The Watercolors of Harlan Hubbard [1 ed.] 9780813153438

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THE WATERCOLORS OF

HARLAN HUBBARD

THE WATERCOLORS OF

HARLAN HUBBARD From the Collection of

Bill Caddell and Flo Caddell Photography by David Aaron Marshall Foreword by Peter Morrin Introduction by Jessica K. Whitehead

Benefactor: Eleanor Bingham Miller

Special Thanks: John Begley Wendell and Tanya Berry The Berry Center, Virginia Berry Aguilar and staff Bob and Charlotte Canida Joe and Bette Dixon John and June Fettig Fort Thomas Forest Conservancy and Sidney Thomas Frazier History Museum In memory of Nancy N. Fullerton Hanover College Asako and Yuichi Iikubo Dr. Kjell Karlsson and family Harold and Barbara Kinsler Dr. Karl and Susie Klein Lafayette Printing The Greg and Elizabeth Landis family Louisville Grows David and Shelley Marshall Gene and Linda Marshall Art and Sherry Morgan Peter Morrin Randy Ross Custom Framing, Randy and Karla Ross Don Sharp Steve and Maureen Thompson University Press of Kentucky Jessica K. Whitehead Our wonderful families and friends who have supported and encouraged us

Copyright © 2021 by Bill and Flo Caddell Published by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Spalding University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hubbard, Harlan, artist. | Morrin, Peter, writer of foreword. | Whitehead, Jessica K., writer of introduction. Title: The watercolors of Harlan Hubbard : from the collection of Bill Caddell and Flo Caddell / photography by David Aaron Marshall ; foreword by Peter Morrin; introduction by Jessica K. Whitehead. Description: Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2021023177 | ISBN 9780813179766 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780813153438 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Hubbard, Harlan,—Themes, motives. | Landscape in art. | Caddell, Bill,—Art collections—Catalogs. | Caddell, Flo,—Art collections—Catalogs. | Watercolor painting—Private collections—United States—Catalogs. Classification: LCC ND1839.H75 A4 2021 | DDC 759.13--dc23

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of University Presses

CONTENTS



Foreword xi Peter Morrin Preface xvii Bill and Flo Caddell



Introduction Personal Wildernesses: Harlan Hubbard and the American Watercolor Tradition 1 Jessica K. Whitehead



Watercolors, Essays, and Reminiscences 11 Compiled by Bill and Flo Caddell

COLOR PLATES Buildings 12 Railroads & People 31 Boats 37 Landscapes 70 River Landscapes 105 River Towns 147 Bayous 164 Western Trips 178 Great Lakes 184 Payne Hollow 198 Books and Other Resources 221

Harlan Hubbard on the Ohio River, 1982. Photograph by Guy Mendes, from Guy Mendes, Light at Hand: Photographs, 1970–85 (Frankfort, Ky.: Gnomon Press, 1986).

The painter Harlan Hubbard said that he was painting Heaven when the places he painted merely were the Campbell or the Trimble County banks of the Ohio, or farms and hills where he had worked or roamed: a house’s gable and roofline rising from a fold in the hills, trees bearing snow, two shanty boats at dawn, immortal light upon the flowing river in its bends. And these were Heavenly because he never saw them clear enough to satisfy his love, his need to see them all again, again. —Wendell Berry

Copyright © 2010 by Wendell Berry, from Leavings. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.

FOREWORD

Peter Morrin

T

his publication stakes a claim for Har lan Hubbar d’s place of high importance in American art history as a watercolorist. It brings to light his least-known but possibly his finest art. The essayist and Hubbard scholar Jessica Whitehead lays out the artist’s aesthetic and intellectual inheritance and his contribution to a conservationist mainstream in our national artistic sensibility. She draws on materials not available to earlier writers and provides a compelling picture of intersecting personal, philosophical, and professional orbits that shaped Hubbard’s life and art. Flo and Bill Caddell have provided a rounded portrait of the artist through accounts of his friendships, contacts, and correspondents. The Caddells have been steadfast in their dedication to Hubbard’s reputation and led the effort for the 1994 publication of The Woodcuts of Harlan Hubbard.1 Why are Hubbard’s watercolors important? Hubbard’s sense of his artistic self is fully integrated with the riverine landscapes he depicted. There is an explosive energy to the immediacy of these works and their invitation to the imaginary hikes and voyages they propose to the viewer. Hubbard did not merely observe: the heightened engagement in his depictions is more fitting for the connotations of the word behold. Though Hubbard proclaimed himself a realist, his work interrogates his emotional engagement with the natural world and treasures up his intoxication with the vistas he represents. Hubbard was born in Bellevue, Kentucky, in 1900, and he moved to New York at the age of twelve. His older brother Frank was a commercial artist and, together with his wife, escorted Harlan to New York art galleries and museums. Harlan Hubbard studied briefly at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Cincinnati Academy of Art after returning to the Midwest in 1919, but he never formally completed a course of study at either school. In 1943 he married Anna Wonder Eikenhout (1902–1986). With her encouragement, the couple built a shantyboat in 1944, subsequently traveling down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to

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New Orleans until 1950 and exploring Louisiana by boat thereafter for a year. After a trip west, the couple returned to Kentucky and settled at Payne Hollow, Kentucky, in 1952. Hubbard built a house and several outbuildings on the property, including a studio, where he painted and where he stored completed works and his art supplies. He died in 1988. There can be no doubt of Hubbard’s ambition as a landscape artist. In the early 1960s Hubbard worked out his thoughts on two sides of an envelope (scraps of paper of all sorts were used to memorialize his ideas). On the front of the envelope Hubbard struggled to express his ambition: “For such a resurrection (recreation?) of aspects and phenomena for arrangement (or design) and a cleverness (or skill) at sketching are not enough. One must be born with understanding (comprehension and a love of the natural with the gift of expressing his mind (spirit?) (soul, personality?) by picturing the scenes he is contemplating. The vocation (or calling) of landscape painter cannot be followed (off hand) without study (preparation) and the great names are as rare as they have always been in landscape painting.”2 On the back, Hubbard wrote more coherently: Landscape painting is not an easy and inferior genre, whatever may have been said about it. I have heard Renoir, who was both a landscape painter and a painter of figures, affirm on the contrary, that the most difficult work to conceive and to execute was landscape, enchanting, changing and elusive for the sight and for the mind. That landscape painting is considered easy is therefore a superficial opinion. There is hardly an amateur painter who has not begun by painting resolutely sky, earth and water. The truth is that a landscape admits of as many a nuance, as many quick changes of expression as a face, and that it is trying to solve one of the great problems of art to try to represent on canvas the things and the hours of eternal matter and sunlight.3

Hubbard’s statements avow his reliance on direct observation—“enchanting, changing and elusive for the sight and for the mind”—while also affirming an Expressionist bias for a very personal engagement with the physical world—“a love of the natural with the gift of expressing his mind (spirit?) (soul, personality?).” It was Hubbard’s genius to pair the pressure of reality—the vision before him—with an intense need to express his feelings of transcendence before nature. There are many reasons for the critical and popular neglect of the artist and the insufficiency of the reputation he deserves. Hubbard’s self-imposed separation from the business world, and his ambiguous attitude toward the monetary aspects of being an artist (despite participation in over thirty lifetime exhibitions), militated against critical recognition. Hubbard’s embrace of a Thoreauvian lifestyle has brought attention to him primarily as a journal keeper, environmentalist, and principled dissident from an all-encompassing commercial and industrial consumerism, rather than as an artist, which was always his first profession. His best body of work, his watercolors, are typically small, often around 5 by 7

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inches—this in an age in which museums and galleries have been dominated by work that creates a warehouse-scaled presence. Hubbard made very personal soliloquies, not loudspeaker pronouncements. Further, the land Hubbard claimed as his artistic turf, primarily the Ohio River Valley, is at a geographical remove from the locales most familiar in American landscape depictions, especially coastal New England, New Mexico, and California. Hubbard’s choice of watercolor as his most constant medium carries additional liabilities. Hubbard’s execution was rapid and improvisatory—hardly the kind of finish that compels popular admiration for an artist’s command of his craft. And in giving primacy to being in the moment, Hubbard often left portions of his watercolors bare and uncolored, leading some to presume that these works were left incomplete. Additional reasons for his lack of recognition include the paucity of his oeuvre at the Cincinnati Art Museum or the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, since his home at Payne Hollow, Kentucky, was between the two cities: each museum holds only one work of his.4 (The two major institutional collections are at the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington, Kentucky, and at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana.) Furthermore, Hubbard’s general indifference to providing dates or signatures to his work makes the art historian’s task very difficult. His journals make clear that much of his days on dry land were taken up with the tasks associated with his off-the-grid lifestyle: sawing and splitting wood, drawing water, raising crops, and catching, trapping, and bartering for daily sustenance for Anna and himself. In conventional terms, he seems seldom to have spent a whole day dedicated solely to artmaking. Also, Hubbard’s subject matter can be seen as startlingly traditional. When Jane Austen has Elizabeth visit Pemberley House in Pride and Prejudice, she admires a view from the dining room windows: “The hill, crowned with wood, which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good. And she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its bank, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight.”5 Elizabeth could have been describing a Hubbard depiction of the Ohio River. Ironically, some of the reasons for Harlan Hubbard’s lack of recognition for his art are precisely the factors that are most compelling for its aesthetic success. His defiance of convention, in lifestyle as in his art, demands of the viewer an equal rejection of convention to appreciate his achievement. Drawing is a medium celebrated for its intimacy and the access it provides to the artist’s creative process. The small scale of Hubbard’s watercolors accentuates that close contact with the artist’s emotion-mind-hand-eye coordination in his responses to the views that absorbed him. Though there is no absolute consistency in Hubbard’s creative pathways or processes (he had many artistic personalities), the watercolors seem mostly to have been done on a pad or on paper thumbtacked to a board, not on an easel. Hubbard used many different kinds of paper, but coated or smooth papers predominate.



