STOCKBRIDGE, MASS. — Harvey Dunn (1884–1952), a distinctive illustrator, painter and teacher, was born on a homestead farm in South Dakota. He and his tenacious parents endured years of harsh weather working to make their frontier land productive. Harvey attended a one-room school and, by 14, tall and muscular, he could do a man’s work on the farm. With the help of a supportive mother and an influential teacher, Dunn enrolled at what is now South Dakota State University and later studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dunn’s achievements are showcased in the revelatory exhibition “Masters of the Golden Age: Harvey Dunn and His Students” at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Following its close there on March 13, the show travels to the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tenn., from June 24 to September 15. Accompanying the exhibition is the illustrated catalog Masters of the Golden Age: Harvey Dunn and His Students. The volume features a checklist, introduction by Norman Rockwell Museum deputy director and chief curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, plus essays by South Dakota Art Museum director Lynn Verschoor and artist Dan Howe.
At the Art Institute of Chicago, Dunn met illustrator Howard Pyle, who invited the fledgling artist to study with him at his school in Wilmington, Del., and Chadds Ford, Penn. An attentive pupil and hard worker, Dunn thrived under Pyle.
“Dunn’s South Dakota prairie background, combined with his legendary work ethic, was the stuff of American folklore. He quickly grasped Pyle’s philosophy and added a sodbuster’s grit.… He was the size of a linebacker and spoke of art like Vince Lombardi — and he had a lot to say,” says Howe. A painting for Dunn started with his “complete immersion into a subject,” as Pyle recommended. He then orchestrated the lighting to apply it to aspects of the composition and reduced figures and objects to simple shapes. Howe concludes, “He was after bigger game, a higher purpose. He was after the spirit of the picture.”
Dunn’s art demonstrated that he possessed frontier-shaped tenacity, strength and resourcefulness. In line with Pyle’s admonition to know a subject firsthand before trying to depict it, Dunn painted what he knew to be true. He recognized that depicting his memories as a sodbuster represented a rich trove of prairie experiences that could be turned into art. He expressed the wish “to paint with
the strength of a crowbar and lightness of a feather” in scenes in which everyday tasks are often performed under challenging circumstances. While embracing much of Pyle’s teachings, Dunn remained his own man. He continued to hone his keen sense of observation, recollection and humanity.
Dunn’s panoramic depictions of South Dakota’s capacious mountainous landscape became the setting for sympathetic portrayals of the people who lived there. He makes viewers feel their exposure to bitter cold and snow, and to intense heat and dust. Dunn came to appreciate the courage of frontier women whom he recognized as essential, equal partners in homesteading endeavors. “Homesteader’s Wife,” “Woman at the Pump” and “The Stoneboat” suggest the unremitting labor that was the lot of homesteading women.
Rare moments of pleasure and perhaps surprise are reflected in “Home” and “R.F.D.,” where hardworking women pause to enjoy a sunny day with a baby or a newspaper. A homesteading mother with her two daughters star in Dunn’s masterwork, “The Prairie is My Garden.”
A picture that conveys the vigor required of a frontiersman is “Buffalo Bones Are Plowed Under,” in which a powerful oxen team plows prairie soil guided by a hardy homesteader. The severity of frigid winters on the Great Plains is documented by “30 Below” and “Winter Night,” which record the isolation and chill endured by pioneers like Dunn and his parents. “School Day’s End” shows bundled figures leaving a schoolhouse nearly engulfed in snow. In the warmer weather of “After School,” two happy youngsters gallop from the one-room school down a sunny, undulating hill.
Dunn’s determination to succeed as an artist is reflected in his discipline. He worked hard, fast and accurately, creating 55 paintings in 11 weeks for illustration assignments. As Verschoor notes, “These stories illustrate his extraordinary productivity and capacity for hard work and show how he transferred his resourcefulness from the homestead to his job as an illustrator.”
Dunn’s most prolific years came before World War I when his work graced the covers or inside pages of prominent periodicals like Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post and Scribner’s. Dunn believed, “When doing illustration, the first step is to feel your subject, then the idea and last the composition.”
After Pyle’s death in 1911, Dunn helped fill the teaching void for illustrators by mentoring a number of significant artists over the course of 30 years. He said, “The most fruitful and worthwhile thing I have ever done has been to teach.”
He bolstered his students’ spirits by observing that they were not alone in their creative struggles. “We think of art as sort of a flimsy thing, but do you realize that the only thing left from ancient times is the art…. The Greek statues that are armless and nameless are just as beautiful today as they were the day the unknown sculptor laid down his hammer and chisel and said, ‘Oh, hell, I can’t do it!’”
Dunn was a rigorous instructor determined to prepare his pupils for the realities of life as a professional artist. Adapting many of his mentor Pyle’s instructional methods, he sought to inspire students to embrace the emotion, dedication and spirit that make the creation of one’s best work possible.
Most of his years of teaching were at his Leonia School of Illustration and his studio in Tenafly, in New Jersey, although he also taught at the Art Students League, Pratt Institute and the Grand Central School of Art in New York City. Just as he was determined, charismatic and had a flair for the dramatic in his art, so Dunn brought these qualities to his role as an instructor.
A highpoint of Dunn’s career came in 1917 when he was recruited by Charles Dana Gibson, who headed a government program to enlist top artists and illustrators to design posters and materials promoting the war effort. Dunn was among eight artists chosen to join the American Expeditionary Force in France. Embedded with units, they sought to create compelling battlefield images that would promote support for the war effort and the sale of Liberty Bonds back home. Dunn experienced enemy fire while depicting battlefields and observed the challenges and casualties of doughboys. He eventually completed 33 paintings based on his wartime sketches.
“Rather than focusing only on the drama of soldiers in action that had been envisioned by the military, Dunn faithfully recorded a full spectrum of emotions and experiences in his art, which is powerful, emphatic and heartfelt,” says Verschoor.
Among Dunn’s postwar illustrations was “Gunfire” for the cover of The American Legion Monthly, based on his observation of the brilliant illumination caused by muzzle flash when fired by field artillery. In “The Devil’s Vineyard,” an emotional, nuanced work, dead soldiers lie among a French vineyard’s wires and posts. Another cover, “Coming Off Duty (Camouflage),” shows two rifle-toting, camouflage-wearing doughboys striding confidently into their encampment. Dunn’s paintings are among the most compelling scenes of World War I created by an American artist. They will endure as snapshots of the horrors of that bloody conflict.
Painting more broadly and with greater spontaneity, he accepted assignments for Country Gentleman, Cosmopolitan and Ladies’ Home Journal, among others. In “The Return,” for American Legion Monthly, depicting the aftermath of a World War II bombing, an older woman has collapsed in tears amid the rubble of her home, while a perky, young woman sits upright in a pose reminiscent of Norman Rockwell figures, looking to the future.
Themes emphasized in Dunn’s mature oeuvre included the virtues of hard work, man’s struggle against nature’s harshest conditions, the resiliency of pioneer women and children, plowing virgin soil and an appreciation for life’s quiet pleasures.
In 1945 Dunn became a member of the National Academy of Design, an honor that recognized how his hard, formative years on the Plains had given him unique exposure to scenes only he could interpret in art. As both illustrator and teacher, Harvey Dunn deserves a special place in the annals of American art.
The Norman Rockwell Museum is at 9 Glendale Road (Route 183). For information, www.nrm.org or 413-298-4100.
Stephen May is an independent historian, writer and lecturer who divides his time between Washington, DC, and midcoast Maine.
