I thought the showers were supposed to be in April. Around here, it's May which has been rainy this year - and more than rainy at that. Yesterday we had a tornado confirmed about twelve miles from my house, with hail falling in other places. My longtime readers know that I'm a walking barometer, so this hasn't been exactly fun for me.
I'm doing my best to keep up with the blog, though, and I did finally get files transferred from my less cooperative laptop to the one that my husband has essentially given me. (It's his, but he prefers his desktop computer and his iPad, so he gave me unrestricted access to this one. I like to use a laptop for writing purposes, because then I can work in bed and adjust my position as needed for pain.) So with any luck, sharing Pennsylvania history with all of you will be a bit easier now, and we have some possible trips coming up that will let me collect more markers.
For today, we'll take this year's first trip down to Bucks County, and learn about an artist who used to live in Doylestown. In fact, today is the 60th anniversary of his passing. (P.S. Don't forget, you have until May 18th to send me pictures of your favorite historical markers! See my previous post for details.)
Two things of note happened while he was at the Academy. One was that he made his first trip to Europe, to study the works of the old masters, and the other is that he met Morton Livingston Schamberg, who became his best friend. After graduation, Charles's parents took both him and Morton on a second trip to Europe, and in particular to Paris, where they learned about and were inspired by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Braque. Upon returning to the United States in 1909, the two young men moved together into a studio on Philadelphia's Chestnut Street and began to work as artists. Of course, selling paintings wasn't the most successful way to make a living, so they took up photography to help pay the bills while continuing to paint. Charles liked to take photos of buildings, while Morton preferred portraits.
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| Portrait of Charles Sheeler, circa 1910. Public domain image courtesy of WikiCommons. |
Morton Schamberg, though a brilliant artist, doesn't (currently) have a historical marker of his own. I really don't know why, but because he doesn't, I want to give him a little space here. He was born in Philadelphia on October 15, 1881, so he was a little older than his friend Charles. His was a German Jewish family, and he was the youngest child; his mother, Bertha, died when Morton was just five years old. Like Charles, he was an early American adopter of Cubism and a pioneer of Precisionism, and some of his works still survive. He did portrait photography to pay the bills, as I said, but he gradually turned to more urban photos. However, he was a lifelong pacifist, and the outbreak of World War I disheartened him. He stopped sharing Charles's interest in drawing or painting buildings and mechanical devices, as he apparently associated them somehow with the machines of war, and instead preferred to make watercolor still life paintings. Tragically, he was one of the victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic; he had gone to visit his father for an extended stay in a Philadelphia hotel, and they both died from the illness. On what would have been his 37th birthday, Morton was interred in the Adath Jeshurun Cemetery in Philadelphia. He shares a headstone with his parents.
Given that the two young men were such devoted friends, it's not hard to imagine that Morton's death must have been hard on Charles. He never completely recovered from the loss; later in life would often make references to it during similar times of tragedy, calling it "an overwhelming blow," and was reluctant to discuss Morton because he found the subject too painful. He continued his work despite his grief, perhaps thinking it the best way to honor his friend's memory, and to make his visits to the Worthington House where they had shared many happy memories. The home is situated near Henry Mercer's Moravian tileworks, so he was able to maintain his friendship with the older gentleman for the duration of his tenancy. They occasionally butted heads on small matters, but had great respect and regard for one another. In particular, Mercer really appreciated how much Charles loved the Worthington House; Mercer was deeply upset by the number of historic buildings Doylestown had lost and was continuing to lose in the name of progress, so the fact that he had an ally in keeping the Worthington House from meeting the same fate meant a lot to him. Indeed, the house was very important to Charles in his work, and he exhibited many photographs and paintings of the house and its contents. The 19th century stove in the house was one of his favorite subjects; he fondly referred to it as his "companion" and it features in a number of his works.
As I said, Charles was among the earliest American painters who took an interest in Cubism, and he was also one of the forerunners of the Precisionist movement. (If that sounds familiar in terms of this blog, it might be because you remember that Charles Demuth, of Lancaster, was also a Precisionist. I have no idea if the two men ever met, but it seems likely, especially as they were both friends with the poet William Carlos Williams.) Precisionism is kind of a mix of the art movements of Cubism, Purism, and Futurism. It involves taking a subject and distilling it down to its essential geometric shapes, trying to imitate the shine and smoothness of machinery. It's been alleged that the term "Precisionism" was coined by Charles himself, although it's unknown if this is actually true.
For a few years following the death of his friend Morton, Charles was able to support himself by photographing art for collectors and participating in group shows. In 1919 he moved to New York City, so his visits to the Worthington House became less frequent. In 1920, he collaborated with Paul Strand, a photographer, to produce Manhatta, a short art film about the rapid changes of the cityscape. In 1921 he married Katharine Shaffer, a music student, whom he seems to have known for a number of years; he thereafter took her to the Worthington House many times. The couple even used one of his pictures of the house's exterior as their Christmas card in 1924. However, he ended his lease in 1926, apparently dissatisfied by the way more and more homes and buildings were cropping up in the house's immediate surroundings and making him feel crowded. It's believed that his leaving the house may have ended his friendship with Henry Mercer as well, since there's no record of any further interactions or communication between the two men.
Charles continued to work as a freelance photographer throughout the rest of the 1920s, taking on projects such as an extensive photo documentation of the Ford Motor Company's factory. He also did a number of assignments for popular magazines such as Vogue, Fortune, and Vanity Fair. In 1932 he participated in the art competition which was part of the Summer Olympics of that year. But tragedy struck him again in 1933, when Katharine passed away from cancer. Six years later he married Musya Metas Sokolova, a Russian immigrant twenty-five years his junior, with whom he spent the rest of his life. Musya was a photographer in her own right and also the subject of many of Charles's photographs after they wed. As far as I can tell, there were no children from either marriage.
For several years in the 1940s, Charles worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He and Musya became very popular in New York's artistic community, making friends with other photographers as well as poets, dancers, potters, and painters. Upon retiring from the museum, he continued to paint and take photographs, and also blending the two; for some of his works, he created a complicated composition by taking multiple pictures of the same subject, overlapping the negatives, and then putting the result on canvas. One piece that was done in this way is his 1955 creation Golden Gate. But in 1959, a debilitating stroke left Charles unable to make art any longer, and another stroke on May 7, 1965 ended his life. He was 81. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York's Westchester County. Musya, who never remarried, was interred beside him after her passing in 1981.
I hope Charles and Morton got to be reunited after death, and I hope that it would make them happy to know that the house they loved is still prized by the Doylestown community today.
Sources and Further Reading:
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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