FOREWORD | xiii

These works were executed at close range, perhaps on the artist’s lap. Hubbard did not select wide panoramic views; rather, he concentrated on relatively narrow segments of his visual field. The artist generously provided his viewers a guided tour to the farthest point on the horizon, a distant bank, the disappearing bend in the river, or the far slope of a hillside path. The inclusion of steamboats, ferries, fishing boats, and johnboats imaginatively suggests additional destinations. Hubbard was a proprietary cartographer, and he took possession of his subjects in several ways. He ranged far afield by train, towboat, bicycle, canoe, shantyboat—and by foot—to discover new motifs. That sense of discovery and seeing afresh permeates his work. Place names in his journals—Plow Handle Point, Apple Grove, Hanging Rock, Wolf Creek, Kinnikinnick—attest to an ambition to claim territory that had not been previously charted artistically. Hubbard’s earliest dated watercolors have an elegiac cast: they appear as if seen in the present and past simultaneously. They are wistful and nostalgic and are sometimes monochromatic. In these early works Hubbard was apt to use modulated washes in a manner reminiscent of Chinese ink brush drawing and interpretations of Asian art by Arthur Wesley Dow and other early twentieth-century American art theorists and teachers. For example, fig. 3.36 (p. 63) contrasts with later watercolors that are brasher in color, more emphatic in their mark making, and rhapsodic in their linear flourishes. Hubbard criticized the Postimpressionists for lack of realism and neglecting pictorial depth, as Jessica Whitehead notes. But Hubbard’s quick plunges into the distance abbreviated the Renaissance sequence of foreground, middle ground, and background, giving maximum effect to his decorative impulses. Hubbard usually tilted the plane of depiction upward, so that the sky seldom occupies more than a third of the sheet. Hubbard prized luminosity: leaving areas unpainted created a sense of light and shortened abruptly the visual entrance into his pictorial space. Painting from a boat also served to truncate perspective, since the foreground is insubstantial, and a watery entry point at the lower edge of the paper compromises the traditionally measured movement to a vanishing point. How we are guided on this wayfinding is what matters most: the trace of the artist’s hand is evident in the velocity of the line, the attack of the brush, and the ebullient joy and instantaneity with which Hubbard conveyed his absorption in his river views. Rivers are by turns blue, gray, yellow, brown, purple, orange, and mottled combinations of these hues. Skies are rose, blue of all varieties, pink, mauve, and orange again. Like the German Expressionists, he often favored tertiary hues. A deep yellow ochre is employed repeatedly, designating the action of sunlight on rocks, sand, hillsides, sky, fields, underbrush, clouds, and cloud reflections, providing a zing, especially when juxtaposed with more passive greens and blues. Overall, however, rhythms of light and dark orchestrate Hubbard’s watercolors.

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Again, there are no absolute rules in Hubbard’s artmaking. From the 1950s forward, however, he seems to have often begun by sketching major motifs with pencil or conté, then applying color at the top of the paper, working downward, and after letting the watercolor dry, returning to reinforce the horizon and principal forms of landscape with vigorous black lines executed in crayon or watercolor pigment. The freest riffs come either at the bottom of the paper or at the top: rhythmic squiggles and scrawls, serpentine loops and staccato strokes designating, at the lower edge, ripples in the river, willows, or shoreline vegetation, and, at the top, cloud forms. Sometimes these final lines align with descriptive passages in the middle ground or background, again reemphasizing the two-dimensional pattern. Hubbard’s impassioned calligraphies are also a metaphor for the ongoing currents of rivers and the meteorological phenomena of weather—and possibly, the passage of time and life itself. Because Hubbard wanted to foreground his emotional engagement with the land he depicted, he eschewed some of the refinements of the watercolor medium. But he certainly knew these techniques: he used a split brush to create parallel lines, and he would reserve white spaces to enhance the brightness of a central motif. He also varied the opacity of his color, sometimes leaving it as concentrated as gouache, at other times as transparent and liquid as its subject matter. Hubbard occasionally created atmospheric effects by wetting a passage to let the color bloom. As improvisatory as Hubbard’s watercolors are, they invariably display an exquisite balance of line and color, a clear mark of the artist’s agility and command of the overall effects of his compositions. The all-at-once quality of Hubbard’s improvisations accords with a notion of the work as a psychological release, and endows them with a joyous exuberance. For Hubbard, the work-in-the-work-of-art encompassed not just the execution, but also a habit of prolonged observation as a by-product of his daily activities. So he might well be said to have been a full-time artist after all. We are still at the beginnings of Hubbard studies. Complete transcripts of his journals and correspondence lie in the future, awaiting future generations of methodical scholars. A useful model is the Princeton University Press’s projected seventeen volumes of Henry David Thoreau’s journals. Eight volumes have been published, and the transcripts and copies of the rest are available online. A comprehensive, full-scale art-historical biography of Hubbard is also needed. It will lack the poetry, conviction, and personal touch of Wendell Berry’s masterful biography but is necessary to reckon with the importance of Hubbard’s contribution and to contextualize it within the broader framework of twentieth-century American art. The promise of this present volume is to promote further studies, which the quality of these watercolors more than justifies. And, more important, this volume shares the pleasure provided by these extraordinary works of art.



FOREWORD | xv

NOTES 1. Harland Hubbard, The Woodcuts of Harlan Hubbard. From the collection of Bill Caddell. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994). 2. Harlan Hubbard, undated note on envelope, Harlan and Anna Hubbard Papers, University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections, box 18, file 1.34. 3. Ibid. 4. Harlan Hubbard, Harper’s Ferry, W.V., Cincinnati Art Museum, Museum Purchase, 1944.75; Harlan Hubbard, Untitled (Landscape), Speed Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Rémi Boissonnas, 2002.8. 5. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition, ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 285.

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PREFACE

Bill and Flo Caddell

A

nna and Har lan Hubbar d made an unforgettable impr ession on all who met them. It is hard to describe their profound influence. The Hubbards were gracious, kind, welcoming people. They made each visitor feel like an honored guest. Their off-the-grid lifestyle, in a pre–social media and cell phone era, had a surprisingly broad audience that included many friends and visitors. Bill started visiting the Hubbards while a student at Hanover College. He walked the five miles to Payne Hollow. When Bill spent a year studying at the University of Exeter, England, Harlan let him take along the oil painting Towboat Julius Fleischmann at Sunrise so that he could have a bit of Harlan Hubbard and the Ohio River close by. Bill’s association with the Hubbards reinforced his love of the country and the natural world. He made up his mind that he would stay in the country. Becoming a library director was a direct result of that decision, since almost every small town had a public library. Harlan said that work is meditation in motion. His example of using hand tools and recycled materials inspired Bill to build his own house using old lumber, windows, and doors. Harlan shared his love of gardening and introduced Bill to Lutz Green Leaf beets. Bill has organized exhibitions of Harlan’s art since the 1960s. He sold Harlan’s art at the Sassafras Shop in Westville, Indiana. Before Harlan passed away, Harlan told Bill that he was entrusting him with his art collection. Flo also became acquainted with the Hubbards while a student at Hanover College. She first went to Payne Hollow with a sociology class taught by Dr. Robert Keller. She made subsequent trips with classes taught by the philosophy professor Dr. Robert Rosenthal. She was deeply impressed by the Hubbards’ life and art. When Professor Rosenthal suggested that an art student should catalog Harlan’s paintings, she quickly volunteered. With the help of a grant from the National Endowment for

xvii

the Humanities, she made many visits to the Hubbards, gathering names and addresses of those who owned paintings. She drove throughout Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana photographing and cataloging nearly five hundred oil and acrylic Harlan Hubbard paintings. In 1993 Bill and Flo collaborated on the book The Woodcuts of Harlan Hubbard. Bill met with Harlan to organize the art for the book. Flo read all of Harlan’s handwritten journals, selecting quotes to accompany the prints. At the Frankfort Community Public Library, Frankfort, Indiana, Flo was the arts director of the Anna and Harlan Hubbard School of Living. She organized programs, exhibitions, and classes for children and adults that were based on the Hubbard philosophy of making life a work of art. In 2016 they decided it was time to put together a book of Harlan’s watercolors. They enlisted the help of another Hanover graduate, Jessica Whitehead, after discovering her great skill as a writer and Hubbard scholar. Bill regularly receives email and phone calls from Hubbard admirers—those who have just discovered the Hubbards, and those who have read the books or knew Anna and Harlan and are looking for a way to renew their connection. Bill and Flo have entertained seekers from as far away as Sweden. Out of deep admiration, some have named children after Harlan, created art channeling the spirit of Harlan, written fiction and nonfiction inspired by the Hubbards, built energy-efficient homes, moved to places where a closer connection to the earth might be possible, or reordered their lives to be more in tune with the Hubbard spirit.

•

The essays in this book were gathered from a sampling of those whose lives have been redefined by an encounter with Anna and Harlan Hubbard. Thanks to all for sharing such genuine, heartfelt connections. We were overwhelmed by these moving tributes and are grateful. It is our pleasure to introduce all of you to each other through this book. The Hubbards will always transfix the imaginations of those searching for a calmer, more harmonious way of life. We, too, were captured by their transformative power and continue to search for the ways to make life a work of art.

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INTRODUCTION

PERSONAL WILDERNESSES Harlan Hubbard and the American Watercolor Tradition Jessica K. Whitehead

The paintings I have on exhibition are of the Ohio River, the country of northern Kentucky and its rural life. I have tried to portray their unique charm and character so that one would know that these scenes were along the Ohio River. In gathering material and studying the country, I have covered much of it on foot, and travelled up and down the river in all sorts of boats, sketching its hills and bends, towns, boats and people. To me it is a beautiful country and worthy of great art.

—Harlan Hubbard, Journals, March 9, 1935

W

hy don’t mor e people know about Har lan Hubbar d as an artist? Why is the public record of his art so deceptively brief? Why, if he managed to have his writing published, was he unable to find equal validation as an artist? Such questions are impossible to answer succinctly, as there appear to be a number of factors that may have contributed to his relative obscurity. Such questions also require qualification: there is incongruity in the wider public perception of Hubbard’s career regarding which creative leg-

1

acy is most important to history—his writing, his life, or his art. There is, however, a dedicated and knowledgeable group of his admirers, well aware of his artistic contributions, who can speak eloquently to their importance. Their voices have been heard in a number of regional exhibitions over the years, both permanent and temporary; far less has been published about Hubbard’s art than about his life and written work.1 But the fact remains: even with the arrival of this volume on Harlan Hubbard’s watercolors, the public record of his artistic endeavors remains woefully incomplete. It is odd this should be the case, particularly because of the staggering ratio of Hubbard’s artistic works to his written ones. While it is certainly the case that Hubbard was a prolific and talented wordsmith—even though a large portion of his correspondence and journaling is yet to be published—he always considered himself an artist first, not a writer. The body of work we see today is broad and beautiful, an impressive catalog of paintings in oil, acrylic, and watercolor, in addition to his other nonartistic endeavors. He never stopped thinking about his artistic legacy and whether his artistic work would speak to anyone, present or future. Despite the many paintings that survive, it is likely that even more were thrown away or destroyed, driven by his high personal standard or pure frustration: “After a picture is destroyed, even if I know it is better so,” wrote Hubbard in his journal in 1931, “I am always curious to see it again, and remember something good in it.”2 Nevertheless, there is much that is good to be found in what survived Hubbard’s rigorous six-decade evaluation of his own work as a painter and printmaker. The poetics of Harlan Hubbard’s imagination, evocative as they are in his words, transcend written language. They find higher and more varied expression in the visual language of his painting, especially in his regular use of watercolor. The overwhelming majority of Hubbard’s paintings in watercolor depict the landscape around him; through this sub-oeuvre of artwork we can see the compelling proof of an artist who was called, in every time and every place, by the land and water of America. He answered that call with vibrant color, jubilant line, and free movement, often enhancing his undulating strokes and washes with a contrasting swipe of black crayon. In them is preserved the freshest, most unstudied, most fundamental demonstration of Hubbard’s painting technique, a technique only enhanced by the unstructured medium of watercolor. Because of its fluidity, watercolor can achieve an effortless quality in the hands of a skillful artist; Hubbard exploited these properties by lending to his watercolors the kind of simplicity he rarely employed in any other medium. Hubbard would say in his last years that the body of watercolors he built throughout his long career was his best work. In many ways, they do what his oils cannot; while Hubbard’s oils can be accomplished, even masterful, they lack the immediate emotional resonance of the watercolors. Sometimes barely more than sketches, sometimes scrawled out in a journal or on the back of a letter or receipt, and sometimes verging on the world of abstraction he often derided in his writing, Hubbard’s many watercolors offer us a window into the soul of a

