Tag Archives: Cottage

Chair Paintings – Part 1

In a comment on my post about Hezehiah’s chair, my cousin Becky asked if I might show some of my favorite outdoor furniture. I think my favorite outdoor furniture is indoor furniture brought outside on a sunny day.

In the days before real outdoor patio furniture, my grandparents and parents used all the chairs they could find for an outdoor picnic. I love this photo of the family having a picnic near the farmhouse on Whirlwind Hill. They sit in chairs from the kitchen and dining room of the house, balancing plates of food on their laps and enjoying the sunshine.

Farm Picnic, 1948

Chairs and sunshine are perfect vehicles for painting pleasure. The light creates patterned shadows and intensifies color. While I was going through slides and photos of my chair paintings, I realized how very many chairs I moved around inside and outside to take advantage of the light. (I did this when traveling as well, and probably embarrassed many a friend and family member by moving chairs around in public places.)

Sometimes my chair images are close to home, and sometimes they come from away. The chairs in this post are not chairs from my house. They’re chairs from places that feel like home – California, New England, and Hawaii. Next week I’ll show some of my chairs from home.

California

This white wicker chair sat in the garden of my in-law’s house when they lived in Stockton, California. I had just discovered the artist David Hockney and was influenced by his colored pencil drawings.

“California Chair,” Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil, 1979

Vermont

My friend Robin has a lakeside “camp” in Vermont. I probably moved her furniture around to take advantage of the view, which was very lovely.

“Porch by the Lake,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 30″ x 40″ 1997

Rhode Island

I fell in love with the “Ocean House” in Watch Hill, Rhode Island in 1998 in the years before it was renovated and fancy-schmancied up. I did paintings of its porches, chairs, windows, and doorways. Fortunately it was nearly empty during the off-season, and no one seemed to mind me posing its furniture for pictures.

“Ocean House #2,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 1999

Maine

My favorite place in Maine to paint is the Olson House in Cushing. Its rooms are empty except for a few chairs and the sunlight coming through the windows. I never get tired of going there.

“Northern Light #10,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 38″ x 30″ 2001

These rocking chairs were on a porch in Pemaquid, Maine.

"Green Rocking Chairs," Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 2009

“Green Rocking Chairs,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 2000

Connecticut

This is the cottage porch – one of the best places in the world to sit and watch the ocean.

“Porch Chair and Screen Door,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2009

Hawaii

Hawaii is all about color and light. To paint a Hawaii painting in my studio in the middle of a cold and grey winter is the best therapy ever.

"Waimea Plantation Porch," Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 26" x 34" 2000

“View to the Ocean #1,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 26″ x 34″ 2000

“Lanai with Two Chairs,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2009

My sister-in-law and her husband generously share their beautiful Kauai house with us for a few weeks each year. We started going to the Garden Isle in 1976, and it’s a place that always feels truly like home. The painting below shows the view from their living room. I moved an indoor chair outside and painted a view of the ocean that you might see if there weren’t houses across the street. Artistic license to the rescue!

“Morning Sun,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas 40″ x 32″ 2000

Next week my chairs will move closer to my home in the far north.

Aunt Ellen

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My aunts and uncles and grandparents seemed ageless. I never thought of them as “old,” or as “getting old.” When my cousin Margy Norton sent me a photo of her grandmother – my Aunt Ellen – she said, “Gramie Norton looked like this for as long as I knew her.”

Ellen Hall Norton in front of the cottage, photo courtesy of Margy Norton Campion

Ellen and her younger brother, my grandfather Ellsworth Hall, shared a sense of humor – Ellsworth’s quiet and twinkly, Ellen’s brash and lively – that must have made life on the farm entertaining.

Ellen, Ellsworth, Lydia Jane, and William E. Hall, around 1900

In the black and white photo Margy sent, Aunt Ellen stands in front of her cottage on Long Island Sound wearing what look like clown shoes. The Hall women were tormented by bunions and corns and coped with them in practical ways. Ellen wore her special slippers. My mother’s cousins Melissa and Gertrude cut holes in their white Keds to accommodate sore feet. They laughed about their creative footwear.

“Keds,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2014

Ellen dressed without vanity, wearing comfortable cotton dresses all summer. In an iconic photo, she sits on the lawn in front of the cottage with her favorite dog Count. This is how I always think of her – surrounded by blue and white and smiling an impish smile.

Ellen Norton and her dog Count

Despite her life’s tragedies – her only daughter Jane died at fourteen, her husband Henry in 1938 leaving her a widow for twenty-six years – she held onto a teasing and fun-loving disposition. Her two sons John and Austin provided her with spirited daughters-in-law and loving grandchildren. At her cottage and in her little house in Wallingford she cooked on coal-burning stoves. Summer life at the cottage was simple, but surprisingly elegant.

“Sleeping Porch Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on linen, 1990

She made her famous ginger cookies in the ovens of the massive old stoves and stored them in the same black tin my cousins still use. She greeted me in the kitchen by sticking out her false teeth and asking if I wanted some sour doughnuts. She chided me when I wore lipstick, but I could coax her into playing endless games of Parcheesi and checkers.

Even when I was young and sitting in the living room on the farm listening to the older women talk about their lives, I was learning something from them. Their lessons have become more relevant to me as I grow older. They embodied the adage, “Pain is inevitable – suffering is optional.” The women who paved my way certainly had their share of pain. But they cut holes in their shoes, they played Parcheesi, they gathered in a room together on a Sunday afternoon, they sat on the sea wall in front of a summer cottage, and they made ginger cookies to please the next generation. To all of us they bequeathed their love of family and their enduring sense of place.

