Category Archives: Art

Painting the Cottage

“Here comes Carol with her camera!” one of my uncles said when I visited the cottage as an adult. (See “The Cottage”). I found endless and evocative images both inside and outside this brown-shingled summer home. The light through the windows and the doorways and on the wide front porch made shadows and patterns both dramatic and restful.

I admit to having cottage envy. I wanted a cottage like the one my cousins had. Our family rented summer homes on Long Island Sound for a few years, but on Sunday afternoons we still seemed to end up on the sea wall in front of the Norton’s cottage. For me there was only ever one “Cottage.”

But to make a painting of something is to make it a little bit my own. I can carry the places and the scenes I paint with me forever because of the process of recreating them on paper or on canvas.

One of the first pieces of art I made about the cottage was a drawing/collage – a pencil drawing of the cottage with a collaged photo of my aunt Ellen as a young woman sitting on a porch with some friends. They all wore upswept hairdos and puffy-sleeved dresses. I wish I had a reproduction of the drawing to include, but I’m away from home as I write this, and can only see the drawing in my mind.

Since I did that drawing in 1975, I’ve used paint to create my tribute to the house overlooking the blue water. I’ve painted it from the inside looking out.

“Sleeping Porch Windows #2,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2011

I’ve painted it from the side, looking toward the Marsh.

“On the Marsh,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2006

I’ve painted it from the front.

“Upstairs Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2006

I’ve painted a picture of the old AGA stove in the kitchen before it was replaced during a kitchen remodel.

“The AGA,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on panel

But most often I’ve painted the porch. The place where so much family gathering took place looks timeless in the late afternoon and evening light. This painting from 1985 is a favorite of mine, and hangs in our entryway in Alaska.

“Madison, Connecticut Porch, Evening Light,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on linen, 1985

And here’s one from 2005.

“Two Porches, Late Afternoon Light,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 2005

I’m so glad to have done all these paintings – a few of them still keep me company every day. But there’s nothing that beats being on the cottage porch with a gin and tonic and with people I love as the sun sets over the water, and the moon begins its nightly travels.

Margy Norton Campion and Kirt Crump on the cottage porch

On Monday: Janet

Berries

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Berries ripen in July – whortleberries, huckleberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries – and beg to be picked and made into pies.

“Berries,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2014

Tuesday, July 16, 1912 – “Very warm – showery nearly all day. Pauline [hired girl] went whortleburing in afternoon. Got nearly two quarts. Very nice ones.” – Lydia Jane Hall

You may, like me, wonder, “what in the world is a whortleberry?” Well, whortleberries are blueberries, but not quite. They are more like a wild bog blueberry, and I have no idea where they would have grown on the farm. Maybe someone can tell me.

My mother and her older sister Lydia were champion berry gatherers.

Wednesday, July 20, 1921 – “Fairly good day – still manage to get in some hay. Agnes went in town – brought Hattie out to go after berries with Lydia. She brought Lydia a small pail for her own, which she thought was fine. She picked it full up. A good little girl for work.” – Lydia Jane Hall

A few years later, my mother, Janet Hall, wearing plaid stockings and a necktie, went berrying with her own bucket.

Janet Hall (on right) with friend and berry pails

My mother knew the whereabouts of all the best berry patches, and in 1986 she took my daughter and her friend Winifred into the back lots to gather blackberries.

Janet Hall Crump, Mara Bryner, Winifred Guidone with berries, 1986

That afternoon my mom made one of her perfect berry pies. We ate it with vanilla ice cream just as the fireflies began to flicker and glow in the warm dark Connecticut evening.

“Blackberry/Blueberry Pie,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 1986

On Friday: August Window

Half-Remembered Rooms

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From my sweet mother-in-law I learned that dinner could wait. She taught me by example how to fix the meal ahead of time and leave it on the stove to stay warm while we sat down together in the living room for some drinks and conversation.

On the farm and in my childhood home we ate when dinner was ready. My parents had parties that must have involved alcohol, but before a regular evening meal we never sat down in another room so our mom and dad could have a cocktail or a glass of wine.

Drinking on the farm was reserved for hired men, and my mother and her sister, sleeping in their bed in the room called Siberia, were sometimes woken up on weekend nights by the sounds of the drunken hired man stumbling up the back stairs to his room singing “Barney Google.” My mother had a life-long fear of becoming embarrassingly tipsy and accepted drinks with reluctance.

