Ann Fortescue, executive director of the Springfield Museum of Art – the only art museum in Ohio that is a Smithsonian Affiliate – selected this month’s painting.
“William Sommer’s Horse-Drawn Cart in a Thunderstorm drew me in when I first saw it. When I look at the dark sky with the slashes of orange and yellow lightning and the slant of the man’s shoulder and those of the horses, I hear the sound of thunder, the squeal of the cart wheels and the feel of driving rain, whipped by the wind,” says Fortescue. “The motion in this painting is so powerful and so inviting. My eye jumps around at first glance – even now, after I’ve become familiar with the work – before slowing down to move over the details. Each time I look at the work, I discover something new. This time, it is the many colors in the hills behind the cart suggesting scrubby vegetation struggling to grow in rocky crevices.
“William Sommer painted this work about 1918, 10 years after starting the Kokoon Arts Club in Cleveland to promote modern art. He learned about the work of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists like Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh from friends and colleagues who had traveled to Europe. He moved to Brandywine, Ohio, where he set up a studio to focus on painting and, by the late 1920s, painted primarily in watercolors. Horse-Drawn Cart in a Thunderstorm is in the Springfield Museum of Art’s permanent collection, a museum purchase in 2001 made possible with funding from the Turner Foundation.”
Sommer (1867-1949) was a leading artist of the Cleveland School who, along with Henry Keller and Charles Burchfield, popularized watercolor as a serious medium for modernist artists. Like the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Springfield Museum has a long tradition of supporting regional artists.
This fall, it will feature Recent Work: The Art of Larry Shinneman – Shinneman is a well-known Columbus artist and teacher – and Painting Ohio’s Prairies: The 2014 Ohio Plein Air Society Exhibition.
Nationally renowned local artist Michael McEwan teaches painting and drawing classes at his Clintonville area studio.
