FRANCIS SPEIGHT A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART RALEIGH

COVER: Francis Speight, “Winter Scene.” Lent by Mr. and Mrs. James E. Hall, Lumberton.

(Color plate courtesy of American Artists Group Christmas Cards.)

The North Carolina Museum of Art takes pleasure in presenting this exhibition of an outstanding North Carolina artist. As we seek in world art for the best, so we do in art of the State. The Museum in the past has annually recognized outstanding North Carolina artists through its annual exhibition and will continue to do so in the future.

JUSTUS BIER

Director

ART GALLERY OF TORONTO, Canada

MR. EDWARD G. BUDD, JR., Philadelphia

BUTLER INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN ART, Youngstown, Ohio

MR. AND MRS. JOSEPH G. BUTLER, Youngstown, Ohio

MR. LUCIUS CROWELL, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, Chicago

MR. JOSEPH T. FRASER, JR., Philadelphia

MRS. DANIEL GARBER, Lumberville, Pennsylvania

GIBBES ART GALLERY, Charleston, South Carolina

MR. AND MRS. JAMES E. HALL, Lumberton

MISS ANNA WARREN INGERSOLL, Penllyn, Pennsylvania

DR. W. P. JACOCKS, Chapel Hill

MR. HENRY W. LEWIS, Chapel Hill

MR. JOHN F. LEWIS, JR., Philadelphia

MR. JAMES P. MAGILL, Philadelphia

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, New York

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, Boston

NORTON GALLERY, West Palm Beach

PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS, Philadelphia

MR. GEORGE B. ROBERTS, Philadelphia

ROCHESTER MEMORIAL ART GALLERY, Rochester

MR. FRANCIS SPEIGHT, Doylestown, Pennsylvania

MR. WALTER STUEMPFIG, Gwynedd, Pennsylvania

MR. AND MRS. C. M. WEST, JR., Centreville, Maryland

WOOD ART GALLERY, Montpelier, Vermont

WOODMERE ART GALLERY, Philadelphia

The North Carolina Museum of Art wishes to thank all the lenders whose generosity has made this exhibition possible.

In addition, we should like to express our appreciation to the American Artists Group Christmas Cards for the loan of the cover color plate, to the American Artist magazine for the loan of two black and white plates, and to Kenneth Whitsett, Charlotte, North Carolina, for the donation of six black and white plates.

The North Carolina Museum of Art is proud to present an artist whose proven ability, quality, and integrity have automatically singled him out to be presented in its first one-man exhibition of the work of a North Carolina artist. We hope this will be one of a group of such exhibitions recognizing the ability of North Carolinians. So closely is Francis Speight tied to the area around Philadelphia that North Carolina can claim only his youth, for he went to the Pennsylvania Academy some forty years ago.

It has been a special privilege for those of us at the Museum to become familiar with Mr. Speight and his work. Not only was the task a pleasure, it was a revelation as well. Little did we know of the quality and scope of his particular genius; for one does not usually feel the full importance of his art at a momentary glance nor in the study of a single work.

We have now had the opportunity to examine many of his works in museums and private collections throughout this country and Canada. Not only have many museums honored him by including him in their collections, but he has received awards such as: Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Gold Medal Award, 1926; Medal for Landscape, Society of Washington Artists, 1928; Fellowship Prize for a Fellowship member, Pennsylvania Academy Annual Exhibition, 1930; the first Hallgarten Prize, National Academy of Design, 1930; the Kohnstamm Prize, Art Institute of Chicago, 1930; the Landscape Prize, Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, 1932; Medal, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 1938; first prize, Regional Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy, 1940.

Francis Speight was also elected a member of the National Academy in 1940; in the same year he won the Sesnan Gold Medal of the Pennsylvania Academy; he was awarded the First Altman Prize for Landscape in 1951 and the Second Altman Prize in 1953 from the National Academy of Design. Also from the National Academy of Design he won the Obrig Prize in 1955 and the First Altman Prize for Landscape in 1958. And just last year, in 1960, Mr. Speight was elected to the membership of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In addition, he has won numerous local and regional awards and has been invited to serve on many juries of selection; but more than receiving such recognition or even teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy, he enjoys painting

in the Manayunk—Roxborough area in the Schuylkill Valley near Philadelphia. Perhaps he likes this region because it seems to move at his own deliberate pace. In his paintings of the area, figures walk down the middle of the street, and, if there are cars, they seem to be at a standstill and do not get in the way of the more important picture-building elements—tone, simplicity and weight of the stone and stucco houses which have become identified with his work.

