an essential romanticism, a deft use of fantasy and magical places imbued with nostalgia for the agrarian land of his youth. The effects of light, the texture and the atmospheric modulations on objects in nature fascinated him. Using a technique known as scrumbling, he created his trademark effect, that of casting a mystical veil to intercede between the viewer and the natural forms in his paintings. He firmly believed in the role of atmosphere as an active agent in evoking the spiritual or romantic in any single scene. As a matter of fact, the mists and ambiance of air was always a quality that played a major role in his work. One of his favorite tricks was to always put a light

source in his pictures that suffused the ordinary objects, a building, a figure, a hayloft or field with ethereal tones. He wanted to leave open the question of ultimate holiness, yet put some of it into every picture. My father had many fantasies that had to do with the relationship of nature and man. One phrase he used was from the Bible, “My kingdom is

not of this world.” He treated nature as a divine force and in his art approached it with reverence. Once he told me that light was a pure invention of the divine in nature.

The forms of nature fascinated him, the masses of dark trees on a hillside, the meandering stream or meadows in the foreground and a lone tree to break up the surface of a landscape. His strongest points were in depicting sunsets or sunrises, coming weather changes or the peaceful meadows on a calm day. He advanced into more color as he took up colored pencils and crayons for sketches and his art went from somber to higher in color as time progressed. He could by some alchemy of art transform an ordinary backyard scene into something universal and deeply emotional using everyday objects to carry a message. He did not have to travel far to find subjects and often looking out a window would provide him with several subjects for art. I have no doubt he was a believer in nature and God, but he was also an explorer always seeking to know these two more fully and never being satisfied with half answers. A believer and a seeker, he blended the two in his life. This led him to debates on the major issues of life and sometimes to heated discussions. He yearned for a more perfect spiritual life and this was evident in his art. Although to a major extent a self-made artist, during the Great Depression he joined the Federal Arts Project where he met and was influenced by many of the leading artists of that time. He grew up in the city at a time when the Ashcan school of urban artists was dominant in avant-garde American art. While in the Federal Arts Project, he met New York stage set designers and illustrators. His interest in the theater began as a boy in downtown Newark. From this interest, nearly a passion, he moved easily to art works that had all the qualities of set stage backdrops. As a matter of fact some of his paintings look like scenic sets. During the late 1930s and early 1940s he established a studio on Brookside Avenue in Caldwell where he worked on oil paintings. He often carried a sketchbook with him and could quickly sketch a scene with colored pastels or pencils, a form he brought to a fine technical height. He was a great believer in the use of multiple layers of tone to depict atmosphere and perspective. He also experimented with the blending of colors. “Get that light before it is gone,” he would say. “Will I ever get it right?” Once while I was watching him paint, he asked, “Oh, God, what is the mystery?” This was my father's appeal for divine revelation to the essential question of all creative artists.

