The 1808 Blount-Bridgers House ("The Grove"), a national historic landmark, is home to a permanent collection that celebrates the 200 year-old material culture of Edgecombe County and the creative achievements of Tarboro-born artist Hobson Pittman (1899-1972).
In addition to the oil paintings, pastels, drawings, prints and watercolors by Pittman, the Blount-Bridgers House exhibits locally made period furniture and nineteenth century paintings of Edgecombe County citizens, including work by painters Thomas Sully, Thomas Landseer, and William Garle Brown.
The extensive Batts textile collection includes nineteenth century clothing, quilts, and household linens. Archival records and architectural information about Edgecombe County homes are actively collected and preserved.
On the grounds is the restored circa 1810 Silas Everette House, also known as the Pender Museum. Nineteenth century ceramics and twentieth century Jugtown pottery are featured, along with iron utilitarian objects.
Also on the grounds is the circa 1845 Phillips Dependency containing historic Edgecombe County farming implements.
This gallery contains early documents and portraits relating
to Tarboro and Edgecombe County history.
In this period room setting are
objects primarily made in the early antebellum period (before 1860) for entertaining and dining.
Objects from the Thomas Blount family (1759-1812), the first family in this
house, demonstrate the prosperity of the Tar River planters.
In this period room setting are furnishings and decorative
objects primarily used in the mid-nineteenth century.
On this landing are important artworks by Hobson Pittman,
who was born in Tarboro and spent his adult life in Philadelphia. The
landing features many of the works featured in The Poet’s Palette,
written by Meade Bridgers Horne, for sale in the museum shop for $25.00.
In this exhibition space is an open display of the
artwork, materials and furniture used by Hobson Pittman in his studio,
"Silver Birches", at Bryn Mawr.
The annual Hobson Pittman holiday exhibition takes a nostalgic look at Hobson Pittman. (View PDF 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 the Arts Council Director, 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 Hobson 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.
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.
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. The next year 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. These items 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.
In the gallery’s annual Pittman exhibitions, we hope to reveal his diversity of style, his ability to adapt 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 its opening. The book is available for sale 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 is featured at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art where he also taught; and was featured twice in Life Magazine.