Frost Before Night, Harold Weston, 1939

8/30/12

Grant Awarded To St. Lawrence For Art Conservation

CANTON - The Richard F. Brush Art Gallery at St. Lawrence University has been awarded a grant of $2,904 from the Greater Hudson Heritage Network to conserve a painting in its permanent collection by Harold Weston.

The Greater Hudson Heritage Network awarded a total of $90,475.62 in conservation treatment grants to 21 organizations, located in 16 counties of New York, in association with the Museum Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), a state agency.

The gallery plans to have four Weston paintings conserved by West Lake Conservators in Skaneateles, N.Y. Weston (1894-1972) was an artist whose work captured the spirit of the Adirondack wilderness. The four Weston paintings are Frost Before Night (1939), Hidden Springs (1964), Haystack Winter (1922) and Night Splendor (1968). The grant will allow for the conservation of Frost Before Night, a gift from the artist in 1969 along with several other paintings and prints.

Depicting scenes of nature and the rugged wilderness of the Adirondack region, Weston's paintings in the gallery's permanent collection date from 1922 to 1968, spanning the artist's career. Weston was born the same year as the formation of the Adirondack Park, and he was a lifelong advocate of the "forever wild" principle to maintain "an uncontaminated environment on this good earth." His work has been collected and exhibited widely in the United States in such institutions as the Smithsonian, Yale University Art Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art. In addition to his success as an artist, Weston was active in national and statewide politics.