Epilogue (A Shadow Falls on Beaverbrook #21)

Painting

-

The Art & History Museums of Maitland

Name/Title

Epilogue (A Shadow Falls on Beaverbrook #21)

Entry/Object ID

L1985.001.22

Type of Painting

Watercolor

Artwork Details

Series

A Shadow Fall on the Town of Beaverbrook

Context

"This series of watercolors was painted by Frank Besedick while he was at the Research Studio in Maitland, Florida as one of our resident artists. The accent being on presentation rather than merely exhibition, it became evident that the start of this dramatized gallery 'production' that it would be necessary to prepare a script or at least the thread of a story with which to hold together the series of pictures. And so I wrote A SHADOW FALLS ON THE TOWN OF BEAVERBROOK, and since this was to be a try-out in gallery drama I made it purposely a tragic story rather than just a nice travel and love story. Frank Besedick had spent some time in Connecticut and I knew that he had made a few watercolors, but better yet, I knew that he had filled a sketchbook with those imperative recordings that a keen observer makes for future reference: quick entries set down in a personal shorthand which is a combination of writing, drawing, and exaltation. it was, to this small book of impressions that we now turned for our subject matter, or rather for the setting of our show. And what followed is now before you, all the way from the cast of characters to the Final Curtain. And I need only add that the pictures should not be illustrative of the text but be the show itself, with the story running along with it as accompaniment, a ribbon of type that would offer the gallery visitor additional entertainment if he had the time or inclination to get out of the exhibition of the full measure of delight that the artist was offering him." - J. Andre Smith

Collection

Bok Fellows

Cataloged By

Katie Benson

Made/Created

Artist

Frank Besedick

Date made

1941

Intake

Loan In

L1985.001

Interpretative Labels

Label Type

Artist Commentary

Label

John Griswell was brought to trial in the old Courthouse in Beaverbrook. He was sentenced to death for killing Sheriff Norton. Before he died he admitted his romantic relationship to the "unknown woman" who had hung herself in the old mill after she had killed her sister Eliza in a quarrel over the man who had long ago forsaken them both in order to marry a woman of Beaverbrook, whose high standing in the village would allow John Griswell to shape his life anew.