“What is the secret?” This inquiry was an integral part of his artwork. That, plus a grasp of the ordinary made holy, are the two most forceful elements in his art. When he painted a barn in a landscape, it becomes lit by a divine light yet retains its essence as a man-made work. He combined street-smart observation with a mystical quality or vision. Much that I learned about art, the techniques and the vision came from my father who was my long time mentor, soul companion and inspiration. He was a world-class dreamer, but, oh, what an inner life he must have had. It was colorful, sensual, wide ranging and full of fantasy. There is no question that he sought the answers in his art that today are manifest in the works of Rockwell Kent and even in the visions of such modern artists as Grant Wood, Andy Warhol, and the American impressionists. He did not know anything of the practical working of business, the world of the moneychangers but his world was that of the uses of the imagination as a force in culture and in society. He taught me to worship imagination, the nurture it and to employ it almost on a daily basis. In drives in the country he would stop the car to remark about the quality of late afternoon light on the side of a barn or morning light on a hayfield. He taught me to see light as a spiritual quality that ennobled all life in nature. His twenty-mile trip into the landscape filled him with as much joy as another person would get from a visit to Venice or the Alps. I will always remember him saying, “Where are we going to go today?” It is my firm belief in retrospect that I would be only half of what I am if it had not been for my father. When I went to Europe during the Second World War I carried within me this spirit and it sustained me enough to survive and in one fashion or another it has sustained me since. He had a few public exhibitions in his later life. And we did join in a father-son exhibit in North Plainfield, New Jersey, as well as at the Plainfield NJ Art Association outdoor show. He began painting in oil at the age of 21 and did many landscapes of New Jersey, the Meadowlands, snow scenes of small towns, and the rural countryside around Caldwell, Roseland and Livingston, as well as along the Hudson River and New Jersey shore. Among his many favorite artists were Camille Corot and Pissaro, Monet and Renoir. He also was much under the enchantment of Rockwell Kent and that artist’s northern light canvasses, as well as Michael Lenson and Gus Mager. He painted in oil, did much work in pastels and colored pencil and was inventive in subject matter drawn from everyday scenes of life in the 1930s to the 1960s. After my father died in September 1970 at the age of 90, I resolved to devote more time to art. I started to sketch everywhere I went, the West Indies, Jamaica, England, Switzerland and the western United States. When I retired in the 1980s, I devoted many hours to art, sketching and using pastels and then gradually became interested in cityscapes, landscapes and then to figures. I amassed a number of sketch books and started to exhibit my works at city hall, public buildings and art associations. During all this time the influences of my father’s art remained strong within me. They still are. I cannot see a landscape without thinking of him or a well composed picture without applying his lessons. My ambition is to give him the credit and

artistic recognition he deserved in his life and to do so as a tribute to him and his legacy. I decided a few years ago to compile this little memoir and tribute and to include a few of his sketches and paintings in it. His work needs a permanent record and this is the best way to do that within my resources, will and capacity as a fellow artist. It is apparent in all of this that he will continue to live in this brief tribute but most importantly his work will be so represented. All his work was not in vain because it lives on here and will prosper in these pages. The pictures herein were taken from old sketch books of his from the 1960s, when unfortunately his eyesight was beginning to fail, from informal color sketches and oil paintings owned by the family. The sketches are done mainly with colored pencils or pencil, and a few are pastels. Some have notes on the margins of what he wanted to achieve in tones, composition, color combinations and visual effects, as well as his experiments in styles. Many of his pictures were experimental as he sought to find a conclusive formula that would satisfy the demands of his art. My habit of going to the art galleries in an area comes from my father. One of his favorite places was the Montclair Museum of Art, Montclair, New Jersey. I would like his memoir to be placed in the art library of the museum. Because of his artistic debt to such artists as George Inness, this would be most appropriate. He was a New Jersey original artist who loved the New York art world and galleries, Grand Central and the 57th Street gallery circuit. He introduced me to that world of creative endeavor and also to the challenges of making works of art that still remains with me. Despite the fact I have gradually drifted into sketching and figure studies that I favor and love, his inspiration remains much with me. He taught me to appreciate drawing, to perfect the use of line and perspective and the tonality of pictures. We had a deep and abiding spiritual relationship, a kind of communion of vision. To my father, wherever he is now: haunting the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a snowy street in New Hope, Pennsylvania, or in the purple twilight of the Jersey Meadowlands, I say, I shall not let the light die, but preserve it in art and life. Forrest Stanley Clark 2004

FAVORITE SCENES IN BENJAMIN CLARK PICTURES

Montclair meadows and hills, Newark Meadowlands, Roseland Rural Scenes and Farms,

Passaic River scenes, Watchung Mountains, Eagle Rock, Delaware Water Gap, West Orange, Caldwell and West Caldwell, New Jersey shore and beaches,

and the Ramapo Mountains in New Jersey

“Summer Light”

“Country Scene”

“Jersey Farm”

“Farm Field”

“Red Tower”

“Fall Sunset”

“Falling Brook”

Winter Scene

“Home Path”

“Meadow Stream”

“Sunlit Pasture”

“Christmas Morning”

“Snow Town”

“By A Wood”

portion of an oil painting

portion of an oil painting

“House in the Hills”

“Thundercloud”

“Passing Shower”