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man whose deepest desire was to be simply and unequivocally authentic: to be honest, raw, and real, like the natural world he had spent so long understanding. The watercolors make up the largest percentage of Hubbard’s entire artistic output, save his copious pencil sketches, and this is why they must be studied as a vital record of his accomplishments as an American artist. In many ways, the watercolors are most representative of who Hubbard was as a person; they carry with them the literal acknowledgment of a philosophy that isolated Hubbard from traditional modes of the working artist but also elevated him to a position of ethical authority. Often painted on the water and in the hollers of whatever part of the country he happened to be in at the time, the watercolors are a visual reminder of Hubbard’s staunch commitment to and affinity for his subject. “It is strange that I should go on painting as I do when my work seems contrary to the progress of art,” he wrote in 1933. “But I cannot change it, I have tried. It is as natural as my arm. So now, instead of trying to follow the rest, I cherish and try to justify my own painting. With me it is still a representation of what I see, not consciously distorted. It is realistic, sentimental, unemotional. But there is in it a feeling, abstract design, a definite philosophy. These things are the spirit, the body of which is the representation of what I see.”3 The statement is remarkably prescient and articulates the value of the watercolors perfectly; somehow, in a way that is still consistent with his worldview, Hubbard steps into the twentieth century with both feet firmly planted and tackles one of the biggest questions of art during this period: although he would resist the urge to nonfiguration in his oil paintings, Hubbard’s watercolors dance to the rhythm of his time, slipping lithely in and out of recognizable subject within the space of a single piece. For example, in his Path to Payne Hollow (fig. 10.1, p. 199), Hubbard uses the mere suggestion of form, achieved through amorphous fields of color and unhampered arabesques of lines—are they tree limbs? are they the spirits of the forest?—to align the watercolors with the zeitgeist of Modernist painting styles. One of the greatest achievements of his watercolors is that, in all their scope and variety, there is a timelessness that allows them to drift between classifications, both outsider and participant in their uniqueness. Path to Payne Hollow remains rooted within something specific, local, and important to Hubbard’s day-to-day life: the tree-lined crest of the hill leading to his home at Payne Hollow. And although the subject is, as he says, “not consciously distorted,” he imbues its structure with the expressive wisps and flourishes of an eye scanning the well-worn route to a beloved place. The lines, revealing to us a landscape, also reveal the vestiges of Hubbard’s creative spirit. One of the purest expressions of Harlan Hubbard’s creativity was his reticence in associating his technique—which itself resists consistency in everything but his watercolors— with the larger currents of Modernist art theory. Consequently, Hubbard’s work defies ready classification. The river his muse and Kentuckiana his canvas suggest his categorization as a regionalist painter, though without political statement. Nevertheless, there are

INTRODUCTION | 3

clear formal ties to Modernism, particularly in the watercolors. At times there are evocations of unsentimentalized Impressionist technique. There are free brushstrokes, saturated colors, and black outlines, reminiscent of Postimpressionism or Expressionism, but without the anguish. And often there is the fluid yet energetic suggestion of the artist’s presence and movements—of his act of painting—that invites Hubbard’s most dreaded of associations with action painting and the Abstract Expressionists. While his journals consistently express his distaste for various modern and contemporary movements in painting, Hubbard was a careful student of all of them. “I visited current shows at private galleries where entrance and exit looked easy,” he wrote. “I stumbled on a postimpressionist exhibition and saw my first Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, at once recognizing that here was a new departure. Till then nothing had enticed me beyond impressionism. Yet I did not enter into the subsequent development of modern painting, believing it too narrow in that it scorned nature. I think I understood what twentieth-century painters were trying to do, however, and took it into account.”4 While it may have been youthfully shortsighted of Hubbard to dismiss all modern painting as an aesthetic culture that “scorned nature,” he continued to struggle with what Wendell Berry termed the “tension between representation and abstraction” for the rest of his career. 5 “A picture of my own in an exhibition always seems to stand alone,” Hubbard wrote in 1932. “Perhaps this is because I look at it differently from anyone else, but it seems to lack the stamp of all the rest. I have tried to paint like they do, but have not succeeded. I have gone this far and now I must go on, and develop my own character, instead of trying to suppress or change it.”6 Berry, whose own work is, like Hubbard’s, unapologetically honest to his character and immune to stylistic fads, described the quality of Hubbard’s art in this way: “Instead of the ‘originality’ of technical or stylistic innovation, he was concerned with fidelity—fidelity to his subject, to his art, and to the love that joined the two. His was an aesthetic of authenticity.” 7 Hubbard’s authenticity—which hinged on his distrust and dislike of traditional society—was the agent of his own frustration, and he was consistently frustrated by his reception in the art world. But ironically, for all his frustration, and despite Berry’s assertion that Hubbard was not concerned with stylistic innovation, Hubbard was constantly changing and adapting his style; perhaps not only the quest for fidelity informed his authenticity but also his determination to understand his own lack of success through constant reinvention. For example, the contrast between his study of a house in fig. 1.23 (p. 29) and his study of a coal barge on the river in fig. 3.8 (p. 43) reveals the wide technical range of Hubbard’s watercolors. The effort toward representation is evident in both watercolor studies, but the effect is significantly different. The study of the house feels tied to the traditions of the realists, like Edward Hopper, who were still concerned with filling their work with concrete details of the subject: Hubbard gives us defined gables, windows, balconies, and finials, even if the

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style is loose and simple. In his study of the coal barge, less detail obtrudes: a few basic horizontal bands of pigment, lightly applied in lower-contrast colors, suggest the coal barge rather than describe it. Both feel at home among other examples of twentieth-century art, but neither feels definitively connected stylistically to the other. Hubbard’s watercolors stand allied with both the past and his present in American landscape painting. In his work runs the Romantic sensibility of the nineteenth-century painters who sought transcendence; in his spirit is the same ethos shared by familiar artistic visions in twentieth-century American landscape painting tied to place: canonical masters such as Marsden Hartley (1877–1943), Arthur Dove (1880–1946), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), John Marin (1870–1953), and other, more regional painters like Charles Burchfield (1893– 1967) and Walter Inglis Anderson (1903–1965). All these painters share the Hubbardian drive to explore their natural surroundings more deeply. Those who were coming of age at the beginning of the 1900s form a like-minded cadre of independent individuals who turned to nature—and watercolor—as their philosophical vessel to navigate the waters of change. Hubbard’s watercolors did for Kentuckiana what O’Keeffe’s did for New Mexico, Marin’s and Hartley’s did for Maine, Burchfield’s did for northern Ohio and Erie County, and Anderson’s did for Horn Island and Mississippi. These kindred spirits chose their personal wildernesses where the muses spoke to them most clearly and created the visual companion to the vision of the sublime in Thomas Cole and Asher Durand, the poetry of Walt Whitman, and the prose of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The spirit of sublimity and the influence of the American Romantics were alive and well in the artistic productions of certain Alfred Stieglitz protégés as well as any artist, like Burchfield, Anderson, and Hubbard, who could speak the language of landscape. Hubbard was a true Romantic in that his first concern, beyond formal dogma or theory, was the vision of the artist and his almost spiritual connection with his subject: “There should be something more in a picture than what we see. It is impossible that there should not be more. A cross between conscious painting directed by principles and free play of the artist’s mind. This too is inevitable since the mind cannot be perfectly controlled and directed, and art at its earliest stage has formulas. Above representation is harmony of line and color, and above that, mood, or feeling, or reaction of the artist’s mind to what he sees.” Hubbard was deeply interested in art theory, but such academic preoccupations were ancillary to allegiance to subject. “If an artist worked sincerely,” he wrote in 1930, “he would have no theories.”8 Edward Hopper, the celebrated realist painter, is quoted as saying, “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception.”9 Hubbard’s inner life, re-

INTRODUCTION | 5

vealed in expressive clarity in his watercolors, demonstrates a similar kind of distrust for the academic insincerity of abstraction. His imagination is the imagination of the original American creative spirit, unfettered by convention and uninterested in the European schools of painting. Hubbard’s watercolors are a return to the awestruck nineteenth-century painters, joyfully proclaiming loyalty to the kingdom of nature. On this Hubbard is clear: “I would like my paintings to be as real as the rain and stones, yet transcend reality into sublimity.”10 A unifying factor among the aforementioned artists who tried to work on the fringes of the cosmopolitan world is experimentation in watercolor. Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Arthur Dove probably used the medium least and for a shorter, more concentrated time, but watercolor forms one of the largest portions of the creative output of Marin, Burchfield, Anderson, and Hubbard. Some of this change would have been instigated by the growing popularity and influence of Chinese and Japanese painting and calligraphy. The use of media similar to watercolor in East Asian traditions—specifically, varied viscosities of ink applied with brushes—wedded with the aesthetic of simplicity inspired by the culture of Buddhism had allowed Asian artists to develop a fluidity in their style and compositions that was foreign to the controlled, picturesque characteristics of European watercolors. Important collectors, artists, and teachers—such as Duncan Phillips, James McNeill Whistler, and Arthur Wesley Dow—had already been using fundamental tenets of Asian art in their work, but mostly in terms of radical uses of composition and cropping. Capturing the loose, gestural, spare quality of Chinese and Japanese brushwork had not been a major concern, and certainly not a conscious objective, until artists like John Marin adopted these practices. Harlan Hubbard, who was often so reticent to attribute influence outside nature itself, was a lifelong student of Asian art and wrote in 1938: “If I am sometimes disappointed in my painting, I think how little any other would satisfy me, either old or modern. This comes nearer than any to being an expression of me, of my mind and circumstances. The painting of the old Chinese comes nearer to me than any.”11 Another reason for watercolor’s increased use by naturalistically minded twentieth-century artists is its mobility and expressiveness. “Watercolor,” Martha Tedeschi writes, “which encouraged spontaneous, free handling, evocative effects, brilliant color, and working outdoors, offered the ideal vehicle for a uniquely American brand of Modernism.”12 Watercolor has long been used by artists “on the move,” although the notion of a finished work in watercolor was not established or accepted until the middle of the last century. The art world’s conception of watercolor was, at best, indifferent; it was used by major artists primarily as a sketching medium, and everyone else who opted to work in watercolor was perceived to be either amateur or female. In the nineteenth century, however, artists such as Thomas Moran, John Singer Sargent, and Winslow Homer had started to use watercolor more seriously;