Mr. Speight has said, “I like to be correct and worthy, but somewhere along the line in writing or talking something goes wrong, and I start having fun and mess things up. It may be this way in painting—but, I dare say, not so much, or maybe it is more interwoven and becoming in painting.” A critic wrote Speight that what he liked best in his work were those things that happened as he was painting the picture and were obviously not a part of the original plan. Perhaps the things about which he speaks are a bit overlaid and not interwoven, but they are, as Mr. Speight suggests, becoming.

In this exhibition we see selected examples of Francis Speight's many years of work, and if we look carefully and have an eye for it, we can see the rare genius of a man, an artist, and a poet, who works unexpected magic with the underlying shadowy forms which he has found friendly.

BEN F. WILLIAMS

Curator

We are grateful to Franklin Walkins, distinguished American artist, to Joseph Fraser, Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and long-time friend and associate of Francis Speight, and to Hobson Pittman, another distinguished North Carolina painter now living in Pennsylvania, who have generously supplied us with the following comments on their friend Francis Speight.

Francis Speight and I were fellow students in the school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and today we find ourselves back where we started—this time as teachers. We are in the same age bracket. We enjoy together the comfort of being taken for granted in an environment that we would not wish much different than it is. We have observed the kaleidoscopic gyrations of the art world about us from the same viewpoint of training and locale. A long and indolent friendship between us has survived the years.

For my part, I am quite sure that my friendship for Francis could not have endured so fully had I not held his work in high esteem or rather, since our friendship goes back to a time when our paint was infirm, I should qualify by saying that his integrity and the quality of his intent from the very beginning commanded respect. Simplicity, which some painters may acquire with much work and with much thought, was built into Francis character and reflected in his work. It has been thickened and enriched with time. Perhaps it is for this that he seems to abhor novel subject matter—an essential with some artists—and he has painted the same few acres of streets and hills and buildings over and over again. But—always with more confidence, always with variety and with a continuing delight that his growing strength in expression allows us all to share.

FRANKLIN WATKINS

It has been my privilege, over the many years of association with The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to meet and know great numbers of artists. I have yet to meet one, however, more truly dedicated to the profession of painting than is Francis Speight. The combination of sincerity, honesty, reticence, charm, and technical skill are all evident and wonderfully blended in the poetic aura which pervades his every canvas.

His quiet influence and understanding have made him one of the most valued and venerated teachers, as with simple truths gained through his own experience he has counselled and guided his students. The period of his own schooling in this Academy, with which he still continues as instructor, provided a background of sound, academic realism. Those exemplary influences, unfortunately not at present so ideally sought after, plus the several places, always rural, in which he and his family have chosen to live, have instinctively and healthily been his guiding stars and inspiration. A beautiful succession of landscapes, town and country, reflect his sensitive reaction to the intimate world about him.

The contemporary state of the arts has taught us that there are many, many ways for artists to communicate their personal reactions and convictions to their fellows, but surely few have done so with more distinction and beauty. Francis Speight and his work are a benediction.

JOSEPH T. FRASER

There is almost an uncanny sense of communication with nature found in the work of Francis Speight; his houses are lived in, sunlight sharply defines edges and forms, shadows actually crawl over planes and become absorbed with light as they juxtapose themselves with higher pitched colors. And here one discovers his dedication to nature. Often I say to students, “nature and the museum are our greatest teachers”; and surely Francis Speight is a conspicuous exponent of such teaching.

Speight has unfailing confidence in what is familiar to him—a hillside town, houses spotted with brilliant sun-light, streets leading to unending space, a group of children or an animal “picked up” by dazzling spots of color. But upon examination, one finds he never “copies” what is in front of him but endows the scene with an individuality that becomes his own. There is always distance between the subject and the painter, and in this space much takes place which the “artist” “sees and feels”. With the most important of all implements, “the vision”, he visualizes a statement through careful observation and investigation of the image that confronts him.

It is interesting to recall one of his most important teachers, Daniel Garber, and analyze the work of both. One is immediately conscious of the “correctness” in Garber's work; that is, the general structural design of the canvas, the treatment of a decorative pattern and atmosphere that seems to result in flatness. This does not exist in the painting of Speight. The “proper or correct” approach of organization becomes relaxed, casual and asymmetric. In a Utrillo street in Montmartre, space and distance seem to become inhabited with life, yet empty, quiet, brooding; in Speight's, active and robust, filled with air and movement and intense light.

