.ODg.MTcxMw

3-

became interested in the theatre ,and operated the now defunct Music Hall of Lewiston for over forty years,and with this as a business and investments in real estate,aquired something of a fortune,and at his death left fifty thousand dollars to build a new wing in the then new hospital in Lewiston. My sisters eventually moved to Cleveland after the death of my mother,they married C;leveland men and settled down to establish their own families,and it was there with them in Cleveland that I b,egan my studies in art,on a scholarship offered me by one of the trustees of the old Cleveland Art [word crossed out] school. The rest of the information will be found in the Index of Twentieth Century American ar;tists,a copy of which I have also given to the Lewiston Public Library as a local record. I returned to Maine three years ago,spending the summer at Georgetown Maine,and there painted a number of Maine "portraits",and then last summer I was at Vinalhaven,where I did another series of M;aine piaintings,and I am now at work on several others at this time,all of which will be shown at my Twenty sixth or seventh annual show,all of which have taken place in N ew York,always,and from which my reputation as an American artist as well as an artist from Maine,has radiated. I also had shows in Berlin,London,Mnich,Paris,Breslau and Dresden--alas how different now all that world is,and the meaning and spirit of art so crushed out of existence.

And so it pleases me greatly to receive your request for the recognition that comes with it,as well as reasons of sentiment. And if the State Library is agreeable to the idea,I will be glad to forward any further material that may be kept on file for future use. I have three short essays on painting coming out in I believe the next issue of a very solid magazine called Twice a Year and the essays are all on painting,the subjects being Leonardo da Vinci,Hans M;emling,and Gaston Lachaise, who was a very gifted sculptor who died three years ago, who was until his death a resident of Georgetown,Maine,where his widow still Maintains the country home and has been coming to Maine herself for thirty years,always to Georgetown. Accept my heartiest thanks then,for your kind letter of recognition of me as a painter of Maine from Maine,and as a writer as well,and the new poems to come out have a lot of Maine thoughts,feelings,and pictorial effects in them. And I shall hope of course to have an official letter of