6 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

their work, too, was largely associated with painting en plein air, a method of painting that watercolor simplified. Harlan Hubbard used watercolor both for finished compositions and for studies. Most of Hubbard’s watercolors are small—around 5 by 7 inches—and some of them are still bound in their original sketchbooks. They were very portable, and their versatility while Hubbard was traveling on the river, along its banks, or deep in the hills and woods of the surrounding countryside made watercolor an ideal method for capturing ephemeral impressions or moods that could later be translated into a larger oil painting. Although this was not always the intent behind the creation of Hubbard’s watercolors, there are clear examples of Hubbard using a watercolor study to prepare for a future painting. In some studies, like Green, Blue, Black, Red (fig. 3.10, p. 44), Hubbard would literally make notes on his watercolor to indicate the colors he observed in addition to the overall compositional inspiration. In others (fig. 2.5, p. 35), Hubbard captures a fleeting moment of a passing train along the banks of the river, later translating it into oil in his masterful and whimsical Mules and Freight Train.13 What would eventually become billowing, articulated puffs of white steam from the train’s engine in the final oil began in the watercolor sketch as an opaque black squiggle across the sky; what would materialize into defined boxcars or hills in the oil were simply floating fields of color applied with the confidence of an artist who could demonstrate what he saw with the slightest movement of brush on paper. It is the mark of a true master, distilling the cacophony of nature into the economy of a mere stroke. Such deft and seemingly effortless expressions in Harlan Hubbard’s watercolors reveal the debt we owe his artistic legacy. When examined as a whole, the quality and quantity of Hubbard’s work have few rivals in the cultural history of Kentucky. Hubbard’s watercolors have a unique part to play in his holistic story, just as they constitute the significant portion— perhaps the largest next to pencil sketches—of his artistic portfolio. Pinpointing Hubbard’s ultimate place in regional or broader canons is hard to do, as there has been no exhaustive catalogue raisonné compiled that includes the hundreds of watercolors Hubbard created throughout his career, but the sheer volume of the watercolors—as an extension of Hubbard’s record of his unique life—qualifies them for still closer study than this volume provides. Further, their strong visual language is not only deeply modern but also miraculous given Hubbard’s intentional retreat, physically and philosophically, from cultural conformity. Charles Burchfield, Walter Inglis Anderson, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Georgia O’Keeffe—just a smattering of canonical artists to whom Hubbard might be favorably compared—are members of the same unofficial school of spiritual thought as Hubbard. A thread emerges, beyond simple technique, style, and theory, in the examples of these artists, who were simultaneously creating similar work in their personal wildernesses. O’Keeffe has achieved monumental renown, as has John Marin, who has been hailed as the “father of modern watercolor”; even Marsden Hartley, who was nearly destitute during

INTRODUCTION | 7

his career, has managed to find himself on the right side of canonical esteem.14 The artists most like Hubbard, Charles Burchfield and Walter Inglis Anderson, who straddled the rift created by the representation-abstraction debate of the twentieth century, still remain somewhat obscure within it. Hubbard lags behind in cultural recognition by a large margin; both Burchfield and Anderson now have museums dedicated to them, and multiple publications have documented their legacies. Comparing Hubbard—and particularly his watercolors—to these kindred spirits may begin to enhance Hubbard’s appeal to a wider audience. Hubbard, Burchfield, and Anderson all retained fidelity to their subject, nature, yet all of them resist facile classification as regionalists. For Hubbard’s case, Wendell Berry explains: “For all his devotion to his local subject, Harlan himself was not provincial, and his work was not. He was not a provincial painter because he was a student of painting all his life, and his devotion to his local subject was balanced with and answered at every point by his devotion to his art, which was not local.”15 Hubbard painted in what William Carlos Williams would have recognized as “the American grain,” a moniker that takes us back to those first frontiersmen encountering the vast expanse—the sublime sprawl—of the American continent. In their effort to enter viscerally into their ecosystems, kindred spirits like Burchfield, Anderson, and Hubbard became fluent in the language of specific waters, trees, and creatures; from it sprang a calligraphic shorthand that, though Modernist in ultimate execution, surpassed academic theory and was ultimately nourished by their emotional experience of environment in what might be called Sublime Localism. Hubbard’s unique aesthetic pervades everything he touched as both an artist and a man, and we understand his watercolors as brief essays or vignettes on the conditions of his life. The philosophical legacy of his watercolors—how they speak to the reality of Hubbard’s experience and person more fully than any of his works in other media—catches at similar threads of other artists in the twentieth century. Furthermore, the thread that binds these artists can be traced to the earliest expressions of Americans searching for an appropriate visual lexicon for their new surroundings. The landscape tradition in the United States, particularly that of the Hudson River School and its admirers, has continued to inform the innate longings of succeeding generations. All of them are part of an ethos that unifies those American writers, artists, and thinkers intent on integrating their work with the natural world. Hubbard eventually found his footing and led a life devoted to the earth—actively expressing the philosophies he admired—which makes the work he created the cultural touchstone it is today.

8 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

NOTES 1. From the time of his first exhibition—at the Getz-Brown Gallery in Cincinnati in 1935—until 1970, Harlan Hubbard’s work appeared in fewer than twenty shows. Between 1970 and 2000, Hubbard’s oils, watercolors, and woodcuts found more traction in both sales and exhibitions, appearing at larger institutions such as the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington, Kentucky. Hubbard’s receipt of the Kentucky Governor’s Award for the Arts in 1986 demonstrates his continued recognition in regional culture; however, Hubbard’s work has yet to be exhibited widely outside the tristate area of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. 2. Harlan Hubbard, Harlan Hubbard: Journals, 1929–1944, ed. Vincent Kohler and David F. Ward (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 24. 3. Ibid., 81. 4. Ibid., 75. 5. Wendell Berry, Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 65. 6. Hubbard, Harlan Hubbard: Journals, 75. 7. Berry, Harlan Hubbard, 65. 8. Hubbard, Harlan Hubbard: Journals, 20. 9. Lloyd Goodrich, Edward Hopper (New York: Abrams, 1978), 164. 10. Hubbard, Harlan Hubbard: Journals, 182. 11. Ibid., 168. 12. Martha Tedeschi and Kristi Dahm, John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2010), 25. 13. Mules and Freight Train is in the Hanover College Collection. 14. Tedeschi and Dahm, John Marin’s Watercolors, 25. 15. Berry, Harlan Hubbard, 70.

INTRODUCTION | 9

WATERCOLORS, ESSAYS, AND REMINISCENCES Michael Caddell I have good memories of visiting the Hubbards with my dad, Bill Caddell. One visit, when I was about eight years old, stands out in my memory. The excerpt below is from an assignment I wrote when I was in school. When I was little, my Dad took me to visit Harlan Hubbard. We parked by a house trailer and rang a big iron bell mounted on a post used to signal to Harlan on the other side. A bell sounded across the river and after a short wait, we could see Harlan coming out of the mist. He greeted us, and we climbed into the aluminum johnboat. Immediately, Dad and Harlan were engaged in conversation. Harlan was a tall and slender man; his skin was tough and tan. While he rowed, I looked into the dark green water of the Ohio. The sun shown brightly as we came upon the Kentucky shore. Harlan ceased rowing to check his trotline. His effort was in vain, but he was not upset. He picked up his oars, and we resumed our course for Payne Hollow. We came ashore at the base of a bluff. We walked up a narrow path to Harlan’s house. Ranger, Harlan’s dog, was there to greet us. We placed our things inside. I took off my shoes and went outside to play with Ranger. That night, I was so tired that I couldn’t stay awake to hear Harlan read.

11

BUILDINGS



FIG. 1.1 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 1.2 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 1.3 Pages’ Licking River, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, June 18, 1933.

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FIG. 1.4 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 1.5 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, June 11, 1932.

FIG. 1.6 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 1.7 Mon [Monday] Bicycle, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, May 27, 1935.



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FIG. 1.8 Untitled, watercolor and ink on paper, 1940s–1950s.

Judi Clubb Jerry (my husband) and I were invited to a show of Harlan’s watercolors at the Behringer-Crawford Museum at Devou Park in Covington, Kentucky. When we arrived, Anna found us and asked Jerry and me to come and see “Harlan’s Jewels.” Anna was as charming and beautiful as always. She was right. They sparkled like the jewels of art that they were. Bright in color. Limited brushwork. Catching life in a split second of time according to Harlan’s eye.

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FIG. 1.9 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s.

FIG. 1.10 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 1.11 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 1.12 An old house near Apple Grove, W.Va., watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 1.13 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, November 28, 1932.



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FIG. 1.14 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.

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FIG. 1.15 Rock Haven, watercolor on paper, 1948.

John and June Fettig We are grateful for an unexpected gift we received from the Hubbards—an appreciation of the beauty of the natural world in winter. Maybe it’s due to our visits to Payne Hollow when the vegetation was mostly dormant, when the vistas were greater, and especially when we smelled the wonderful wood-burning fireplace as we arrived to happy reunions with special friends. Anna and Harlan loved all the seasons, as comes through clearly in Harlan’s writing.

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FIG. 1.16 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 1.17 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 1.18 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1936–1939.



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FIG. 1.19 Holalid [sp?] farm, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 1.20 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 1.21 Dead Timber, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, August 1934.



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FIG. 1.22 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.

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FIG. 1.23 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.

Lisa Smith Klohn I visited the Hubbards a few times in the 1970s, once as part of a class trip arranged by Bob Rosenthal. I recall the Hubbards standing on opposite sides of their living space, which was filled to capacity with students. (We were all being respectfully quiet, but still creating a bit of noise and chaos.) Harlan and Anna started speaking to one another in such soft voices that I had to strain to pick up bits of their conversation. Through the commotion in the room, they seemed to be communicating on a frequency reserved just for them—I remember feeling a bit like a voyeur. They played music for us that day and talked of art, but I left being affected most by their relationship, by the intimate way in which they were able to reach each other through whispered words.

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FIG. 1.24 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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R AILROADS & PEOPLE

FIG. 2.1 Untitled (near Silver Grove railroad yard), watercolor and crayon on paper, October 19, 1930.

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FIG. 2.2 Alma, watercolor on paper with pencil sketches on front and back, 1920s. Alma Willison was the daughter of Cornelius Willison, proprietor of the Brent Frame, Door and Sash Factory, Brent, Kentucky. In 1927, Harlan set up a painting studio in part of the old planing mill in this factory.

Judith Moffett The second volume of my Holy Ground Trilogy, Time, Like an Ever-Flowing Stream, was set almost entirely at a fictional Hanover College and a fictional Payne Hollow, and Anna and Harlan, as faithfully as I could imagine and render them, were characters in the story, contacted by means of an alien device called a time transceiver. That book, like its predecessor, (The Ragged World) was a New York Times Notable Book for its year of publication and is dedicated to Harlan and Anna.



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FIG. 2.3 Untitled (near Silver Grove railroad yard), watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, August 1934.

FIG. 2.4 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 2.5 Untitled (near Silver Grove railroad yard), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 2.6 Untitled (near Silver Grove railroad yard and Harlan’s studio on Sandfoss Farm), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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BOATS

FIG. 3.1 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 3.2 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s–1950s.

