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Discovering a Forgotten Folk Artist at the Independence Seaport Museum
15 Plays1 year ago
In Part 1 of a special two-part podcast, Curious Objects’ host Benjamin Miller speaks with Peter Siebert, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum about a folk art watercolor from the late 1700s that’s been the subject of a major research project. Called Navigation Lesson, the painting is believed to depict the artist, Cornelius van Buskirk, receiving instruction from Commodore John Barry (1745-1803), the man regarded as the father of the United States Navy.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
This is the podcast about art, decorative arts, and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
00:00:23
Speaker
What is it about the age of sale that is so damn enticing?
00:00:29
Speaker
I don't know about you, but if I hear five seconds of a sea shanty, I'm just there.
00:00:34
Speaker
I'm smelling brine, I'm feeling the salt spray on my face, I'm probably wearing a tricorn or I'm climbing the crow's nest, or because I'm a decorative arts nerd, I am etching scrimshaw on a walrus tusk or a coconut shell, or I'm whittling some woodwork, or maybe on a bad day, I'm assembling a Napoleonic prisoner of war ship bottle.
00:00:58
Speaker
The point is, it's a historic moment and a historic setting that is so sensory and visceral and that so captures the imagination.
The Age of Sail and Decorative Arts
00:01:09
Speaker
And part of that is the sense of adventure, the exploration and global travel and trade.
00:01:14
Speaker
And then part of it is the actual sailing, the maps and reckoning and sextants and spy scopes and, you know, the risk taking of it all, that sense that you will run into problems and solving those problems might be the difference between living and drowning.
00:01:32
Speaker
And because I am a decorative arts nerd, and maybe you are too, I love the objects and the works of art that make me feel those feelings.
00:01:41
Speaker
And I'm pleased to report that I have found a place full of these evocative things.
Partnership with Independence Seaport Museum
00:01:47
Speaker
It's called the Independence Seaport Museum.
00:01:50
Speaker
And I'm sitting in their offices right now.
00:01:52
Speaker
We're in Philadelphia, right on the Delaware River.
00:01:56
Speaker
And it's actually important that it's on the river because they have two actual ships that you can visit alongside everything else.
00:02:04
Speaker
I am so pleased to be partnering with the ISM to bring you two episodes about two remarkable pieces in their collection.
00:02:11
Speaker
One is a book of flag signals that is going to take us on a wild ride through the American Revolution and one of its most famous admirals and the critical importance and huge difficulty of communicating between ships across the sea.
00:02:26
Speaker
We'll get to that one next week.
00:02:28
Speaker
But for this week, our curious object is a watercolor that was recently the subject of a major research breakthrough.
00:02:37
Speaker
And
Interview with Peter Siebert
00:02:38
Speaker
it's going to introduce us to a mysterious folk artist who also knew his way around a ship.
00:02:44
Speaker
And it reveals a fascinating relationship that he had with his mentor, who just happened to be the father of the US Navy.
00:02:53
Speaker
Joining me is ISM president and CEO, Peter Siebert.
00:02:57
Speaker
Peter, welcome to Curious Objects.
00:02:59
Speaker
PETER SIBERTT, Thanks for having me.
00:03:00
Speaker
Welcome to Philadelphia.
00:03:01
Speaker
PETER SIBERTT, Thank you very much.
00:03:02
Speaker
Now, are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
00:03:04
Speaker
PETER SIBERTT, I am ready.
00:03:05
Speaker
I've had three cheese steaks, so I am stoked.
00:03:07
Speaker
PETER SIBERTT, You're in the mood.
00:03:08
Speaker
OK.
00:03:10
Speaker
How's your pirate accent?
00:03:11
Speaker
PETER SIBERTT, Arrgh, I'm not sure maybe how it is today.
00:03:13
Speaker
PETER SIBERTT, God.
00:03:15
Speaker
Wow, that was so much better than I was expecting.
00:03:17
Speaker
What's your favorite sea shanty?
00:03:20
Speaker
I'm dang nabbit.
00:03:21
Speaker
I don't have one because I'm sort of more of an Aerosmith guy than a Sea Shandy guy.
00:03:25
Speaker
Well, after that pirate accident, I was really expecting you to break out.
00:03:27
Speaker
I know.
00:03:28
Speaker
I was going to break out, and I've had people who do it, but, you know, I just, it never was quite my cup of tea.
00:03:34
Speaker
I can't carry a tune.
00:03:36
Speaker
I can't carry a log.
00:03:37
Speaker
I can't carry anything.