I have only vague memories of the two rooms at the top of the back stairs. The bedroom on the left we called “Charlie Warren’s room.” He was the hired man of my childhood, and, as far as I know, he neither drank nor sang. It frustrates me that I don’t have a mental image for either his room or the one at the other side of the landing. When I went up the back stairs I was mainly focused on the bookcase in the hallway. The two bedrooms were male territory. The boys and men who slept there over the years were my brother, cousins, uncles, great-grandfather, and the hired men.

Since I’ve found no photographs of this part of the house, I drew a picture of how I remember the upstairs hallway. I imagine this interior looking like a drawing by the artist James Castle, who used sharpened sticks dipped into a mixture of soot and spit to make depictions of his home and family. He drew on whatever surface was handy – an envelope, a piece of cardboard, a scrap of newspaper, the page of a book. His drawings evoke for me not just a rendering of place, but also the feeling of a memory not quite formed – a memory like my own of these half-remembered rooms – a smudgy suggestion of what might have been.

“Upstairs Hallway,”Carol Crump Bryner, pencil and charcoal on flattened cardboard box – after James Castle, 2013

On Wednesday: Berries

Watermelon Pickles

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A cold watermelon on a hot summer day is a glorious treat, especially when eaten outside where seed spitting is allowed.

Francis and Janet Hall eating watermelon, 1921

Whoever invented watermelon pickles must have had the bright idea to preserve the memory of this sweet, watery, cold, pink, and green fruit for a dark winter day.

My uncle Francis loved these pickles, so my grandmother kept jars of them in the basement and put the sweet sticky blobs in a glass dish to go along with the big Sunday dinner. But watermelon pickles are a disappointment. They don’t look like watermelon because they’re actually watermelon RIND pickles. And during the pickling process they become translucent and kind of slimy. I think someone should figure out a way to make watermelon pickles so they look like the ones my grandson and I painted on a recent July afternoon.

“Watermelon Pickles,” Carol and Henry, 2014

On Monday: Ellsworth’s Room

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

Cows

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To entertain my visiting grandsons one afternoon, I put out paper and pencils and some old crayons that came with a restaurant kiddy meal. But the youngest grandson (three years old) would have none of that. He wanted the big box of crayons from the high shelf where I keep my art supplies. I can’t remember where I got them, but I know I was excited when I bought this set of ninety-six Crayola crayons. They’re still in pristine condition. They reside neatly and sharply in their tiered rows – the way I long for them to stay.

But I can’t resist this little guy, so I gave him the box. At first he took out one at a time, drew a few lines, then tried to put them back. This soon gave way to an indiscriminate and disorderly adventure with first the crayons and then the little holders that keep them separated. Before I knew it the table was covered with crayons, and I was suddenly reminded of the cows.

Milk production was the main industry on the farm, and much of the daily activity was geared toward keeping the cows happy. My grandparents owned black and white cows called Holsteins and a few brown and white ones and milked them twice a day in the early morning and the late afternoon. As I helped my grandson color little circles on the paper, I wondered how a cow would look with colored spots.

I remember the work it took to herd the cows from field to lane and into and out of the barn at milking time. When the cows had been pastured across the street from the barn, all available help (sometimes even small children) lined Whirlwind Hill Road brandishing sticks to keep the cows from wandering up the hill, down the driveway, or into the front yard of the farmhouse. My grandfather’s gentle voice nudged them along as he tapped their rear ends with his stick and crooned, “Cow-boss. Cow-boss. Cow-boss.”

With furrowed brow and loud voice I herd my grandsons with, “Come on kids. Come on kids. Come on kids.” Keeping my mind on the past when I’m with grandchildren is a challenge. I love being with them, and when I am, all my thoughts are in the present, and all my cows are in color.

“Crayola Cow,” Carol Crump Bryner, crayon, 2013

On Friday: Speckled Beauties

Rooms and Doors

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Almost fifteen years ago our adult son moved back in with us while he went back to school. He stayed for seven years.

Living in a multi-generational household wasn’t easy, but we managed. It took humor, patience, and love. But when the humor ran dry, the patience wore thin, and the love felt tempered by irritation, it helped to have a room to go to and a door to slam.

I thought often about my ancestors during that time and fortified myself with the knowledge that if they could do it, so could I. There were almost always several generations living under the roof of the Hall farmhouse. Aaron built with this kind of living in mind. There were enough rooms to go around, and definitely enough doors to slam. The living room alone had nine doors, although until the 1930’s the one big room of my childhood had been divided into three smaller chambers.