Tracy Mannix Geglein One fall day, a group of us students hiked through the brush into Payne Hollow to cut up fallen trees they could use for firewood. I was fortunate to spend time in Anna’s kitchen, watching as she prepared a lunch from roots and berries she had gathered and made peanut butter from peanuts someone had given her. She pumped water from the gravity-fed water system that Harlan built, and moved around comfortably in her small kitchen. She served a meal to all of us, and I helped her clean up. She proudly showed us around the small cabin, revealing the clever ways Harlan used foraged materials to create an efficient living space. I returned to Payne Hollow several times, mostly with my parents in their houseboat. They swapped stories of river adventures during their visits. Harlan’s special gift to my mother was a beautiful, brightly colored sunflower he painted in oil and framed with the wild bamboo that grew on the riverfront.

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FIG. 3.3 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 3.4 Ravenswood (orange lights), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1950s.

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FIG. 3.5 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1940s.



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FIG. 3.6 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 3.7 S.P.S. [Sam P. Suite], watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, October 13, 1931.

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FIG. 3.8 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 3.9 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s.

FIG. 3.10 Green, Blue, Black, Red, watercolor on paper, 1920s–1930s.

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FIG. 3.11 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1950s.



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FIG. 3.12 . . . waves . . . boat, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1930s.

FIG. 3.13 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1930s.

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FIG. 3.14 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 3.15 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 3.16 Eugene Dana Smith, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 3.17 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on heavy paper, 1930s–1950s.

Mary Lee Mannix My husband and I met Harlan and Anna Hubbard in the mid-1980s. We owned an old banged-up but river-worthy yellow houseboat that we drove downriver, taking our children and grandchildren along. Harlan and Anna always welcomed us. Conversations were brief, yet a certain unspoken energy always prevailed. Harlan kept a fascinating flow of quiet conversation with periods of silence in between, as though he was quietly praying.



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FIG. 3.18 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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FIG. 3.19 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s–1950s

FIG. 3.20 Turkey Creek, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 3.21 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s–1940s.

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FIG. 3.22 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 3.23 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 3.24 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 3.25 Ripley, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s.

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FIG. 3.26 Neville, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s.

Polly Hubbard To me, Harlan was a great uncle and pen pal figure, and I think his environmental awareness was a focus of his generation of artists. I enjoyed his humor, his writing style, his way of depicting his world, and his need to live away from the fast pace of modern life—and the twentieth century felt plenty fast!

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FIG. 3.27 Washout, watercolor on heavy paper, 1949. “WASH OUT (old river) (red river)” is written on the back.

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FIG. 3.28 Untitled (Harlan’s shantyboat), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 3.29 Untitled (Harlan’s shantyboat), watercolor and pencil on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

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FIG. 3.30 Henrico Bar, watercolor on paper, 1949.



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FIG. 3.31 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 3.32 Untitled (Harlan’s shantyboat), watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.

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FIG. 3.33 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on heavy paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 3.34 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1930s.

FIG. 3.35 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s.

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FIG. 3.36 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 3.37 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 3.38 Fishing boat, Frankfort (Michigan), watercolor and crayon on paper, 1940s.

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FIG. 3.39 Untitled (shrimp boat), watercolor on paper, 1950.

FIG. 3.40 R.R. transfer, Pelican, Helena, Ark, watercolor on paper, 1949.



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FIG. 3.41 Untitled (Harlan’s canoe), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

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Dr. Robert Rosenthal I couldn’t adequately tell the story of my life and thought without including Harlan as a major influence. Until I came to teach philosophy at Hanover College in 1967, I had never heard of him. But early on I began to hear about the Hubbards and their profound way of living at Payne Hollow. So, when my wife led a Girl Scout troop for a visit there, I tagged along. That started a long friendship with the Hubbards, which lasted to their passing in the 1980s. For many years, I took two classes to visit the Hubbards: a class in aesthetics to talk about the role of art, music, and literature in the Hubbard way, and a class in intentional communities to consider in what ways the Hubbards exhibited a wise alternative way of life. Beyond that, I became deeply aware of Harlan’s ideas and experiences through his writings and in personal conversation. Let me briefly list some of the features of “the Hubbard Way” that most affected me: • a life of deep integrity, with all its elements in harmony and rooted in a single wise understanding of life • a life in intimate contact with an unspoiled natural environment, drawing sustenance and inspiration from that place • a life nourished by the creation and enjoyment of art and beauty • a life of humility, simplicity, and hospitality • a profoundly married life On each of those points, Harlan and his beloved Anna gave me a wonderful living example of how I wanted to live my life.



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Mike Enzweiler I became a huge fan of Harlan’s artwork and his connection to my surrounding community of Camp Springs, Kentucky. Amy, my wife, purchased a Harlan Hubbard pencil sketch of a house and outbuildings that I identified as being located in Camp Springs. Another pencil sketch of a house in Camp Springs (labeled Peter Enzweiler) I received as a gift from Bill Caddell. I remain a true admirer of Harlan Hubbard, his artwork, lifestyle, and connection to my community of Camp Springs.

FIG. 3.42 Untitled (checking the trotline), watercolor on paper, 1940s.

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FIG. 3.43 Untitled (Harlan’s johnboat), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1940s.



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LANDSCAPES

FIG. 4.1 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1940s.



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FIG. 4.2 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 4.3 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.

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Evan Sennett Looking into the sky, we can study infinity. Below us rests the tangible. It is an act of humility to reach down and touch our rivers and streams, perhaps discovering how we stand against a reflection of sky. Living a self-reliant life and facing nature invites daily challenges. But nature is neither kind nor vindictive. Its beauty arises from the horizon line—the conjunction of physical limitations (the earth) and the metaphysical sky upon which we wonder. In his journals, and in Walden, Henry David Thoreau calls this connection of human thought against nature “sky water.” No one ever documented the sky waters of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers quite like Harlan Hubbard. Hubbard knew that the Ohio was not an obviously appealing spectacle of nature when he decided to return to it and call it home. It does not possess the grandeur of many American landmarks. But to the natural inhabitants of this land the Ohio represents a simple and humble constant. Like the small sheets of paper Hubbard used to paint his watercolors and print his woodcuts, the Ohio stands for a simple but foundational link between life on earth and intellectual thought. Hubbard teaches us that a simple life can also be an intellectual one; a house or boat may only be a shanty, but it can also possess dignity beyond its walls. Anyone with a place they deliberately call “home” can relate to Hubbard. Those of us who live near the Ohio may even cite a closer, more familial relation to his spirit. I can certainly claim this. His work leads me, as a Kentucky filmmaker, to consider my landscapes as representations of human nature rather than exploiting them merely as backdrops. It was Hubbard who led me to Thoreau and inspired my English thesis paper as an undergraduate. He has shaped my life as an artist, as a writer, as a Kentuckian, and, most of all, as a human being. His universal lesson is that the water’s limits only expand once they reflect the infinite. Simple living on earth bridges complex thoughts of never-ending fertility. Consequently, the connection of physical simplicity and intellectual expansion is at the very heart of Hubbard’s work. His fixation with painting, printing, sketching, or writing about sky water is a simple invitation to any viewer—a suggestion to live with awareness of the simple beauty surrounding us all.



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FIG. 4.4 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.

74 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.5 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1932.

FIG. 4.6 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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Sidney Thomas In 2006 my now late husband, Bill, purchased the house and art studio that Harlan built in 1923, which is located on Highland Avenue in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. He purchased the home knowing of its history and importance and with the idea that he would share Anna and Harlan’s values of sustainability with our community. Since that time and after the passing of my husband, Harlan’s art studio (also where he and Anna lived while building the shantyboat) has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of a conservation easement held by the Fort Thomas Forest Conservancy. As a group, we have raised funds to restore and secure the studio, and it is being used as an experience center to uniquely share the values of Anna and Harlan. We have had visitors from all over the country that knew and were influenced by Anna and Harlan and have been overcome with joy to see its existence and preservation. Many have said that I have undertaken quite an extensive project as the keeper and caretaker of this portion of Anna and Harlan’s legacy. On the contrary, it is a gift; and I am not the sole caretaker. Together with our community, restorers, donors, and visitors, we share the responsibility and are honored to join Anna and Harlan on their continued journey.

76 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.7 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s.



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FIG. 4.8 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s–1940s.

FIG. 4.9 Untitled, watercolor on paper, April 1946.

78 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.10 Untitled, watercolor on paper, April 1946.



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FIG. 4.11 How many times I have seen Joe Bill’s farm in the morning sunlight, watercolor, pencil, and crayon on paper, 1930s.

80 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.12 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

Peter Falk We are too often focused on making “art” into an object, let alone a body of work. Harlan and Anna created a new paradigm, the “art of living.”



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FIG. 4.13 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.

82 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.14 Kinnikinnick, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1932.

FIG. 4.15 Martins, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.



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FIG. 4.16 Martin’s Creek, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

84 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.17 Dead Timber Road, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 4.18 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1950s.



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FIG. 4.19 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1950s.

FIG. 4.20 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s.

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FIG. 4.21 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 4.22 Woolper, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 4.23 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on heavy paper, 1930s–1950s.

88 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.24 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1932.



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FIG. 4.25 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1940s.

90 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.26 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1932.

FIG. 4.27 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.



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FIG. 4.28 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, May 24, 1934.

FIG. 4.29 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s–1950s.

92 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

Mac Walcott To read Wendell Berry is to be invited into a generous world, both actual and imagined, a place that he continually describes and aspires to live in. Through his many works, we can come to know real people like Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Wes Jackson, David Kline, Aldo Leopold, Archibald Rutledge, Gene Logsdon, and all the characters of Port William. All of these writers, farmers, foresters, and naturalists have become citizens in this community of ideas about our place in this world. Harlan Hubbard is a founding member of this community. The denouement of their community story is the large body of art he created, art that continues to be shared today. Harlan is like several other men of his generation, such as Walter Inglis Anderson of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, or Henry Stuart of Fairhope, Alabama. He was driven to create a place that could offer us an example of a different way of living. It was a community of a loving couple, a few goats, and a regular stream of visitors, centered on a huge stone hearth surrounded by a handmade house. The large window facing the river lit the main room and its grand piano, all as tidy and sufficient as the captain’s quarters on a schooner. What folks came to see was the essential foundation of a community, a tiny home nurtured by love.



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FIG. 4.30 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 4.31 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.

94 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.32 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1950s.

FIG. 4.33 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, October 24, 1933.



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FIG. 4.34 Wolf Creek, watercolor and ink on heavy paper, 1949.

FIG. 4.35 Untitled, watercolor and ink on paper, 1930s.

96 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.36 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 4.37 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 4.38 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1940s.

98 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

Tom VanSickle Along with estimable examples of Wendell Berry, Scott and Helen Nearing, Michael Pollan, and many others—the model of “living life” set by Anna and Harlan Hubbard is one to admire, learn from, and truly honor.

FIG. 4.39 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 4.40 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1930s.

100 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.41 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s.

FIG. 4.42 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 4.43 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1940s.

FIG. 4.44 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

102 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 4.45 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 4.46 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1940s.

104 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

RIVER LANDSCAPES

FIG. 5.1 Gratz, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1934.