00:03:39
Speaker
Okay, you're gonna have to practice that and get back to this.
00:03:41
Speaker
I will work on it.
00:03:42
Speaker
What's the oldest object that you personally own?
00:03:44
Speaker
The oldest object in my own collection, so I collect ancient coins, so I'm going back to definitely some BC stuff, which is pretty cool.
00:03:54
Speaker
That was like the earliest thing I started to collect, you know, when I went through the phases of stamps, coins, Indian stuff, and then, you know, got to college and had to figure out how to furnish an apartment.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, we've all been there.
00:04:05
Speaker
So you can travel back in time to take a ride on any historic ship.
00:04:10
Speaker
What are you choosing?
00:04:11
Speaker
I think I'd want to be there with John Smith coming up the Susquehanna River and exploring Pennsylvania.
00:04:19
Speaker
You know, because Smith, you know, he comes up, he arrives in Pennsylvania, he's wandering and then he goes back to England and he writes this book which was so all about selling books.
00:04:28
Speaker
You know, the Indians are six feet tall, they are 16 feet tall, they have calves that are 36 inches in diameter.
00:04:36
Speaker
I'd like to see what he actually saw.
00:04:38
Speaker
I think that's what I want to see.
00:04:40
Speaker
Plus, it would have been very, very cool to see all the areas that now are so developed that would have been pristine forest, which here in the East, there just aren't a whole lot of those places left.
00:04:52
Speaker
The ISM actually owns the World War II submarine, the Bakuna.
00:04:57
Speaker
Am I saying that right?
00:04:58
Speaker
That is right.
00:04:59
Speaker
On a scale of one to 10, how much would you hate to be part of that crew?
00:05:03
Speaker
With 10 being like...
00:05:05
Speaker
Like which one?
00:05:06
Speaker
The worst.
00:05:06
Speaker
10 is the worst.
00:05:07
Speaker
You would hate it the most.
00:05:08
Speaker
Okay, so I'd be a 35 on that scale of 1 to 10.
00:05:12
Speaker
Definitely not.
00:05:14
Speaker
You know, I've been in a lot of those World War II submarines, and I have to admire the folks.
00:05:19
Speaker
They definitely have the temperament.
00:05:22
Speaker
I'm not claustrophobic until I get into that submarine.
00:05:25
Speaker
And then I think like most people, I'm like, yeah, get me the hell out of here.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, I know what you mean.
00:05:30
Speaker
So let's say you've just commissioned a spiffy new galleon to sail the high seas.
00:05:36
Speaker
What figurehead are you going to put on the prowl?
00:05:38
Speaker
Oh, I would have to like steal the one from the museum that we just had restored because we spent so much time restoring her.
00:05:44
Speaker
I feel like I know her inside and out.
00:05:46
Speaker
Don't let my wife hear me say that.
00:05:49
Speaker
But Mary is her name and she's just magnificent.
00:05:53
Speaker
Sort of 1820s, the wind is blowing through her hair, pushing back her dress, not in an immodest way, just in a...
00:06:01
Speaker
sailing kind of way.
00:06:03
Speaker
And a very, very cool ship's figurehead.
00:06:05
Speaker
So, Mary, done by William Rush, I'd steal from the museum and no one would ever notice.
00:06:11
Speaker
Our curator, I just pretended to tell him, I borrowed it for the weekend and that's who we'd put on.
00:06:16
Speaker
That's too bad.
00:06:17
Speaker
We just got you on record.
00:06:19
Speaker
What is the best movie about the age of sail and why is it Master and Commander?
00:06:24
Speaker
Oh, it is Master Commander.
00:06:25
Speaker
You can't stop.
00:06:26
Speaker
There's no contest, right?
00:06:27
Speaker
No contest.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's the coolest movie.
00:06:31
Speaker
It really is.
00:06:32
Speaker
I mean, it's well shot and, you know, you get that sense of the unknown.
00:06:38
Speaker
And what I liked about it actually was, is it sort of showed the unknown aspects of sailing.
00:06:43
Speaker
You know, the older movies, it's amazing how fast you go, never accounting for dead wind or dead space.
00:06:50
Speaker
And that movie really catches that really, really well.
00:06:53
Speaker
I mean, it was either that or like Pirates of the Caribbean.
00:06:56
Speaker
And I went from Astro Commander, so, you know.
00:06:59
Speaker
Nice choice.
00:07:00
Speaker
How historically accurate is that movie overall?
00:07:02
Speaker
I think it's pretty accurate.