Speight is also interested in perspective—not like Uccello who used it to embellish his suggestion of a two-dimensional pattern which became one of the most elegant and personal in the history of painting—but to establish movement which leads the eye into a space of receding and advancing planes.

So in the work of an artist who is endowed with a true spirit derived from nature, we find a “new landscape” injected with living and personal elements found in nature itself.

HOBSON PITTMAN

We are greatly indebted to Mr. Speight for supplying us with biographical notes from which this sketch was drawn.

Francis Speight was born on the Speight farm between Windsor and Lewiston in Bertie County, North Carolina, September 11, 1896. His father, the Reverend Thomas T. Speight, was a native of Gates County. Francis’ mother was Margaret Sharrock Speight, a native of Bertie County.

The first Speight who settled in this country seems to have been the Francis Speight who arrived in the Virginia Colony in 1634 and who settled near what is now the North Carolina-Virginia line. The Reverend Thomas T. Speight (born 1844) and his father, the Rev. Henry Speight (1808-1873) lived in this same section about ten miles from the Virginia line.

It was from this immediate North Carolina-Virginia area that Speights moved about 1730 to Craven County and the Greene County area, and from there to Edgecombe County, N. C., and to Alabama and Texas, as well as elsewhere in the South. In the vicinity of the original settlement and in the other places named there are still families of Speights.

When Thomas T. Speight, who was then a widower, married Margaret Sharrock, the widow of Albert V. Cobb, he moved over to Bertie County, to what had been the Sharrock home. This was where Francis Speight, the artist, was born and raised. The house was fairly large, an L shaped old frame dwelling with a dining room and kitchen of newer origin built in the rear. The house rested on brick piers about three feet high. (When he was little, Francis and the other children played under the house.) It was in a grove of about seventy-five old oaks and a few other trees. There were many farm buildings in the yard; these included a cotton gin house, a school house, three large smoke houses and a store. The household was large, consisting of the parents, six of the seven children of the last set (Francis was the youngest of these), a great aunt, the school teacher, a pupil boarder and sometimes an overseer. The older half brothers and half sisters, being grown up, were there only occasionally. There were often guests, distinguished people or just anyone passing through that part of the county-peddlers or neighbors who had brought their cotton to the gin.

Francis’ first five years of schooling were in the schoolhouse in the yard. His father employed a teacher and had a private school for his children and the children of a few other families in the neighborhood. Conversation in the household centered around religion, education, politics and the farm activities. For Francis and his brothers there was working in the fields with the hired hands, or working in the fields by themselves or, on occasion, as hired hands for some of the tenants. Francis states that the neighbors might question just how much he worked in the field-but to him it seemed a great deal. His brother Lloyd, two years older than he, and his brother Jim would turn and help him out when they came to the end of the row.

Francis says that he recalls with pleasure riding on horseback behind his father on moonlight foxhunts with the men and boys of the neighborhood. Another thing that he likes to recall is that quite early he and his brother Lloyd appointed themselves to look after the cattle. The Speight's cattle, along with those of everyone else, roamed the woods and anywhere else they wished, except supposedly the fields; for there was no stock law. He says that they herded about as many head of cattle on foot and on horseback as any two cowboys, and drove them a mile down the lane to the cow lot at the house.

After the school in the yard was discontinued, Francis went to public school a mile down the road and then to high school in Lewiston. During this time there was much conversation among the older children in the family about writers, actors and artists. His sister Tulie, who had studied art at Chowan College, talked about going to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and studying with Cecelia Beaux. She went to the Pennsylvania Academy in 1921 and while a student there won a Cresson European Traveling Scholarship and a First Toppan Prize.

Although Francis did not finish high school, his father, anxious that he should graduate from college, sent him to Wake Forest College in 1915. Although his father, Thomas Speight, had no college education, he and his brother, the Reverend Alex. Speight had been given honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees by a Virginia college. Francis, however, stayed in college only two years. During these two years, in addition to his studies at Wake Forest, he took art lessons on Saturdays with Miss Ida Poteat at Meredith College in Raleigh.