FIG. 5.2 Bellevue, watercolor and crayon on paper, October 3, 1932.

106 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.3 New Richmond Ferry, watercolor and pencil on paper, October 25, 1931.



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FIG. 5.4 Muskingum 2, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 5.5 Columbus, Ky, watercolor and ink on heavy paper, 1940s.

108 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.6 [Title indecipherable], watercolor and crayon on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.7 Wellsburg, watercolor and ink on heavy paper, 1940s.

FIG. 5.8 Wellsburg, watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s.

110 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.9 Rock Haven, watercolor on heavy paper, 1948.



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Kathy Kaplan I love Harlan’s paintings. I was charmed by his use of color and perspective. These astonishing images from his life on the river are as brief as a thought, full of breath and gesture, and as complete as a haiku. I was not surprised to learn Harlan thought they were his best work. I decided that young people growing up in our increasingly regimented society needed to know about Harlan and the choices he made in his life. I decided to write a narrative nonfiction account for middle-grade readers about Harlan’s search for a way to live on the earth, a way that allowed him to be himself. I hoped kids would enjoy reading about how he built his shantyboat, how he learned to fish and hunt, and especially how he put it all down on paper for us. I hope the story I wrote using Harlan’s journals and Anna’s letters will encourage kids to read Harlan’s words and perhaps take a breath and begin their own thoughtful journeys.

•

Kathy Walden Kaplan, The Road Home Is Always a River: Harlan and Anna Hubbard’s River Journey (Reston, Va.: MAB Books, 2013).

112 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.10 Rock Haven, watercolor on heavy paper, 1948.



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FIG. 5.11 Shade Is. (Shade Island, Kentucky), watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s–1950s.

114 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

Scott Russell Sanders The protagonist of my novel Divine Animal (2014) is named Harlan. Abandoned by his mother as an infant, reared by grandparents in a Cleveland pub, at the age of eighteen he sets out in search of a greener and wilder place. He finds such a place on a mountainside farm in Vermont, where he goes to work for an elderly couple. After the husband of that couple dies, a Swedish au pair named Katarina, the same age as Harlan, arrives to care for the widow, who is suffering from dementia. On their first meeting, Katarina studied him with a directness the Cleveland girls had never shown. “It is an unusual name, Harlan.” “My mother named me after a man she’d read about who lived on a shantyboat on the Ohio River.” “What is a shantyboat?” “It’s like a hut on a raft.” “Ah, yes. We have the same in Sweden. I have often thought how lovely to ride along a river and tie up at night and cook your meal on a little stove and sleep with the waves rocking you.” Harlan had imagined such a life, ever since learning from his grandmother the source of his name, but he had never said as much to anyone. And now here was a stranger voicing the same desire within minutes of meeting him.

As you might guess, the author of Divine Animal was equally intrigued by the man whose name Harlan bears. I was introduced to the story of Harlan and Anna Hubbard in 1989 by Don Wallis, who has done so much to preserve the record of their life. Having read an essay of mine about the Ohio River, Don thought I should learn about one of the most remarkable couples who had ever drifted down its current or homesteaded along its shores. Unfortunately, I learned of the Hubbards too late to meet them in person. But I met them on the page through Don’s Harlan Hubbard and the River: A Visionary Life (1989). I went on to read and reread Shantyboat (1953) and Payne Hollow (1974), as well as Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work (1990) by Wendell Berry, another hero of mine.

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The exemplary lives of the Hubbards appealed to me for many reasons. I had been fascinated by river travel since reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in childhood, by homesteading from reading accounts of the Ohio frontier, and by the practice of material simplicity from reading the Christian gospels and Thoreau and Tolstoy. I admired the Hubbards’ long and loving marriage, their competence in the skills necessary for sustaining life, their rejoicing in the earth and all its wonders, their union of work and art. I came to appreciate Harlan’s art even more deeply after meeting Bill and Flo Caddell at a conference devoted to the Hubbards at Hanover College in the spring of 2007. Bill and Flo subsequently invited me to the marvelous Frankfort (Indiana) Community Public Library, with its art gallery and “The Hubbard School of Living.” There, and later in the Caddells’ home, I was able to view many of Harlan’s oil paintings, watercolors, and woodblock prints. In all these media, he conveyed the mystery and power of the river, the countryside, and the observer’s soul. In Divine Animal, after the widow dies the farm is sold, so Harlan and Katarina must leave. He plans a return to Cleveland, and he assumes that she will return to Sweden. But she cannot return to her home, as she explains: “My father lives in the house where I grew up, but so does his latest mistress, and she does not want me underfoot.” Before Harlan could absorb all of this, Katarina added, “So if you will take me along, I wish to see your lake and your grandparents and your city. But I am afraid of hitchhiking. American drivers all carry guns.” As he thought this over, his desire won out over his fear. “The train goes right through Cleveland, a few blocks from my grandparents’ place. Or we could take the bus.” “Then we will go? And also see the shantyboats?” “There’s some on the Cuyahoga River.” “The river that caught fire?” “That’s the one. My hometown stream.”

Upon reaching the Cuyahoga, they find what they’re seeking: “There were a few shantyboats tethered along the river, and Katarina studied each one, assessing its virtues and flaws, spinning out visions of living aboard such a cozy craft and plying the waters of America.” Harlan Hubbard inspired that vision in me before I conveyed it to Katarina, and to my fictional hero, who bears his name.

116 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.12 8 Mile, Ohio, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 5.13 Maysville, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

118 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.14 Black R (Black River, Kentucky), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 5.15 Big Sandy, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1920s–1940s.



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FIG. 5.16 Apple Grove (W. Virginia), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

120 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.17 Fire brick (Kentucky), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 5.18 Bizzle’s Bluff, watercolor and ink on paper, 1948.

122 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.19 Crown City, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930.

FIG. 5.20 Brush Creek, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.



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FIG. 5.21 Big Locust, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1948.

FIG. 5.22 Miss[issippi] R[iver], watercolor and pencil on heavy paper, 1948–1950.

124 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.23 Jones’ Hole (361), watercolor on paper, 1949.

FIG. 5.24 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, 1930s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.25 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s–1950s.

FIG. 5.26 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s–1950s.

126 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.27 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1950s.

Sadie Steller I fell in love with the story of Shantyboat while I fell in love with my husband, Jeff. Harlan inspired us to farm in our Newport, Kentucky, backyard, raise chickens, and grow plants from seed. In the world of better, faster, and future, Harlan helped us live in the moment and enjoy the wonder right outside our door.



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FIG. 5.28 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

128 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.29 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s.

FIG. 5.30 Untitled, watercolor and ink on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.31 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 5.32 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s.

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FIG. 5.33 Untitled, watercolor, pencil, and crayon on paper, August 1, 1933.



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FIG. 5.34 Ohio River, watercolor, ink, and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 5.35 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.

132 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.36 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.



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Anne Ogden One of the reasons I admire Harlan and Anna is that they gave as much love and care to the earth as they took. They were true stewards, friends of the land, honoring the river and their beloved Payne Hollow and the sustenance they received from them. I once took my parents’ friends Rémi and June Boissonnas, who were from Paris, France, to meet the Hubbards. Complete strangers who lived very different lives, Harlan and Rémi became instant soul mates. Rémi sat down to play the piano with Harlan on the violin. Inspired by their conversation and immediate friendship, Rémi went back to Paris and spent his winter translating Harlan’s book Payne Hollow into French.

•

Reprinted with permission from Harlan Hubbard: The River’s Artist (Jeffersonville, Ind.: Howard Steamboat Museum, 2007.

134 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

.

FIG. 5.37 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 5.38 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.39 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

FIG. 5.40 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.

136 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.41 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on heavy paper, 1930s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.42 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s–1940s.

138 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.43 Athalia O[hio], watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.44 Sketch for oil Trees Against the Sun Reflected in the Backwater, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

140 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.45 Untitled, watercolor and ink on heavy paper, 1940s–1950s.



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FIG. 5.46 Glaciem cum Flumina Trudent [When the Rivers Break through the Ice], watercolor and pencil on paper, 1928.

142 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 5.47 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s.

FIG. 5.48 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1930s.



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Bob Canida Charlotte and I counted it a blessing and privilege to have Harlan stay with us in our home for approximately the last six weeks of his life. One of the blessings was that we were able to visit with Harlan and the many people who loved him. A team of several people participated in caring for Harlan, including Paul Hassfurder, Dr. Marcella Modisett, Dr. Leon Michl, Helen Spry, Bill Caddell, and Don Wallis. We all enjoyed this company every day. Friends called from all over the country to send their regards and to inquire about Harlan. We were delighted to read aloud with him on most nights in the manner that he and Anna read together. We read small sections of the Japanese novel Genji, and he said he and Anna had read it together more than once, even though it was nearly a thousand pages. Perhaps the most moving moment for me was when Harlan, near the end of his life, told us the story of his Irish Mail. One evening, sitting up in a hospital bed in our living room overlooking the Ohio River, Harlan told those who were around his bed a story about when he was a young boy around six years old. His brother Frank, who worked in graphic arts in New York, told him he was sending him an Irish Mail scooter, which was propelled by a handle similar to a railroad utility car. While Harlan delivered papers one day, the mailman told him that he had left a package for him at home. Harlan raced back home and found his Irish Mail scooter. He said that was possibly the happiest moment of his life! We could sense the ecstasy of that young boy emerging from deep in his spirit. We were in awe of being present as he told his story. Harlan said it was so important to him because it helped him to do his work, delivering his papers. Other young boys might have seen it as a fun toy, but not Harlan. Soon after recounting his story, Harlan went to sleep, and we knew we had experienced a very significant moment with him. Though they lived off the grid, they were not recluses. They had the conviction that they had something soul changing to share with the world, and that involved them being so inviting and such gracious hosts. Everyone visiting Payne Hollow felt welcome and honored to be called friends. The early group, “Friends of the Hubbards,” reflected our pleasure at being deemed “friends” from the first time we visited Payne Hollow!

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FIG. 5.49 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 5.50 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930s.



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FIG. 5.51 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1940s.

FIG. 5.52 One of my best, watercolor on paper, 1930s–1940s.