00:07:04
Speaker
I mean, I'm not a scholar of that time period, but my sense is that it's pretty darn good.
00:07:11
Speaker
And...
00:07:12
Speaker
I find it, as I say, it's one of those ones you can watch over and over again.
00:07:17
Speaker
You know, if I'm needing it to watch on YouTube, I could just pull it up because it definitely is a good one.
00:07:23
Speaker
And it is funny because you ask people the question, you know, what's the movie?
00:07:26
Speaker
That is the one they remember more than anything else.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, I bet.
00:07:30
Speaker
It's so visceral.
00:07:31
Speaker
What piece in the Seaport Museum's collection would you say visitors are most surprised by?
00:07:39
Speaker
That's actually a really interesting question because I think our mission has evolved over the years so many different ways that when they come in and they see some of the things we have in general, and I'll hone it down from there, but they just assume, oh, you're a boat museum.
00:07:53
Speaker
Oh, you're a museum of ships of the world.
00:07:56
Speaker
And then they come in and they'll see, for example, downstairs this tin figure that looks like the tin man from The Wizard of Oz.
00:08:05
Speaker
And it's, where did that come from?
00:08:07
Speaker
And then there's a bicycle not far from, where'd that come from?
00:08:09
Speaker
Both of them came from the Philadelphia Navy shipyard, which was a huge employer here, built many, many important ships over time.
00:08:19
Speaker
The Tin Man was made by the workers there for a kind of a family worker Sunday
00:08:26
Speaker
to do to show what their families, what they could do.
00:08:29
Speaker
It's very cool.
00:08:30
Speaker
The bicycle is because the place is so freaking huge.
00:08:33
Speaker
They have bicycles to get around and they made them available to their workers.
00:08:38
Speaker
So, hey, I got to get over that building, hop on the company bike and get over there.
00:08:42
Speaker
Both of those things speak to the stories that we tell here, but in completely atypical of what people think they might see here.
00:08:54
Speaker
We'll be right back with Peter Siebert and the Independent Seaport Museum, which, by the way, has just opened a brand new entrance and a major redesign.
Listener Engagement and Podcast Growth
00:09:01
Speaker
So even if you've been here before, this might be a great time to go back.
00:09:05
Speaker
If you'd like to see images of today's curious object, which I know you do, you can see those at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:09:13
Speaker
If there's something you'd like to tell me about today's episode or a topic you'd like to hear about on Curious Objects, or just say hi, you can reach me at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:09:27
Speaker
I always love to hear from you.
00:09:29
Speaker
And I know you've heard me say this a million times, but I'll say it again because it really does help me out when you, dear listener, open up your podcast app and go to the Curious Objects podcast page and then go to ratings and reviews and give us one.
00:09:43
Speaker
Those ratings are what tells the algorithm that people like the show and that it should nudge more people to listen to it.
00:09:49
Speaker
So it really only takes a few seconds and you will receive my eternal gratitude, which I think is a pretty good deal.
00:10:01
Speaker
Now, Peter, we are talking today about a watercolor.
00:10:05
Speaker
It
Analysis of a Newly Discovered Watercolor
00:10:06
Speaker
is about 16 by 24 inches.
00:10:08
Speaker
There's a lot going on in this picture, but tell me, just looking at this before we get into the discoveries that your staff has made, what do you see?
00:10:18
Speaker
Well, it's fascinating.
00:10:19
Speaker
The first time that I saw it, it looked like one of those wonderful New England watercolors you see of the husband and wife seated on a painted floor covering with a window and a pot of geranium.
00:10:34
Speaker
You know, Davis was the big artist who did all those.
00:10:37
Speaker
And it struck me that bit, except it sort of took a lot of steroids because it's very large.
00:10:43
Speaker
And there's a whole lot more going on in here than you've seen.
00:10:47
Speaker
And then you look at the profile and you think, well, maybe it's this whole tradition of watercolor profiles.
00:10:54
Speaker
But again, it's kind of over the top because you have two men holding maritime instruments.
00:11:01
Speaker
One seated, the other one standing, gesturing with it.
00:11:05
Speaker
Behind them, you know, is a pair of globes.
00:11:08
Speaker
And then you've got the artist who is clearly showing off.
00:11:11
Speaker
I mean, there's no two ways about it.
00:11:13
Speaker
He's got an open window with a little landscape out the window and then he's got two paintings on the wall and he's depicted both of those, the scenes in both of those of a maritime scene.