“Corner of the Porch,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas

On Friday: Outbuildings #3 – The Turkey Pen

The Cottage

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Taking a vacation was a rare event for my grandparents. The most they could afford in summer, when so much work needed to be done, was to go on outings for the day. And it seems, from reading journals and letters and post cards, that the favored outings took place near bodies of water.

My Aunt Ellen, (my grandfather Ellsworth’s older sister) lived on the farm until she married Henry Norton and moved into downtown Wallingford, Connecticut. Ellen and Henry, to escape the summer heat, took trips to the Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut coasts. In the early 1920’s they started going to what my great-grandmother Lydia refers to as “East River.”

Monday, June 6, 1921 – “Nice day. Men busy hoeing corn. Agnes went to town to the dentist…Ellen and family went to East River yesterday afternoon. Got home about eight. They expect to spend their vacation there soon.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Ellen and Henry must have rented a cottage in East River during the summer of 1921, and my grandmother Agnes took my mother and her brother and sister there for outings.

Thursday, June 30, 1921 – “Stormy some of the time…Agnes is all ready to go. Children are delighted. They have finally gone about half after eight. Went after Hattie and went town way. Hope they will get home safely…All reached home safely at six o’clock.” – Lydia Jane Hall.

In 1928 Ellen and Henry bought a cottage near Circle Beach in Madison, Connecticut, and we have all been delighted ever since. I began my visits to the shore when I was six or seven months old.

Janet and Carol Crump at the cottage, 1946

I took my own children there often.

Carol, Mara, and Paul Bryner in front of the cottage – Betty Norton on the porch

Unlike the farmhouse, with its half-remembered rooms, the cottage still sits on a grassy knoll above Long Island Sound. The rooms, with their spare, comfortable furnishings, have changed little over the years. My aunts and uncles, and now my cousins, have gently and lovingly cared for every inch of the house, so that the next generations can also be delighted. It’s a happy place, and a place I’ve tried to make a little bit my own by painting it over and over. On Wednesday I’ll talk about painting the cottage and show you a few of those paintings.

Margy Norton Campion and Austin Campion on the back porch of the cottage, 1984

On Wednesday: Painting the Cottage

Cornelia and The Sea

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My great-great-grandmother Cornelia Andrews Hall was a stern woman. At least that’s the way I always pictured her. A portrait that used to hang in the living room of the farmhouse is said to be of her. She has a serious and tired countenance, and she wears a brooch containing a lock of an ancestor’s hair.

Possibly Cornelia Andrews Hall, around 1860

Five years before she died she tried to evict my great-grandfather William E. Hall from the farm. Her husband Salmon had been dead for thirteen years, and it would be five more years before her own death. William wrote a comment on the eviction notice that says “Thirteen years of pleasure – five years of hell.” Something went amiss between Cornelia and her son William to cause this rift. I’ve never been able to find out what it was or if my great-grandparents actually had to leave the farm for awhile. It’s another mystery waiting to be solved.

Until last fall I didn’t know much else about Cornelia. But after my cousin Ellen sent me a photo of Cornelia’s childhood home in Sheffield, Massachusetts, and I was doing research about that homestead, I stumbled upon a letter Cornelia had written home to her family in the third month of her marriage to my great-great-grandfather, Salmon Hall:

Wallingford, August 12, 1832

Dear Parents,

It has been three months since I left you. I enjoy good health and am perfectly contented with my new situation, and much pleased with my new neighbor. I should like to have brother Dwight with me. He would find enough here to amuse him. He could pick whortle berries and go to school, drive my cow and feed my chickens. Last Monday we went to the sea. We had a very pleasant time and I enjoyed myself very much. We sailed to Kids Island and took a pleasant walk. I went in the water over my head. Mr. Hall gave me my choice to go to Sheffield or the sea. I hope my friends will not forget me. We have long waited for a line from you but have not received any. Mr. Hall says he shall not write anymore unless you write to us. I hope you will come and visit us this fall. I shall expect a visit from grandpa and grandma this season and I hope they will not disappoint me. Give my love to all inquiring friends and tell them I have not seen one homesick moment yet. Tell Brothers and Sister to write to me.

Good evening parents – This is from your daughter C.T. Hall & S. Hall

Her home in Sheffield was a stately-looking place. A photo of it hangs in my cousins’ cottage in Madison, Connecticut, but until last fall I didn’t realize it was the Andrews Homestead. The fact that she chose not to go back home for her outing, but to have an adventure at the sea gives me a younger and more lively picture of her.

Andrews Homestead, Sheffield, Massachusetts

Nearly one hundred years after Cornelia wrote this letter, her granddaughter, Ellen Hall Norton, bought a cottage near Circle Beach in Madison, Connecticut. A copy of the above photograph of the Andrews Homestead hangs on the cottage’s living room wall. Later this summer I’ll write about the cottage – a place loved and often visited by our family. I’m glad that Cornelia “chose the sea,” and glad that my aunt Ellen did the same. My aunts and uncles and cousins have generously shared their cottage with me, and I’ve enjoyed painting the views into and out of its windows and doors. When Cornelia went to the sea for an outing it must have been a welcome respite from the busy life of the farm. Our family on the farm always kept a close connection to the sea – a connection I try to continue through my paintings.

“Sleeping Porch Windows,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 2010

On Wednesday: July Window

On Whirlwind Hill

An artist's memories of a family farm – Carol Crump Bryner

Tag Archives: Cottage

Chair Paintings – Part 1

Aunt Ellen

The Cottage

Cornelia and The Sea