146 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

RIVER TOWNS

FIG. 6.1 Malta, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 6.2 Carntown (Kentucky), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

148 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

Bill Ray The whiteness of the clouds stands out against the rich blue of the sky. Added to this canvas are the warm colors of the Kentucky hills and the rich greens and browns on the Indiana shore. We are slowly working upstream from Louisville on our way up to Madison, Indiana. With no paying passengers, we have the boat and the river to ourselves. Once you get up above Twelve Mile Island, it is a river that transcends time. The names of the navigation lights and the long-forgotten steamboat landings converge into a confluence of place, story, and the before. As we work our way upstream, Fourteen Mile Creek, Rose Island, Beggs Landing, Grassy Flats, Jobson, Bethlehem, and Marble Hill all have their own stories to tell. Their past influences our present kinship with the river, just as the stories of relatives gone before shape the understanding of one’s family. Now, with Trimble County Power Station slipping out of sight in the bend behind us, we enter a hallowed stretch of river—their river—that extends up to Broadway Hollow. From there on we start thinking about making our landing at the Madison city front and returning to the present day. But right here, right now, we are in a sacred place, somewhere between the river’s past and the river’s present. For us, the joy of running this stretch of river on an old empty steamboat in the clear autumn air is unparalleled. The memories of it will nourish us for years afterward. A sense of anticipation settles into the pilot house as we pore over the worn Ohio River chart. The binoculars are passed around as we all opine about what we are looking for and how it might look—an argument renewed and necessitated by running this stretch of river only once a year. As the token young buck, I am often the first to make claim on seeing it, but Preston’s, one hollow short, seems to delight in exposing my youth and inexperience. Soon thereafter, on the Kentucky shore, we spy a bit of bottomland and an opening where a clean creek tumbled down the hillside and emptied into the river. The sign stating “Payne Hollow” is no longer there, and the house and Harlan’s studio are only barely visible through the trees. But though it has been decades since their passing, Harlan and Anna are undeniably present. And so, in honoring their lives and their membership in the river and its community, I slowly step down on the whistle treadle. One long and two short blasts renew them to us, and us to them. Within moments it is all over, and Payne Hollow once again slips back into the folds of the steep Kentucky hillside. I am thirty years old, a steamboat mate, and nothing is more real than this stretch of river. Through his prose I sought out and found some of the last vestiges of river culture from the before and immersed myself in them as best I could. Through his artwork I found heaven in the Ohio Valley—timeless yet ever present. It is found in the quiet slipping of my oar under the surface, it is in the sky above and in the patchwork quilt contours of the hills and shore, it is in the drive through the rolling farm country of Trimble County. It has been here all along, and I have Harlan to thank for finding the Ohio Valley worthy of great art, and of a remarkable way of living. “What we need is at hand . . .”

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FIG. 6.3 Hamburg, Tenn, watercolor on paper, 1940s.

150 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 6.4 Portsmouth, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1932.

FIG. 6.5 Portsmouth, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1937.



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FIG. 6.6 Rising Sun, Ind., watercolor and pencil on paper, May 27, 1931.

152 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 6.7 Higginsport, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1930.

FIG. 6.8 Gaysport (Ohio), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1936.



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Mike Oberst I was about twenty-five years old when I first heard the name Harlan Hubbard. Looking back, I was a pretty lost young man, reeling from the recent death of my mother, and still living in my childhood home by the Ohio River that we had shared. I was on an endless search to find the things in life that were REAL. My newfound love of traditional folk music led me to an awakening, especially in the sense of being more aware of the natural world. I took a friend up on his suggestion to read Payne Hollow, but all I found was another book by the same author, Shantyboat. There could not have been a better find for this Ohio River boy. I had grown up with the Ohio, heard the booms and the bangs of the barges from my bed at night, played in the barren tree roots along its sandy banks, and snuck out with friends to have bonfires on the shore as a teenager while watching the moonlight dance on the water. My first job, at fourteen, was as a dishwasher on board a riverboat restaurant near my home. As a kid, I’d had a relationship with the river that had faded, but that love was rekindled by Shantyboat. I began to ride my bike back to the river more frequently. I would take my notepad, and I eventually scratched out some of the first lines to a song that I also titled “Shantyboat.” It was my own Ohio River adventure, inspired by Hubbard’s. Since then, my band, The Tillers, has sung this song and told the story of Harlan and Anna all over the country and overseas, hoping to inspire more folks and to spread the good word of the Hubbard Gospel. Harlan’s reverence for nature and example of finding true happiness through living in harmony with the earth have influenced me greatly, especially in my efforts to build and manage a local community garden. This garden, Paper Street Farm, is near my childhood home, where I still live, and where I have started my own family. If you ever visit the Paper Street Farm Community Garden, you will find a little library box by the sidewalk. Among the books on chicken keeping, permaculture, and random seed packets, you’re sure to find Shantyboat and Payne Hollow, always on hand to change the lives of the next generation.

154 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 6.9 Shank’s Store, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, May 12, 1934.



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FIG. 6.10 Vanceburg, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 6.11 Ashland, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1933.

156 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 6.12 Hanging Rock, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1934.



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FIG. 6.13 Boulders below Hanging Rock, O[hio], watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1934.

FIG. 6.14 Untitled, watercolor on paper, April 1946.

158 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 6.15 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s–1940s.



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FIG. 6.16 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s.

FIG. 6.17 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1930s.

160 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

John Leon While browsing art books at the library, I discovered The Woodcuts of Harlan Hubbard. The prints are masterful, captivating, and inspiring, but I was also intrigued by the brief biographical details included by Wendell Berry and Robert Browning Reed—my introduction to Harlan. Serendipitously, I learned that Bill Caddell would give a lecture and slideshow on Hubbard at the Baker Hunt Institute within the week, which I eagerly attended. (Symbolically, just before the lecture began, a summer storm knocked out the power, and Bill had to present the program, without the slides, in candlelight and the fading light of the day—the spirit of Harlan enveloping us.) Bill’s lecture sealed my love for Harlan and his work and gave me the desire to make my sculpture of him. I had been sculpting portraits of personal mentors of mine (the sculptors Walter Driesback and Jay Bolotin and the saxophonist Jimmy McGary) and of famous artists and musicians (van Gogh, Mississippi John Hurt, and Eric Dolphy, among others) who had inspired me—and who I felt had compelling faces. Harlan Hubbard became one of them. I call them The Big Men—they are about overcoming, the human spirit overcoming the human condition. I believe that each of us can be heroic in facing the fears, desires, pitfalls, and challenges that fill our lives. The deeds of our hearts and hands can allow us to rise above our faults and frailties with dignity and, in doing so, give comfort and inspiration to others. So I give The Big Men (or Women) big, forceful, expressive hands to emphasize their deeds, and well-defined faces to emphasize their character and individuality. The bodies I leave mangled or roughly worked, to show the physical and temporal aspects of our existence, less substantial than the spiritual. I had the face of many Harlans to choose from, but there was one soul, one essence that I strove to capture. Steadfastness, stamina, commitment, kindness, inner peace, and visionary are words I kept in mind as I worked the clay. His hands are oversized, symbolic of physical work, as is the garden hoe he holds. His body I rendered rough and weathered to suggest the forces of nature—the river currents, wind, rain, and erosion that he lived so in tune with. I often think of him in my own struggles as an artist, always regaining faith and inspiration by reading his words and looking at his art.



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FIG. 6.18 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1940s–1950s.

162 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 6.19 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1930s.

FIG. 6.20 Untitled (Cincinnati waterfront), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s.



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BAYOUS

FIG. 7.1 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1950–1951.



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FIG. 7.2 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1950–1951.

FIG. 7.3 Brandon, La., watercolor on paper, 1950.

166 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 7.4 MB Wood, Brandon, La., watercolor and pencil on illustration board, 1950.



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FIG. 7.5 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1950–1951.

168 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 7.6 Barataria, watercolor on paper, 1950.

FIG. 7.7 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1950–1951.



BAYOUS | 169

FIG. 7.8 Donaldsonville, watercolor on paper, 1950.

170 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

Morgan Atkinson I have an image of Anna and Harlan crossing the Ohio River by johnboat. It is cold, around ten o’clock on a January evening. The current is fast, winter fast, but the trip is routine for the couple now well into their seventies. They are returning from a classical music concert at Hanover College. Anna is in the front of the boat. It is handmade by Harlan. She is holding a lantern to light the way. Behind her Harlan rows steadily toward their home on the Kentucky shore, Payne Hollow. The effort the crossing requires makes him happy. I love this image because it captures much that made Anna and Harlan so inspiring to me. Their love of great art is matched only by their embrace of the natural world. The short journey across the Ohio, much like the far longer shantyboat trip they had taken years earlier, illustrates their unique partnership as well as witnessing to their passions—music, the river, independence. All this, all of life, they met with wonder, respect, and full engagement. In his writings Harlan describes their way of life as being on the fringe of society, on the margins. This makes me think of another Kentuckian, the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton. Like the Hubbards, Merton lived an unconventional life. Some would call it crazy. Yet like the Hubbards’, Merton’s commitment to his way of life inspired many. Merton’s friend Daniel Berrigan, the activist poet and priest, described Merton’s approach to life in this way: “Thomas had this image of a monk as being someone on the margins, at the edge, he would say. . . . I thought maybe his work, and mine as well, was not to look upon ourselves as at the edge of anything. We were creating a new center.” The Hubbards too created a new center, a very challenging one, a very necessary one in these unbalanced times. Few can match the rigor or integrity of the lives they chose. It seems absurd to try. But don’t give up! My goal is simply to emulate the honor the Hubbards seemed to give to every moment, every day. As Harlan once wrote, they sought to make a masterpiece of their lives. Today we might call it living mindfully. Anna and Harlan simply lived fully. I made a documentary (Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard) about this remarkable couple because I loved them both, though I never met either. I’m sure I romanticized them and their lives a bit, but I hope some truth came through in the documentary. I found many of these Hubbard truths in some of the people I met along the “Hubbard trail,” people such as Wendell Berry, Flo and Bill Caddell, Paul Hassfurder, John Morgan, Laurie Risch, and Bill Thomas. I see these people, each in his or her way, carrying on the legacy of the Hubbards. None of us can match them, nor would they want us to, but we are all called to find the truest part of our selves and bring it fully to each day. For myself, when I need some inspiration, I think of Anna in the front of the boat lighting the way.

BAYOUS | 171

FIG. 7.9 LA (Louisiana), watercolor and crayon on paper, 1950–1951.

172 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 7.10 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1950–1951.



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FIG. 7.11 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1950–1951.

Dan Price Payne Hollow was a book that changed my life, a bible of sorts on how to escape the rat race. Harlan’s stories filled me with the excitement of creating the most minimalist lifestyle possible, while still maintaining a sense of joy and robust health. In 1990 I found a piece of land by a river in eastern Oregon and began leasing it for a hundred dollars a year. I erected and lived in a canvas tipi there for three years, through the snowy, cold winters. Eventually, I built my current home of the last sixteen years, an eighty-square-foot underground Hobbit Hole with a skylight and tiny door! I have electricity but no running water, also a composting outhouse, manual shower, propane sauna, small garden, and six- by twelve-foot underground studio. The two acres are mowed with a hand scythe and the entire meadow is manicured like a park. It is an indescribable life of beauty and serenity. I owe so much to Harlan and his many books that put me on this path to the simple life. Because I too draw, paint, and write Moonlight Chronicles, and share so many of Harlan’s beliefs, it seems that I may be, in a sense, a reincarnated version of Harlan. I’m sure that we would have been the best of friends. 174 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 7.12 Untitled (Delcambre, Louisiana), watercolor on paper, 1951.



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FIG. 7.13 Crown Point, watercolor on paper, 1950.

176 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 7.14 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, February 1949.



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WESTERN TRIPS

FIG. 8.1 Untitled, watercolor, crayon, and pencil on paper, 1920s.



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FIG. 8.2 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1951–1952.