00:11:24
Speaker
So, you know, it's clearly an artist who
00:11:28
Speaker
wasn't just gonna do, I'm gonna catch the moment and that's all that's gonna be a very literal work.
00:11:33
Speaker
It was somebody who was definitely taking it up a couple of notches and saying, hey, I've got some artistic talent here.
00:11:42
Speaker
It's one of those ones that all the folks who write books about interiors will love because it's got a great painted floor.
00:11:49
Speaker
It's got Windsor chairs.
00:11:51
Speaker
It's got curtain details.
00:11:52
Speaker
It's got all those things that, you know, you want to do an 1820s house.
00:11:57
Speaker
This is, you know, this is the one to address.
00:12:01
Speaker
But it's a fascinating work.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, personally, I love a painting within a painting.
00:12:08
Speaker
Any kind of meta art, it just hits my buttons.
00:12:12
Speaker
But stylistically, at first glance, it might look, as you say, a little crude, sort of very, very folksy, but the devil is in the details.
00:12:22
Speaker
And as you look closer, you see the globes that you mentioned, which one of them is a globe of the earth, and one of them is a globe of the heavens, and the paintings on the walls.
00:12:32
Speaker
I mean, it's really a lot more sophisticated as you get into it, as you look at it more and more closely.
00:12:39
Speaker
So, I mean, how would you overall describe the style and the level of skill and quality that went into the production of the piece?
00:12:47
Speaker
Well, you're absolutely right.
00:12:47
Speaker
I mean, the composition is very well put together.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yes, I mean, as many of these sort of, you know, works are, it's a study of symmetry.
00:12:58
Speaker
You know, got to have it on the left, we'll have it on the right.
00:13:00
Speaker
You know, that is so inherent in painting of that period.
00:13:07
Speaker
What to me is really striking about it, beyond the incredible level of detail that's included in it, is the figures are engaged in action.
00:13:17
Speaker
You know, it's not like Jacob Mantell here in Pennsylvania,
00:13:21
Speaker
Mantell almost always had their hands in their pockets or behind their backs or sort of dangling loosely.
00:13:26
Speaker
Here you've got people gesturing and doing something.
00:13:29
Speaker
So there's some action that's brought into the composition, which I think makes it again, that and the scale really, I think are the two things that caught me the most when I first observed it, because it was very different and it's different both from New England and mid-Atlantic painting in the sense that it is not quite so rigid.
00:13:52
Speaker
You see a Davis, you see a Mantell, you can kind of pretty much pick them out.
00:13:57
Speaker
Here's one that you say, and then I guess this is always the question that haunts one,
00:14:04
Speaker
it's technically very good.
00:14:05
Speaker
So is this, and he's showing off.
00:14:07
Speaker
So is this the only one he ever did or are there others out there to be discovered?
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, so we're going to get into that later because I think that's such a tantalizing question.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I want to start to tease out a little bit of the process of discovery that's occurred around this picture because it's really fascinating.
00:14:26
Speaker
There's a reason that we're talking about it today and it's not just because it's a pretty picture.
00:14:30
Speaker
It's because there's a story behind it.
00:14:33
Speaker
And just to start to whet our appetite a little bit, tell us, you said that these two figures are engaged in action.
00:14:40
Speaker
What kind of action is it?
00:14:42
Speaker
So what it appears to be is that the seated figure and the standing figure, so they're two of them sort of facing each other, are engaged in some sort of
00:14:56
Speaker
what we believe is teaching.
00:14:59
Speaker
One is teaching the other one, and they're holding these mathematical instruments that are used for ocean navigation.
00:15:07
Speaker
You know, ocean navigation is an art and a science, and it's not one that,
00:15:13
Speaker
you don't want to take seriously because it's a big empty out there with not a lot of landmarks and hoping you'll see the mountains soon is probably not the best way to navigate.
00:15:22
Speaker
And so you really need to know what you're doing and you need to study that.
00:15:27
Speaker
And so you have these two figures, one clearly engaged in teaching the other one about what these devices are.
00:15:36
Speaker
And obviously, we know when you see, you know, in paintings of this period, someone shown with an object that represents their profession, it's intended to point out to you, this is a blacksmith, a butcher, you know, whatever it is, they're holding that tool of their trade.
00:15:53
Speaker
Here, you've got two of them, each of them holding a mathematical, you know, scientific instrument.
00:15:59
Speaker
that was part of their trade.
00:16:00
Speaker
So, it's revealing to us when you look at it what their jobs were, but it also very much of the positioning of it suggests that one is the older is probably teaching the younger what the heck these things are and why you need to know that.
