The John Stobart Project – Chapter 10 – Nearly Finished, And Discovering An Earlier Version Of The Painting
The painting (above) as it was last touched by John, now on my easel here in Mystic.
Finishing a John Stobart Painting
I am deeply honored to have been asked by John Stobart’s widow (and head of the Stobart Foundation) to finish a painting of South Street (at his request) he was unable to complete before his passing early this year. I will be regularly chronicling my progress finishing the piece using John’s notes, research, methods and materials in a series of blog posts, below:
Thanks to all of you following my journey of finishing this painting and for the positive feedback and encouragement. One reader, who also had a close connection to John, was even able to send me a few pictures he took of John with this very painting — and in an earlier stage which revealed to me some of his likely intentions.
Lester Salazar, a fellow artist from Florida, met John many years ago when they took a life drawing class together (John used to spend winters in Fort Lauderdale). He thinks it was 2017 when he took this photo of John pointing to the painting and undoubtedly telling Lester its story of the Great Barrel Shortage of 1884:
Lester also took a good shot of the whole work, which was in a stage very close to where he finally left it, (which you can see at the top of this page) except for one telling difference: John had yet to overpaint the figures and horses in the bottom left corner, which revealed some early thinking not apparent in the later version. This was most helpful to me, which I will describe in the sequence below:
This closeup (above) from the photo that Lester took in 2017, shows the horses clearly standing still, apparently waiting for their turn to enter the dock and unload their haul of barrels. I hadn’t seen this photo until a few weeks ago, well after I thought I had finished this part of the painting.
This closeup (above) is after John had done some more refinement of the scene, and was his latest version, the one I inherited. You can see he eliminated some standing figures and added others. Since he had overpainted the horses legs, it wasn’t clear to me they were standing still; I assumed they were moving. Despite the differences in the coloration and sharpness of the photographs, on careful study you can still see in the later version how much of the seemingly finished work he painted over, such as the horse-drawn cart with the woman aboard.
Here is the same scene (above) after I had done my initial ‘finish’ work. You can see I have the lead horse walking, and added a driver. I kept the guy in the blue shirt and white hat pointing down the dock but added another figure in conversation with him.
Finally, the version above is, in my opinion, a good final compromise between the two of John’s. I have repainted the horse to be still, restored the figure behind it now once again leaning on the cart, the extra barrels on the backside of the cart, and the standing figures near the corner.
I also spent a few long sessions completing all the rigging on the main schooner, as you can see below. What a lot of work (!) painting each line over the ones behind, moving from background to front. Most also have a highlight and a shadow side, a trademark of John’s which always revealed not only his incredible skill but superhuman patience. What you see below, then, is the far right hand side of the painting, finally finished. As I mentioned in a previous post, I chose to illuminate the vessel’s hull with some bright sunlight, as I am certain John would have done too. A couple of trademarks of John’s are here as well — a hidden wine bottle (can you spot it?), and the name of a friend or acquaintance adorning a sign or other lettering. In this case, I have named the schooner ALFRED BLADEN — John’s favorite instructor at the Derby College of Art in the early 1950s.