180 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 8.3 Untitled, watercolor and ink on paper, 1951–1952.

Christy Carr When I was pregnant with my son, I had an epiphany to name him Harlan just days before he was born. In naming him after Harlan Hubbard, it seemed fitting that he would honor not only his father, Dana Goodman, and his dear friend Bill Caddell, but also a whole cohort of back-to-the-landers who have quietly “walked the walk” of living in a gentle, cooperative, connected way with nature. It gives me hope that my children may be inspired to find as good a path as Harlan Hubbard did (and as my daughter’s namesake, Maya Angelou, did) in the menagerie of choices currently present for us. In most meanings of the name Harlan, connection to the land is prevalent and thus also seems appropriate. He has also inspired me personally to strive to make real changes in the way that we live and exist in the Midwest and on planet Earth, so I am grateful that he has a daily presence in our lives.

WESTERN TRIPS | 181

FIG. 8.4 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1951–1952.

FIG. 8.5 Penasco R[iver], N.Mex., watercolor on paper, 1951–1952.

182 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 8.6 Cloudcroft (New Mexico), watercolor on paper, 1951–1952.



WESTERN TRIPS | 183

GREAT LAKES

FIG. 9.1 Untitled, watercolor on heavy paper, April 4, 1946.



GREAT L AKES | 185

FIG. 9.2 Car ferry, Ann Arbor R.R., Elberta, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1952.

FIG. 9.3 Manistee, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1952.

186 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 9.4 Frankfort [illegible word]—2 of channel (Frankfort, Michigan), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1952.



GREAT L AKES | 187

FIG. 9.5 Untitled, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1952.

188 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 9.6 Copper Harbor, watercolor on paper, 1952.

FIG. 9.7 Untitled, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1952.



GREAT L AKES | 189

FIG. 9.8 Lake Michigan, watercolor and ink on paper, June 1952.

190 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 9.9 Untitled (Anna at Lake Michigan), watercolor on paper, 1940s–1950s.



GREAT L AKES | 191

FIG. 9.10 L[ake] Superior, watercolor on paper, 1952.

192 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 9.11 Copper Harbor, watercolor and crayon on paper, 1952.

FIG. 9.12 Eagle River, watercolor on paper, 1952.



GREAT L AKES | 193

Celia Parrott We have wondered why, when over the years our friendship was just a fistful of letters and a handful of visits, the Hubbards still exert such a profound influence on our lives. The land trust that we initiated was our effort to save wetlands from what Harlan called “insistent, clamorous civilization.” When we gather clams or oysters, dig in our garden, or watch the osprey dive for fish, we do it as if Harlan and Anna were nearby, sharing our joy. When we ranched in a remote area of British Columbia, we wrote our most complete letters to the Hubbards, secure in their sympathy with and understanding of why we would leave everything to live such a simple, arduous life. Payne Hollow was not an escape from the world; it was constructed as a thoughtful alternative, a wondrous sanity in the world. It was a place where the whole was more than the sum of the parts. My husband and I kept coming back to the “grace” in their lives. Despite the hours of work necessary to live a self-sustaining life, we sensed in theirs real leisure, relaxation, and time for contemplation. They lived every moment consciously and with careful, thoughtful skill, but the result to observers appeared unself-conscious and lovely and lives in our memories as luminous pictures. If ever Gary and I journey far enough in our spirits to embark on a simpler life, it will be because we knew and learned from and loved Anna and Harlan Hubbard.

194 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 9.13 Houghton Canal, watercolor on paper, 1952.



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FIG. 9.14 Upson, watercolor on paper, 1952.

196 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 9.15 Untitled, watercolor on paper, 1952.



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PAYNE HOLLOW

FIG. 10.1 Path to Payne Hollow (top of the hill), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.



PAYNE HOLLOW | 199

FIG. 10.2 Untitled (path to Payne Hollow, Kentucky side), watercolor on paper, 1950s.

200 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.3 Untitled (path to Payne Hollow), watercolor on paper, 1940s–1970s.

FIG. 10.4 Untitled (path to Payne Hollow), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.



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FIG. 10.5 Untitled (stone chimney at Payne Hollow), watercolor on paper, 1940s–1970s.

202 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.6 Untitled (sand digger across from Payne Hollow), watercolor and ink on paper, 1950s.

FIG. 10.7 Untitled (sand digger across from Payne Hollow), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s–1970s.



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FIG. 10.8 Untitled (view of Payne’s Landing), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s.

204 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.9 Untitled (Payne Hollow view over the garden), watercolor on heavy paper, 1950s.

FIG. 10.10 Untitled (checking the trotline), watercolor on paper, 1940s–1970s.



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FIG. 10.11 Untitled (johnboat at Payne Hollow), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.

FIG. 10.12 Untitled (gravel bar at Payne Hollow), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.

206 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.13 Untitled (gravel bar at Payne Hollow), watercolor on heavy paper, 1947.



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FIG. 10.14 Untitled (Payne Hollow, Harlan’s boats), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1940s–1970s.

FIG. 10.15 Untitled (view downriver from Payne Hollow), watercolor on heavy paper, 1950s.

208 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.16 Untitled (Payne Hollow view, path to the river, gravel bar extension of shore), watercolor on paper, 1947.



PAYNE HOLLOW | 209

Kjell K. Karlsson Some meandering rivers, like the Mississippi, change course, bifurcate, or even make a loop forming an “oxbow lake” with no connection to the river proper. The reflection you are about to read seems to do likewise. I hope you are indulgent toward that. Some twenty years ago I built singlehandedly a very small sailing boat, designed for long-distance sailing. Not that I would ever set sail (yes, one sail) for endeavor, but for the joy of building and to keep an old dream afloat. During those years I also trawled internet antiquarians for travel logs and caught one and a half running meters of books. Building during days and reading in the evenings made for the best kind of sailing, the armchair variety. The trawl mesh, though, was rather small, so there was some strange bycatch. That way, Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat: A River Way of Life surfaced. It resonated so well with me that I searched the internet for everything by and about the author. I found resemblances between us, which made me feel smart and interesting. (Oh, sweet self-deception.) From a website I bought one of his woodcuts and made a beautiful frame from an endangered species of tree. I felt as though I had found a soul mate and friend— hence, hereinafter I call him Harlan. In 2006, as my family planned our Grand Tour of America (we live in Sweden), New York to San Francisco in a rental car, I got the family’s permission to add a pilgrimage to Harlanland. In Frankfort, Indiana, we enjoyed the hospitality of Flo and Bill Caddell and could see a lot of Harlan’s art, especially watercolors, of which I bought two. We also got a guided tour at Payne Hollow by Paul Hassfurder. My affinity with Harlan grew as we walked the steep, wooded riverbank down to the mighty Ohio, thinking our likewise steep grounds back home had a faint similarity. Well, we have no mighty river, but a tiny brook at least. Elated by the visit and the new watercolors in my possession, we drove southwest. The last stop on the Grand Tour was Beverly Hills. There, after introductory phone calls from Bill Caddell, we made a short visit to Mrs. Betty Heasley, daughter of Lucien Hubbard, Harlan’s oldest brother. Lucien Hubbard was a film producer in Hollywood and won an Oscar in the first Academy Awards, in 1929, with Wings, in which a young Gary Cooper was first presented to the movie world. Mrs. Heasley had spent summers in Xanadu, William Randolph Hearst’s strange castle. And now she allowed me and my travel-weary family into her home, so that I might enjoy more of Harlan’s art. 210 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.17 Untitled (Payne Hollow wheelbarrow in garden), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.

First and foremost, I regard Harlan as a gentle person, such as many of us would like to be but few are capable of. Definitely a naturalist, in the sense of the Age of Enlightenment, he saw reason as the source of knowledge. He knew his Thoreau, but he read him critically. I don’t think he cared much for the Transcendentalists in Concord, being a practical and curious man, searching to understand the workings of nature. Early in life he wrote about “doubting even my own faith. . . . There is no good in painting picturesque towns or beautiful scenery or interesting faces or abstract designs. There is one thing to paint—Life.” I can imagine Harlan cleansing his brushes in the river, the color pigments drifting down the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Mississippi and out in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Gulf Stream picks up, finally scattering the pigments among the Azores. And when I feel the end is nigh, I would take my Harlan paintings out of their frames and stagger to my little brook, gently laying them on the water, where they immediately get stuck on the twigs and stones, and I would watch them fade to nothing and the color pigments drift with the brook down the five kilometers to the Baltic Sea, following its slow journey south and around Skåne, then north, passing through the isles of Denmark, and west around Skagen Odde and out in the North Sea, where the Gulf Stream picks up northward and delivers the pigments to the deep Canary Current southward, eventually releasing them to join Harlan’s among the Azores.

PAYNE HOLLOW | 211

FIG. 10.18 Untitled (Payne Hollow view of Plow Handle Point), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.

212 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.19 Untitled (Payne Hollow view of Plow Handle Point), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.



PAYNE HOLLOW | 213

FIG. 10.20 Untitled (Payne Hollow view of Plow Handle Point), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.

214 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.21 Untitled (Payne Hollow view of Plow Handle Point), watercolor on heavy paper, 1940s–1970s.



PAYNE HOLLOW | 215

FIG. 10.22 Plow Handle Point from Payne Hollow, watercolor on paper, 1947.

216 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

FIG. 10.23 Untitled (Payne Hollow view of Plow Handle Point), watercolor on paper, 1940s–1970s.



PAYNE HOLLOW | 217

FIG. 10.24 For Anneke, Christmas 1952, Payne Landing, watercolor on heavy paper, 1952.

218 | THE WATERCOLOR S OF HARL AN HUBBARD

BOOKS AND OTHER RESOURCES

Atkinson, Morgan, dir. Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard. DVD. Duckworks, 2012. Berry, Wendell. Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. ———. Leavings: Poems. Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint, 2010. ———. Sonata at Payne Hollow. Monterey, Ky.: Larkspur Press, 2001. Cunningham, Mia. Anna Hubbard: Out of the Shadows. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Hall, Wade. A Visit with Harlan Hubbard. Lexington: University of Kentucky Libraries, 1996. Harlan Hubbard: The River’s Artist. Exhibition catalog. Jeffersonville, Ind.: Howard Steamboat Museum, 2007. Hubbard, Harlan. Harlan Hubbard: Journals, 1929–1944. Edited by Vincent Kohler and David F. Ward. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky 1987. ———. Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society. 1974. Reprint, Frankfort, Ky.: Gnomon Press, 1997. ———. Payne Hollow Journal. Edited by Don Wallis. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. ———. Shantyboat: A River Way of Life. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1953. ———. Shantyboat Journal. Edited by Don Wallis. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. ———. Shantyboat on the Bayous. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. ———. The Woodcuts of Harlan Hubbard. From the collection of Bill Caddell. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. Junior League of Louisville. Creative Progressions. Exhibition catalog. Louisville: Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation Gallery, 1987. The Life of Harlan Hubbard. Season 5, episode 15, of Kentucky Life. PBS, 1999. Wallis, Don. Harlan Hubbard and the River: A Visionary Life. Yellow Springs, Ohio: OYO, 1989.

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