00:16:16
Speaker
So the piece was actually just given to the ISM a few months ago.
00:16:20
Speaker
And your researchers went straight to work trying to understand the context behind it.
00:16:25
Speaker
But there was actually a clue.
00:16:27
Speaker
There was something else that the museum already had in its collection since 1984 that helped to get the ball rolling.
00:16:34
Speaker
What was that?
00:16:35
Speaker
Well,
Reuniting a Manuscript Book with Watercolor Drawings
00:16:35
Speaker
and this is such the story of collecting antiques and museums.
00:16:41
Speaker
The family had donated in the past this manuscript book, but they had removed the watercolor drawings that were in it.
00:16:51
Speaker
And
00:16:52
Speaker
I applaud them for wanting to reunite them.
00:16:54
Speaker
That is wonderful.
00:16:56
Speaker
I think everyone knows stories of pieces that were split up and one ends up one place and one ends up the other and they are never back together.
00:17:05
Speaker
In this case, we had a book that was very filled with mathematical calculations and practice.
00:17:14
Speaker
So, it suggested that whoever had the book and had kept the book was involved somehow in
00:17:23
Speaker
learning maritime navigation because he was practicing all of this and he was recording it as it happened.
00:17:30
Speaker
And we know that that's how people learned.
00:17:32
Speaker
It was a matter of copying and recopying and rote memorization in a lot of cases.
00:17:38
Speaker
So we had the clue, obviously, that whoever had that book
00:17:45
Speaker
and made those things probably was the student in the watercolor drawing.
00:17:51
Speaker
Because obviously, it seems to make some sense.
00:17:54
Speaker
It could have belonged to the teacher, but more than likely, it belonged to the student.
00:18:00
Speaker
And the timetable of the dates that were in the book certainly seemed to suggest that they blended very, very well.
00:18:08
Speaker
That, yeah, the young one in the watercolor and the keeper of the book were watercolors.
00:18:17
Speaker
When did making plans get this complicated?
00:18:20
Speaker
It's time to streamline with WhatsApp.
00:18:23
Speaker
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00:18:26
Speaker
Use polls to settle dinner plans.
00:18:28
Speaker
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00:18:33
Speaker
And never miss a meme or milestone.
00:18:35
Speaker
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00:18:37
Speaker
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00:18:39
Speaker
Message privately with everyone.
00:18:40
Speaker
Learn more at whatsapp.com.
00:18:43
Speaker
on in the same person.
00:18:43
Speaker
Right.
Identifying Figures in the Watercolor Painting
00:18:44
Speaker
And now there's another really important clue in this picture, which I've unfairly withheld from listeners until now, which is that the figures each are labeled with a name.
00:18:57
Speaker
And the older one who's seated is labeled I-Barry.
00:19:01
Speaker
And then the younger one standing up
00:19:03
Speaker
is labeled C. Buskirk.
00:19:06
Speaker
And that is a very tantalizing clue, but anyone who's tried to do genealogy or really any kind of historical research knows that tying a historic name to a particular person can be really tough.
00:19:17
Speaker
So can you talk me through that process for I, Barry, and C. Buskirk?
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, so the Buskirk one was the slightly easier of the two because it's a unique name.
00:19:28
Speaker
And we've seen it as Buskirk and Van Buskirk.
00:19:31
Speaker
So we know we have a Dutch link and we have ties up into New York and New England with that family.
00:19:39
Speaker
He's a little enigmatic because he seems to pop up there, pop up in Pennsylvania.
00:19:46
Speaker
And then at least one source places him in the hinterlands.
00:19:50
Speaker
So perhaps this wasn't his cup of tea, or maybe there's another one.
00:19:54
Speaker
And that's always the challenge when you do this kind of work, because there could be a father, a son, a cousin.
00:20:01
Speaker
You know, our ancestors had this
00:20:03
Speaker
unfortunate propensity for naming each other and carrying on these blooming family names.
00:20:09
Speaker
So, but Van Buskirk of Buskirk seems to be the owner and probably more than likely the artist because it matches up with the book and these watercolors were in the book.
00:20:24
Speaker
the I. Barry a little more complicated, but clearly the reference would be that the I is in fact a J, and we see of course an interchange of those two letters, and that would be J. Barry, more than likely John Barry, the father of the US Navy from here in Philadelphia.
00:20:45
Speaker
And our curator had noted, in fact, that Barry had, was recorded as having a rather ruddy complexion.
00:20:52
Speaker
In fact, a portrait of Barry hangs in my office.