Francis’ chief interest at this time was to be a writer, and the art lessons were his sister Tulie's idea; she thought he might like to illustrate his own writings.

At Wake Forest, he wrote stories and rhymes for the monthly magazine, “The Student”, drew cartoons for the weekly newspaper, “Old Gold and Black”, and for the annual, “The Howler”.

After the United States entered the war in 1917, Francis’ brother Jim-later a member of the State Legislature-when he volunteered, asked Francis to stay at home with their parents until he returned from the war. He said that then he would see to it that Francis went to art school. So Francis stayed at home, until he was drafted for three months’ service.

When Jim came home in 1919, Francis went to Washington, D. C., where he studied two or three months in a commercial art studio. Then, in January of 1920, he went to the Corcoran School of Art and studied for a semester. At the Corcoran he saw an exhibition of the drawings of Daniel Garber, who was a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It was this exhibition, along with the interest of his sister Tulie, that led him to go to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts School in the fall of 1920.

He has been at the Pennsylvania Academy ever since-five years as a student, two as a student-teacher, and thirty-three as a teacher. As a student, Francis says that he was slow, and that added to this was a tendency to spend much of his time writing rhymes. Some of these were published in the Raleigh “News and Observer”. But he found drawing and painting more deeply satisfying. Included in his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts were a few abstract and semi-abstract paintings, but he says that he preferred the challenge of realistic or representational painting. He still has, however, some linking for abstract painting.

Though Francis had thought of going back to North Carolina to paint, the fact that he was offered a job teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy and the encouragement of Daniel Garber led him to spend his time painting in Manayunk, a hilly industrial area along the Schuylkill River on the edge of Philadelphia. Here the stone and stone-stucco houses on the hillsides, the stone factories, the canal and the river furnished abundant material.

Francis says about the area, “In Manayunk where most of my painting has been done, I have been fascinated by the height and depth of the landscape. When I was a child in eastern North Carolina where it was fairly flat, I was afraid of the least bit of a hill and recall that my father let me get out of the carriage and walk down the hill at ‘Chisky Swamp’ on the way to Windsor, but I did not mind walking up. In Manayunk, it was always stimulating to stand and look across the valley and paint the rich mosaics of houses on the distant hill, the river, and foreground sloping toward the

river or turn and look up at the houses and trees, so often seen against the blue sky and white clouds.”

Pennsylvania Academy students had been going out to Manayunk to make sketches for years. But Francis Speight was the first professional artist to paint there and to bring it to national attention.

In 1936, Francis married Sarah Blakeslee, an artist who has won several prizes as a professional artist, including first prize and a Gold Medal at an all-Pennsylvania exhibition at Legonier, Pennsylvania, in 1960. She is represented in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and has painted a mural for the U. S. Government which hangs in the post office in Strawsburg, Virginia; when she was a student in the Pennsylvania Academy's school, whe won two Cresson European Traveling Scholarships and other prizes. Francis Speight and Sarah Blakeslee Speight have two children, Thomas Blakeslee, twenty years old, and Elisabeth Sharrock, seventeen. The Speights lived in the Roxborough-Manayunk area until 1943, when they bought an old stone house near Doylestown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Since then Francis has driven down to Manayunk to paint while Sarah has painted portrait studies, still life, and the rolling countryside around Doylestown. By chance, the property that the Speights bought near Doylestown and where they live adjoins the farm which was the birthplace of Thomas Meredith, for whom Meredith College was named.

Besides painting in Manayunk, Francis Speight has painted during two or three summers near Tamaqua in the Pennsylvania hard coal region. There he has painted the miners’ homes against the dark mountain piles of slag. He has also made short painting and sketching excursions to North Carolina.

Of Francis’ paintings Dorothy Grafly wrote in the Magazine of Art published by the American Federation of Art in May, 1938:

“The pattern feeling for heights and depths in this smoky landscape often brings to a Speight canvas a sense of sweeping diagonals as the sun slants from the road or field of foreground across street or railroad tracks, past isolated slim block-like houses and the shadows of passers-by, to misted hills across the river. Shadow and light are the ultimate burden of the design: but it is interesting to see a Speight pattern roughed in, literally a skeleton to be clothed later with light. . . Such is the essence of Speight's art with its wisps of poetic contemplation, and its never militant sympathy. His is the vision of the poet, not that of a reformer, and in the maturity of his career he is expressing in terms of paint what as a boy he thought to say in words.”