More than 90 Years of Age, the Artist Can be Found Today Among His Paints at His Cambridge Home—Oldest Living Member of the Boston Art Club.
The Boston Globe, March 19, 1905, p. 5
Transcription of the printed article; photographs and captions omitted.
At the corner of Cottage and Pleasant in Cambridge, there stands a gambrel-roofed house, white with green blinds, embowered in shrubs and vines. This picturesque little modest home partakes the character of the man who has occupied it for more than half a century—John W. A. Scott.
Who is he? Ask some painter of pictures whose memory of the members of his craft dates back a quarter of a century, and his reply will be very likely: “There was a John W. A. Scott, an artist, but he must have passed away, for he was an old man 25 years ago.”
The men who have grown up in the last two or three decades, who know more of French art and artists than American, would probably say they had never heard of him.
Now ring the bell of that modest little house that has the name “Scott” on the door and inquire if John W. A. Scott is at home. “Yes,” answers the kindly woman who appears, “he is in his study up one flight. Will you step up and see him? Knock a little loud on the door as he is slightly hard of hearing.”
You pass through a hall lined with pictures and up the stairs. You knock and you hear a cheery voice say: “Come in!” So you enter and are greeted by a delightful old gentleman, with silvery hair and beard.
He wears a long, dark painter’s coat. You are placed at ease at once. He is glad to see you. He is glad to see anybody who is interested in art.
Although it is evident at a glance that physically he is somewhat feeble, yet the marvel is that this man who is over 90 years of age should still pass the time in his studio surrounded by his pictures and his sketches—the walls are generally covered with them—and with paints, brushes and oils. Wonder increases when you hear the venerable John W. A. Scott talk—talk of the past, the dim past—for he clearly remembers the men and events of 75 or more years ago. His eyesight is good.
He can point out peculiarities in color and composition. You see the conscientious man in every scrap of his work. Several little bottles, filled with a yellow substance, hang at one of the windows, and you ask what these contain. “Oils,” he says, “that I’ve been testing in the light for some time.”
Those oils are the keynote to his character. Testing! Testing! He has never touched anything in the course of his long career that he hasn’t tested and tested.
Be it pigment or moral principle. A thing had to be right before he used it or adopted it. Ask him how he accounts for his longevity and you are not surprised to hear him speak of the same old elixir—hard work and right living.
Whatever he is or has been and whatever he knows in art or along other lines, he owes to himself. He has dug and dug. There is no vanity in the makeup of the man. He has studied nature in the early morning in the Catskills and in the White Mountains; he has studied her in the hazy noon and in the evening twilight. And he has never forgotten the topography of his landscapes.
The best proof of this lies in the hundreds of charming lead pencil sketches in delicate outline which he has in his studio. Each one of them is certain in touch and as expressive in the rendering of character, contour and distance as if it were filled in with color. These are gems. Neither Whistler, nor Turner, nor Seymour Haden did anything in pure outline any better than these clever sketches by John W. A. Scott. They tell the story of the man’s work perhaps even better than the finished pictures.
They are fundamental. They are the basis on which the superstructure rests. With a single sweep of line he can express 15 miles or more of distance: one mountain falls behind another, a lake in the middle distance, a stream or a road in the foreground, trees, rocks; all expressed in simple, subtle, vigorous outline.
There is no “niggling” about the line. It is strong and pure.
Like Abbey and many other American artists, John W. A. Scott is self-taught with the exception that in his early days he had some experience in lithographic shops. He went to work for Pendleton, the lithographer, when he was 15 years of age, in 1829, with the understanding that he was to learn the business from beginning to end. He was put to sweeping the floor, and at the close of a year he found himself little more than a drudge around the pressroom of the establishment.
So one fine evening he trudged out to his home in Roxbury and told his mother that he was not going back to work. He told her that he was not being treated right; that they showed no signs of advancing him beyond the pressroom. William S. Pendleton was an observant man, however, and he did not purpose to let this boy leave his employ. On the following Saturday night he called on John and his mother, and after much persuasion the lad was induced to sign a contract by which he was to remain with Pendleton until he was 21, and by which time Pendleton was to see that John had an opportunity to learn the entire business.
There were forfeits on both sides in this contract. John then got his first real insight into drawing and painting, although he saw little of the latter.
He formed an intimate acquaintance with a talented young man named Robert Cooke, who probably was the best draftsman of his day in the lithographic business in Boston. Cooke was also a good painter, and in his death in France in 1841 there is little doubt that American art suffered a great loss. He was just beginning to be known as a portrait painter in Paris at the time.
John W. A. Scott married this young man’s sister later. She died eight years ago. Four children are also dead. One of these, Francis, was a talented young artist.
Cooke and some of the other draftsmen in the lithographic shops had been to Fowler to find out if they were ever going to become Raphaels or Michael Angelos. Fowler satisfied them. They wanted John Scott to go, but he said he thought Fowler was a humbug. To prove it he went with Robert Cooke and some of the other men and in their presence Fowler got everything about John Scott “all wrong.” Among other things the phrenologist said young Scott couldn’t paint, and to refute this statement John painted his first picture.
Well, it was some 60 years ago when Scott decided to make painting a profession, and since then he has never once regretted the fact that he exchanged the lithographic pencil for the palette and brush.
What his struggles have been as far as the solving of the problems which confront every young artist are concerned, only he himself knows, but they have all been solved quietly and, often with much labor, in the recesses of his studio or in the solitude of the woods and mountains. He seems to have been particularly affected by the scenery of the White Mountains and the Catskills. He has painted hundreds of pictures there. He visited either one or the other of these places annually for years. He has painted considerably in Vermont and the section of Massachusetts around Cambridge.
Besides, he has painted some portraits, flower pieces and still life. His heart is and always has been in the “landscape,” in the mystery, the infinite variety of color and tone and the poetry of it. Here his spirit meets something akin to itself.
His work is scattered pretty much all over the United States. Occasionally Mr. Scott has exhibited at the Boston Art Club, of which he is the oldest living member, but not often.
John W. A. Scott has many artistic treasures in his little house other than his own paintings. He has some old masters—2 Rubens, for instance. This is a circle of cupids dancing, and the flesh on the little nude figures is richly painted.
He has a fine example of Rosa di Tivoli’s work and also of L. Charles Jean Lanfranc. There is a very fine portrait of the artist, when a young man, by Robert Cooke and one of Cooke by himself. In fact, the walls of the entire house are covered with treasures that are the accumulation of a lifetime, all selected with taste and judgment.
But after all the most wonderful thing in the house is John W. A. Scott himself, venerable, interesting, full of reminiscence, broad and catholic in his views on every subject and full of good will toward all men.
Source: The Boston Globe, March 19, 1905, p. 5. Transcription of the printed article; photographs and captions omitted.