00:20:55
Speaker
He and I chat a lot.
00:20:57
Speaker
And, you know, the watercolor figure now, maybe a little artistic-like, it's hard to say.
00:21:03
Speaker
Does seem to have a ruddy complexion as well.
00:21:06
Speaker
Barry was tall.
00:21:07
Speaker
He's the figure seated, so that doesn't help us a whole lot.
00:21:10
Speaker
But certainly,
00:21:12
Speaker
Barry had a knowledge of sailing.
00:21:16
Speaker
And the question then becomes, was Barry... What was Barry doing?
00:21:22
Speaker
Was this...
00:21:26
Speaker
his side gig.
00:21:26
Speaker
Today we all talk about side gigs.
00:21:29
Speaker
Was this a side gig in his time?
00:21:31
Speaker
Certainly there seems to be a lot of evidence.
00:21:34
Speaker
We can't find anything within Barry's writings, but Barry's writings are mostly his military and business writings, not necessarily anything about his side gigs.
00:21:44
Speaker
So I'm not...
00:21:46
Speaker
I don't think that's a negative that necessarily takes it away that he doesn't write about it.
00:21:51
Speaker
But certainly there's precedent that we see many of these, particularly military leaders, around the time of the revolution or right afterwards, kind of looking to pick up that side work.
00:22:02
Speaker
And so we suspect that Barry may have been teaching in his home, and that's the presumption, as this is Barry's home here in Philadelphia, teaching Buskirk or Van Buskirk
00:22:14
Speaker
the art and the science of maritime navigation.
00:22:18
Speaker
And that's pretty cool.
00:22:20
Speaker
That is very cool.
00:22:21
Speaker
And I'm so curious.
00:22:22
Speaker
So it's circumstantial evidence, of course, that we've been talking about.
00:22:26
Speaker
There wasn't necessarily the silver bullet where you discovered instantaneously this is who this was.
00:22:33
Speaker
Right.
00:22:33
Speaker
But this is how it often goes with historic research.
00:22:36
Speaker
You build up the case one bit at a time and gradually the picture starts to become clearer.
00:22:41
Speaker
And I wonder what the feeling was for you and the researchers here at the ISM as that started to come into focus, as you started to have a theory at least about who these people were.
00:22:52
Speaker
Well, you're absolutely right.
00:22:54
Speaker
I mean, it's why I joke to students sometimes they call it re-search because we're constantly going back and searching over and over and over and trying to, you know, peel it away.
00:23:06
Speaker
Or someone once said, you know, the study of the past is to look through a very dirty, cracked telescope.
00:23:12
Speaker
and some fleeting images and hope that those turn out to be... that what you're seeing is actually, you know, the reality of the moment, and you only see it through that narrow lens of the optic.
00:23:23
Speaker
And I think in this case, you know,
00:23:27
Speaker
The leap didn't take too far to realize that this was probably, I mean, obviously the name, this is Buskirk learning to do maritime navigation.
00:23:37
Speaker
That didn't take a bit of a leap.
00:23:39
Speaker
I think the bigger leap is, you know, John Barry and then John Barry, the father of the Navy, got a side gig teaching the art and mystery of
00:23:50
Speaker
maritime navigation.
00:23:52
Speaker
And I think it comes down to, as you noted, making some assumptions about how that was, how few people there were who were skilled in this, and even how a smaller number could actually teach it.
John Barry's Contributions to the U.S. Navy
00:24:06
Speaker
You know, that's the thing.
00:24:07
Speaker
Well, he knows how to do it, but can he teach it?
00:24:09
Speaker
And I think in Barry's case, he had that ability to do so.
00:24:13
Speaker
And then it gives us this amazing sense of Barry's home.
00:24:17
Speaker
And I mean, it makes sense for a man of the sea to have the celestial and the sky and the earth globes and to have paintings of maritime scenes.
00:24:28
Speaker
All of that makes perfect sense then for him.
00:24:31
Speaker
And so assuming that it is John Barry, I mean, how did he go on to become the father of the US Navy?
00:24:36
Speaker
in the sense that his involvement really was in those years of the time of the revolution and just after trying to create a fledgling United States Navy, trying, recognizing that we were up against and would continue to be facing perils on the sea and that we were facing the greatest naval power that the world had ever known.
00:24:59
Speaker
And so, you know, he is charged with developing a fleet that ultimately would become the modern U.S. Navy.
00:25:07
Speaker
So in the scene, in the picture, you've mentioned the tools that they're holding, the fact that they're seemingly engaged in what might be a lesson.
