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Hobson Pittman Memorial
Gallery
Recent Hobson Pittman Exhibit - Annual
Hobson Pittman holiday exhibition takes a nostalgic look at Hobson Pittman. (View slideshow.)
Every year
in late November after the Great Tarboro Art Bazaar comes to a close ,
another significant exhibit is already waiting in the wings to be presented
in the Hobson Pittman Memorial Gallery at the Blount-Bridgers House. The  works
selected by Arts Council Director, Buddy Hooks, annually feature the
Edgecombe County artist whose collection of works is the very reason we
enjoy such a fine gallery today in the historic museum facility restored in
the late 70s. The Pittman holiday
exhibit is a tribute to Pittman and his artistic legacy and to his niece,
Alyce Weeks Gordon Patrick who saw it through to offer this treasured gift
to the Town of Tarboro.
The holiday
exhibit takes a nostalgic look at the artist, Hobson Pittman. Looking at the works selected, the viewer
will quickly see the images the young artist took with him when he moved
away to study in Philadelphia. Many
of the paintings he created revealed a child’s memories of the rambling
Victorian homes that surrounded him in Tarboro. The stark wooden homes with 10 and
12-foot ceilings, enormous doors and windows provided strong elements to
mix with his imagined and fantastic ones to create compelling, and somewhat
mysterious scenes. He often would exaggerate
the massive windows and doorways he remembered from his childhood, that
seemed larger than life.
Hobson Pittman (January, 1899-May, 1972)
Twentieth
century artist, Hobson LaFayette Pittman was born in 1899 in the rural
Edgecombe community of Epworth near Leggett. When he was old enough to
start school, he moved with his family to a house on Wilson Street in
Tarboro.
The artist
showed promise at a very early age and was encouraged to pursue his
creative talent by his first art instructor, Molly Rouse. Today, in the gallery that bears his
name, are impressive examples of his works done as early as age ten, likely
under her instruction.
(Click picture
for a larger version)
Both of his
parents had died by the time he was 16.
After finishing public school, he moved to Philadelphia to live with
his sister Juanita and there he attended Pennsylvania State College and
also studied summers at Woodstock, N.Y.
He attended
the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1925, studying painting and art and
the next hear, he moved on to Columbia University. The holiday exhibit shows several oil
paintings from his first trip abroad, in 1928 when he was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Europe for the first time where he
visited major art museums and did a series of works. From then on, Pittman traveled between
the United States, Europe and the Orient, teaching and studying painting
and art. He was a member of the faculty at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Art.
Following
Pittman’s death, his niece, Alyce Weeks Gordon Patrick donated most of the
works and many of his personal belongings to the town of Tarboro in 1972
ultimately resulting in the creation of the Hobson Pittman Memorial Gallery
located on the upper floor of the Blount-Bridgers House. The collection
includes more than 400 pieces, some of which are part of a permanent
display in the replica studio setting adjacent to the gallery. The studio
has many of the artist’s student works including assignments with teachers’
comments. Also featured in the
holiday exhibit are his easel, his palette, his favorite chair, a work
table and quite a number of the porcelain vessels he so often used in many
of his still lifes, are all set out among selected pieces of furniture from
his Philadelphia studio. Over the
years, additions to the collection have come from others and as a result,
Pittman’s personal history and artistic career are documented through the
collection of his works, his belongings and hundreds of letters and other
written documents that are housed in the gallery.
(Click picture for a larger version)
In the
gallery’s annual Pittman exhibitions, Hooks hopes to reveal his diversity
of style, adapting to different mediums, representing a lifelong artistic
journey containing elements from his Southern childhood and the
sophistication through a world’s eye view that came from his many trips
abroad.
A centennial
celebration of Hobson Pittman, held in 1999 culminated with the publication
of a book, “The Poet’s Palette,” written by Meade Bridgers who had served
as director of the gallery and museum since 1981, a year before it’s
opening. The book is available for sale ($39.95) in the gift shop at the
Blount-Bridgers House.
“Pittman’s
artistic hallmark is the romantic nostalgia and rememberings captured on
canvas of his Edgecombe childhood,” recalls Bridgers.
In addition
to Tarboro’s Hobson Pittman collection, his works also hang in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Gallery in New York, the Phillips
Collection in Washington and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.
His career
was marked with many prestigious awards, including the Scheidt Memorial
Prize in 1943 from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the
Brevoort-Eickenmeyer prize at Columbia University and the North Carolina
Award in Fine Arts in 1968. His work
featured at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art where he also taught; and was
featured twice in Life Magazine.
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