Correspondence, 1914-1919: Artist Commissions and Sale of the House

Letter from William Gray Purcell to Maynard Dixon (November 2, 1915)

Dear Sir:-

I have been much interested in your work. It has an especial appeal, for you seem to be believing in the things that we believe in. Some reproductions of your work in a recent number of the "Studio" brought you again to my mind.

Mrs. Purcell and myself several years ago resolved each year to undertake a work with some artist whose ideals and accomplishments seemed to be significant to us.

We are not people of great means and for the first three years of our little experiment we were able to gather for this purpose only about one hundred and fifty dollars each year. We firmly believe, however, that is the artist, and this is certainly true of our own professional work, must wait for commissions from millionaires, there will be no art and no artists.

Our first venture was a study of the Chicago River. Old Mr. Fleury of the Art Institute, whom you doubtless know, has made studies of the Chicago River for many years past and we think we have the one which states its views most clearly.

The next year an obscure but earnest sculptor in Chicago, Richard Bock, a man probably of no remarkable talent but a man of delightful character who understands child life, captured for us the spirit of Selma Lagerlof's Little Nils and his Goose, and this forms the focal point of our family room. It is a sort of cubistic conception in some ways with a pretty strong emphasis on the flight movement of the goose and is most interesting.

Last year Mr. Charles Livingston Bull whom I came to know merely through seeing his work and writing to him as I am writing to you, came to Minneapolis and developed over our family hearth a decoration which is proving itself every day. We worked very closely with him in this, bringing the architectural treatment of the room into the field and bringing the decoration in turn well into the field and materials of the room. It is all very flat, full of fine, glowing color and a decoration in the true sense. I merely rehearse these details to indicate the nature of our program. As they years go by and we are prospered we expect to increase our fund for this purpose but we do not intend to depart from our fixed intention of making this matter not the mere purchase of an art work, but an intimate and personal matter with the artist himself. Incidentally we are using the process to help us grow into our home.

The Western country has always been fascinating to me. I got my first Western experience supervising the Unversity of California buildings for Mr. Howard and this fall we just missed going with Howard Eaton through the Arizona desert. We hope to go another time.

Now, I do not know whether the value which you will properly place upon such a performance, if you care to undertake it with me at all, would be such that we would find ourselves able to afford it this year or next, or not for several years to come, but sooner or later, I certainly would like to think about such an undertaking and would like to hear from you in regard to it.

I go to Chicago not infrequently. Possibly some time our paths might cross. Some errand might even bring you to Minneapolis now that our city is definitely awake to the fact that there is something called Modern Art in the world, and now that the fight to keep our new Art Museum from becoming a cold storage warehouse has definitely been won. I am sending you a copy of an architectural magazine [1] so that you will at least know as much as me from our work as the little I know of you from you own. Incidentally, you will find our own home illustrated on Plates 6, 7, 8, and 9, You will make proper allowance, I am sure, in looking at the impossible smudge which is supposed to represent the values of Mr. Bull's decoration. Little Nils had not arrived over the bookcases when the pictures were taken but another woods imp by Mr. Bock was sitting there for a while. In reading the letters which are published in this issue you may find something which may strike a responsive chord. These are the things, at any rate, that I seem to see in your work. 1. The Western Architect issue on Purcell, Feick, & Elmslie of January, 1913.

Well, this is just a little vibration out of the blue. Its potential you will be able to determine at once-- whether or not your receiver be keyed too taut to catch it.

Yours cordially, (W.P.)
 

research courtesy mark hammons