00:25:16
Speaker
Tell me a little more about the situation, these tools, this lesson.
00:25:21
Speaker
Can this tell us something about the state of the nautical sciences in the 18th century?
00:25:27
Speaker
I'd love to say absolutely, but I don't think so because I'm not sure the technology, frankly, had evolved that much and won't evolve that much until really the 19th century.
00:25:38
Speaker
These are the same tools that had been used in many cases in the 17th century and arguably earlier than that, where you're simply relying upon the sun, the stars, a watch,
00:25:54
Speaker
charts and so forth to get you from point A to point B. That really doesn't change a whole heck of a lot over time and really, you know, arguably until modern GPS and other
00:26:11
Speaker
devices, and even people today who still study this, still study that same way of getting around, because they know they can be out there and lose that signal.
00:26:20
Speaker
So it's one of those, to my mind, I think the maritime skills are one of those things that will always have that relevancy, because one cannot assume that
00:26:31
Speaker
modern technology will completely replace it.
00:26:35
Speaker
So most modern sailors might not be familiar with those, you know, the tools for shooting the sun and shooting the stars to determine your place, but they would have some sense of all of that and would have some knowledge of maritime navigation.
00:26:52
Speaker
So even if they're not familiar with those specific tools, they might understand the general idea.
00:26:56
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:26:58
Speaker
And I think that's an important part.
00:27:01
Speaker
One of the fascinating things is there was a, you know, Philadelphia in the 18th century, it's been sort of reported, and I have no reason to believe it's not, that it was the largest city outside of London in the British Empire.
00:27:13
Speaker
We had maritime instrument makers here who were cranking out the tools to supply to the ships that were being built here and to the fledgling, you know,
00:27:25
Speaker
navigational officers and captains like Van Buskirk or like John Barry or like the US Navy.
00:27:33
Speaker
They were supplying all of that.
00:27:34
Speaker
And that was part of Philadelphia's really big link to the outside world is this was a good place to come and get those tools.
00:27:44
Speaker
So one of the really exciting things about this picture is that it's sort of the discovery of a new artist.
00:27:50
Speaker
Buskirk is not somebody who's sort of well recorded and explored in the annals of folk art history.
00:27:57
Speaker
And now here we have this picture that is so interesting, so detailed, that is a demonstration of a considerable degree of skill.
00:28:05
Speaker
I mean, what is this picture telling us about Buskirk as an artist, about his abilities, his interests?
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is the part that I have to confess that I struggle with sometimes because there's a lot of technical skill for a quote unquote folksy watercolor that's going on here.
00:28:27
Speaker
And there's always the argument is, is it folk art or just really bad art?
00:28:33
Speaker
You know, and I think we've all seen paintings where just go, yeah, that one, that wasn't just hit with the ugly stick, it was hit with the whole ugly forest.
00:28:41
Speaker
You know, this is really a work that's got some complexity to it.
00:28:46
Speaker
And it's got those show off pieces that a trained artist would put into it.
00:28:50
Speaker
And that's the piece that makes me scratch my head about it.
00:28:53
Speaker
Because...
00:28:56
Speaker
It does not seem to relate to other known works, but I can't look out there and find 20 others like this.
00:29:04
Speaker
And so, did he have training and did this?
00:29:08
Speaker
And then this was his masterpiece, never did another one.
00:29:12
Speaker
There's an accompanying watercolor of a ship that's pretty
00:29:16
Speaker
pretty straightforward.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's the kind of thing that would turn up at any auction in the Mid-Atlantic or New England and people go, oh, nice folksy ship watercolor, and not think much of it because it's a broadside view of the ship, not particularly complicated.
00:29:32
Speaker
This one as an interior is definitely head and shoulders far more complex.
00:29:39
Speaker
And so the question is, where are the others?
00:29:44
Speaker
Or is it that old adage that's talked about, did he just have one in him?
00:29:48
Speaker
You know, and after that.
00:29:50
Speaker
Exactly.
00:29:52
Speaker
Maybe.
00:29:54
Speaker
I go back and forth like in my own tennis court of my brain of wondering whether that's the case or someday, you know, we'll walk in that door, another one, and we'll make us all rethink it all.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:07
Speaker
So, okay.
00:30:08
Speaker
Dollars to donut.
00:30:09
Speaker
I mean, you've got to put your money on one side or the other.
00:30:12
Speaker
Are other Buscourt paintings going to come to light?
00:30:15
Speaker
Are they going to appear?