Over the next few months I’ll take you on a tour of the house – a room here and a room there. I’ll begin with the room where my parents started their life together – the upstairs front bedroom.

My mother, Janet Hall, and my father, Charles Grantham Crump married in 1943. It made sense for them to move into the farmhouse with my grandparents while my father did his Coast Guard service during the war. It would be over two years before they had the time or the money to build their own house. In the photo below, my mother sits at her vanity table in the light-filled bedroom at the upstairs front of the farmhouse.

Janet Hall Crump, around 1942

After my birth in the middle of the winter of 1945, my parents brought me home from the hospital to this room. Surely it was cold there even with the clanking and hissing radiators doing their best work. There were no bathrooms on the second floor, just chamber pots under the beds for nighttime use. The switch for the upstairs hall light was at the bottom of the stairs, so an upstairs sleeper needed candles, or flashlights, or someone to turn the switch for them when they reached the top. Later, when I was older and spent occasional nights at the farm, it was my grandmother who did this for me, waiting until I got to the bedroom door and told her goodnight before she pushed the round black button that started the darkness.

It was in this same room in October 1969 that my husband and I, on an overnight visit to my grandmother, stayed awake long into the night in the big lumpy bed with the chamber pot underneath, trying to decide whether or not to go to Alaska. In a way, this was the start of our life together, because we decided to go north to build our own rooms and doors.

“Studio Door,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on panel, 2001

On Wednesday: Ginger Cookies

June Window

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June must have been a welcome month for my great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall. By 1921, when she wrote the second quote, she was spending her days in a wheelchair because of rheumatism. But she was also, by that time, surrounded by the busy life of a farmhouse with three young children in it. She patiently sat through her days, watching, trying to help a little, and observing.

“June Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, June 1, 1913 – “A very fine day – everything is lovely outside. The birds are especially fine around us with their sweet notes, which is very nice for those that are at home like myself. Should be lonely without them.”

Thursday, June 2, 1921 – A nice cool day when the sun shines clear and warm. Everything is beautiful, the fields are full of flowers, the roses and peonies are coming. Lydia [my mother’s sister] brings them in to show me. Soon the harvest will be here. How fast we are going on the wings of time!”

Decoration Day

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As you can see, this is not “The House that Aaron Built,” which I had promised today. That will appear on Wednesday instead.

It’s Memorial Day, and I want to mark it. It seems important on this day to pause and remember. The custom in our family was to go to the cemetery with flowers – not just for soldiers, but for all those we held dear. I admit to being a cemetery person. I like the quiet grounds and find it peaceful to visit the resting places of my ancestors. Here in Anchorage, because I’m so far away from the place where my own mother and father are buried, I’ll go today to the local cemetery and place a small bouquet of flowers on the graves of Bill and Frances – parents of a good friend. This cemetery in the middle of town is a busy place on Memorial Day. Families picnic near their loved ones, and visitors prune vegetation and place flags and flowers at the headstones.

In the early part of the twentieth century Memorial Day was always on May 30, and it was called “Decoration Day.”

My great-grandmother Lydia Hall wrote in her 1924 journal:

Friday, May 30 – “Pleasant. This is Decoration day. Agnes took the children in town to see the parade. They were too late. Very quiet for Wallingford. The decorations were very nice. I have been sitting out of doors for an hour this morning enjoying the sunshine and warm air. It is the first time I have been out since last fall.” – Lydia Jane Hall

For her “decorations,” my mother gathered flowers from the farm or from her own garden to make a patriotic bouquet. Red and white peonies and indigo blue baptisia were her blooms of choice, and under my mother’s skillful hands, they made a striking arrangement.

janet Hall Crump with Red Peonies

One year she painted this tiny watercolor of her bouquet. It hangs in an alcove in my house and greets me in the morning when I come downstairs to breakfast. Today when I see it I’ll pause, and remember, and thank her for this good life.

“Memorial Day Bouquet,” Janet Hall Crump, watercolor

On Wednesday: The House that Aaron Built

Violets – An Addendum

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Two weeks ago I wrote here about violets and about Mary E. Hart’s painting of violets. When I visited Whirlwind Hill recently I took a drive to Durham, Connecticut to visit the old cemetery in the town center. My mother loved this drive, and we went there together often to visit the Hart graves. My great-grandmother, Lydia, was a Hart, and her family had been long-time Durham residents.

So it seemed fitting that when I found Mary’s little grave marker, the grass surrounding it was full of violets.

Mary E. Hart’s grave stone with violets, May 2014

On Monday: The Letter

On Whirlwind Hill

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