Name/Title
Some Went This WayEntry/Object ID
2013.14.03Description
A Forty year Pilgrimage among artists, Bookmen and Printers written and published by Ralph Fletcher Seymour. A small segment of the book covers the area around OxBow in Saugatuck.
Green linen cover with black letteringContext
In 1945, Chicago artist and printmaker Ralph Fletcher Seymour published a book entitled Some Went This Way. In it he describes the art world of Chicago beginning about 1900, covering many of the artists who were important to the Saugatuck area.
First, he describes the general life in one of America's fastest growing cities.
"City life was undergoing radical changes. Thousands of strangers swarmed into them, who did not care for American institutions or standards. Cities became less attractive centers, life less pleasant and more complicated. Boulevards were jammed with automobiles, congested districts overflowed into one-time exclusive sections, continual din, ever present dirt and conglomerate associates for children influenced many to pick up and move elsewhere... Some of my friends went back to live with nature because they could not remain happy in the city."
He describes artist enclaves founded at the time including visits to Indiana with Frank Wilstach, a school by founded by Jens Jensen in the upper part of the Green Bay peninsula in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright at Talesien. Then he moves on to Michigan:
"There is yet another retreat and school, materialized by those who have been my friends. It lies on the big lake's eastern shore, just outside the village of Saugatauk [sic]. When I think of it I think of John Norton and Thomas Tallmadge, who did much to make it what it now is. Naturally attractive features surround the place. A few old pine trees an a hillside facing a wide and placid river, behind them many acres of forest, glade and ridge, great dunes of white sand, one or two of which are notable because they are so-called traveling dunes, and in their laps Goshorn Lake, and Lake Michigan beyond and miles of soft, clean sand beach on which long waves of surf glow and spend; a great marsh and a fabulous buried city, once the lumbering town of Singapore; all these are part of the lay-out into which Norton and Tallmadge moved many years ago, to build retreats for themselves and their friends. The Kalamazoo river makes a great bend around the spot where they located, cutting it away from the nearby town. this river is crossed by an ancient ferry with windlass and iron cable. On the top of a sand ridge stands an abandoned house in the wind swept rooms of which may still be founds a piano, kitchen dishes and even bedroom furnishing, it being to hard to lug them back into circulation. The Saugatauk Summer Art School hold forth at the place where Norton and Tallmadge built their cottages. Norton used to teach classes there, Tallmadge kept the school alive by diligent, zealous interest in its welfare. Francis Chapin is now its head instructor. About fifty boys and girls spend a few summer months in cottages or hot old hotel reams, finding out how to paint in the chapin way, making lithographs, modelling in wax or clay, swimming, going to night beach parties on the lake shore. Otta Schneider and I went there for our first visit in 1915, the summer after our return from France, as guests of Tom Tallmadge. Each succeeding summer until death removed first John Norton and then Tom Tallmadge this place was the summer home for these two and a week-end paradise for nee. John liked nothing better than to start a small fire, out under the pines, at dusk and sit before it until long into the night, talking on art, women and other mysteries. Friends came to this camp and school each summer. Among those counted on as "steadies" were Albert Shaver, Arthur Bissell, Eames McVeagh, Jarvis Hunt, Charles West, Harry Bigelow and Joseph Ryerson. I did not fail to get there two or three times each year until Tallmadge died in a railroad accident in the year 1940.
Back of their cottages in the forest glade called "The Temple" stand three large hemlock trees. 0n one is affixed a bronze plaque bearing this inscription
NATURE FIRST HE LOVED AND AFTER NATURE ART
This is in memory of John Norton, whose ashes are scattered there among the fee roots. On a second tree is a similar plaque in memory of Thomas Tallmadge and the third bears another in memory of Frederick Fursman, who was the head of the school for many years until his recent death. I have an interest in these plaques for John's was designed and modelled by me, Tom's was modelled by Marion Reed after my design; the third she both designed and modelled."
He ends his discussion of the artists and the back-to-nature movement:
"Thus artists come and go; the dance ends, the pen rusts, the worn brush is laid aside, the ideologies they helped form change; suddenly a new world, busier than any before, stands revealed. It seems to care not at all for past thoughts and deeds, on which, however, it is built. The dull arts, whose work has just recently been taken down from the permanent exhibition at the Art Museum, lives effectively in the understanding by which his modern successor produces just what the Doctor ordered for today's needs."
Some of the tall hemlock trees which formed the natural "temple" in the woods between Ox-Bow and the Kalamazoo River have, in the last ten years, succumbed to old age and weather and the plaques have been removed. What is left of The Temple is still a very special place.
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Source: SDHS newsletter, pages 501-502Collection
Biographies and personalities, 1910 Ox-Bow, ArtistsCataloged By
Voss, MaryAcquisition
Accession
2013.14Source or Donor
Yoder, ChrisAcquisition Method
DonationLexicon
Search Terms
Goshorn Lake, Lake Michigan, Kalamazoo River, Saugatuck Summer Art School, The Temple, Forest Glade in Tallmadge Woods, Ox-BowBook Details
Author
Seymour, Ralph Fletcher 1876-1966Publisher
Ralph Fletcher SeymourPlace Published
Location
Chicago, IllinoisDate Published
1945Call No.
709.2 SEYRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Seymour, Ralph Fletcher 1876-1966Person or Organization
Tallmadge, Thomas Eddy 1876-1940Person or Organization
Norton, John Warner 1876-1934Person or Organization
Shaw, AlbertPerson or Organization
Bissell, ArthurPerson or Organization
McVeagh, EamesPerson or Organization
Hunt, JarvisPerson or Organization
West, Charles Cameron 1877-1957Person or Organization
Bigelow, HarryPerson or Organization
Ryerson, Joseph T.Person or Organization
Fursman, Frederick Frary 1874-1943General Notes
Note
Status: OK
Status By: Mary Voss
Status Date: 2013-04-08Create Date
April 8, 2013Update Date
July 23, 2025