00:30:16
Speaker
I think there has to be only because
00:30:21
Speaker
he's technically showing off so much, it means he had some training and he knew that aspect of painters, you know, where we've seen portraits and they do a big landscape in the background, where they do a still life in the foreground of a bunch of fruit next to it.
00:30:37
Speaker
And you know they're just showing off, you know, because they want to show off their technical skill.
00:30:42
Speaker
Hey, I can do something more besides portraiture, I can do landscape, I can do still life, you know.
00:30:48
Speaker
It's relatable.
00:30:49
Speaker
And you know, so if that,
00:30:53
Speaker
accepting that as a truism, then there has to be others out there, because he just didn't spring full blown into doing this.
00:31:02
Speaker
Did he do all of these and kept them himself when they were destroyed in a tragic fire?
00:31:06
Speaker
Maybe.
00:31:06
Speaker
Or are they sitting out there in somebody's attic?
00:31:10
Speaker
And there's been great, this work has been known for a number of years.
00:31:14
Speaker
There have been folks who've cited it, the family allowed it to be seen, and it's been a head scratcher from day one.
00:31:23
Speaker
And only as antiquarians and curators and museum geeks and collectors can be, we fixated on the little details going, ah, this can't be any earlier than this, or can't be any later than this, and you go, but step back and see that this is a complex, large work, not just a Sunday painter who's taken a swipe at it and moving on to doing something else.
00:31:50
Speaker
that would presuppose there are others out there.
00:31:52
Speaker
And I'm very comfortable with saying this is Van Buskirk, I think it's coming out of his book.
00:32:00
Speaker
If for some reason, if it isn't, there still should be others out there.
00:32:03
Speaker
And we have yet to see that.
00:32:05
Speaker
So my hope is, as in getting the word out about this, somewhere in a collection in Tulsa or Toledo or Timbuktu, that's a nice bit of alliteration there, we would be able to find
00:32:18
Speaker
other examples of this because I think as an interior scene, it's a rarity unto itself, let alone an interior scene that's built around a maritime theme, let alone one that has these sort of show-off elements that are incorporated into it of the landscape out the window, the two paintings, and so forth.
00:32:38
Speaker
In the meanwhile, while we're waiting for these other hidden lost works to resurface, what are the museum's plans for this piece?
00:32:46
Speaker
What research is left to be done on it and what kind of story do you want to tell about it?
00:32:51
Speaker
The question really becomes what happens to him?
00:32:54
Speaker
So why does he seemingly give this up and ends up in the hinterlands?
00:32:59
Speaker
Or is that the same person?
00:33:01
Speaker
And I mean, that's where, you know,
00:33:05
Speaker
you go back and I think we all do this, you check Ancestry from time to time to see if they've uploaded new records.
00:33:11
Speaker
I mean, it's that crassly,
00:33:15
Speaker
you know, not lofty, but pretty much down to earth how you do the research is you hope that somewhere out there there's gonna pop up a record, some document that, you know, pulls that curtain back even for just a second and reveals, oh, you know, he failed as a ship captain because he wrecked everybody and he decided maybe, you know,
00:33:43
Speaker
Tennessee was a much better place to live.
00:33:45
Speaker
Okay.
Museum's Plans for the Watercolor Display
00:33:47
Speaker
Well, I can relate to that as a Tennessean.
00:33:50
Speaker
Well, there you go.
00:33:51
Speaker
All good ship captains flee to Tennessee if they wreck the ship.
00:33:54
Speaker
But no, we're gonna continue.
00:33:56
Speaker
It's on exhibit.
00:33:58
Speaker
We've put it out because I wanna showcase it in our brand new opening installation we just did.
00:34:05
Speaker
We've tried to put some of our masterpieces out, things that people haven't seen, either that they're very new or that they've been tucked away and haven't been out in a number of years.
00:34:13
Speaker
This one's very new.
00:34:14
Speaker
And I show it because I think it's wonderful.
00:34:17
Speaker
It speaks to the times, speaks to the maritime.
00:34:19
Speaker
But always there's just that little part that comes in that, you know, might get that knock on the door and some little old lady says, yes, that's so-and-so and I can reveal the mystery and the curtain pulls back for us.
00:34:32
Speaker
Well, fingers crossed that somebody listening right now will bring that revelation to your doorstep.
00:34:37
Speaker
Peter Siebert, thanks so much for talking with me and we'll chat again next week.
00:34:41
Speaker
Sounds great.
00:34:43
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Palata.
00:34:48
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:34:52
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:34:53
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.
00:35:19
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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