Wallace Nutting...number 2 of my favorite artists....

"I am under no illusions as to my pictures. I am not an artist, and it is most disagreeable to me to be called one. I am a clergyman with a love of the beautiful."
Wallace Nutting, 1936

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Wallace Nutting is my second favorite artist. His artistry was with a camera.

My mind is always wandering down a new path. I always want to take a new way when I go some place. Years ago, the first pictures that I came across of Wallace Nutting's were just that, pictures of a path or road trailing off into a woods or along a river or creek. I felt them beckon me. I found myself wanting to hop into the picture and follow the path. I started to collect them.

His pictures also have brilliant patches of color in them...a sunrise of bright pink or sunset of deep scarlet, with vivid blue waters of a pond or stream. Just beautiful.

Wallace has aways been a favorite because of who he was. He used to stand in the church pew next to his mother, at the age of three, and preach out loud along with the minister giving the sermon. No amount of shhh-ing would hush him up. At eight he was giving sermons to his family members sitting in the parlor.
He was smart, talented, and driven. Wallace graduated from Harvard in 1883,with honors. He then moved to Maine to be a minister in a church in the middle of nowhere...much to his professors' disappointment.

Wallace loved nature and when he found time he would ride his bicycle around the countryside and take pictures. He loved old buildings and tried to educate people of their value to future generations.

He said, "America with its abundant materials every where for dwellings that might outlast the ages, will fail disgracefully unless she can learn that the monuments which are nearer than any other to feeding the heart and enshrining history, are old dwellings."

After reading that quote, my mind yelled, "So true!" My first trip to England was when I was a teenager, to learn about and see where I was born. I visited the church my parent's got married in. I took a picture of a sign in the side garden of the courtyard, it read "Watch out for Falling Bricks." The old chapel was built in the 1600's! I remember thinking, where I live they would have torn that wonderful old building down! Up with the new! In the United States the mentality is...new is always better. My eyes were opened to the many buildings that are being left to ruin, or torn down, with no value given to them for what they were, what architectural period they were built in, or what history the building represented to the community. I photograph old homesteads and barnyards and old buildings, and houses where ever I go. I feel the need to at least preserve them, even in a small way, for the memory of what once was. For his insight, and the passion that insight validated in me, I will always be grateful to Wallace Nutting.

Wallace died at his home in Framingham, MA in 1941, at age 79. Even though he was reluctant to be called an artist, he recorded America as it was. As it will never be again. He wanted people to have an appreciation for the beautiful. He labored more to develop character than monetary success. He was a remarkable man.

Wallace Nutting also write many books, and was an authority on American homes. A section of his photographs were dedicated to the colonial home life of early Americans. He had a hard time finding the right props for those pictures. He started making pieces of furniture for that purpose. He ended up with a furniture factory making reproduction period pieces and employing over 200 people! His furniture is highly collectible today. He was a business man of great wealth. That never changed him, he remained a humble man.