Memoir of the Dunn Class
by Charles J. Andres
Editor's note: This memoir is compiled from notes in the artist’s papers, portions of which were used in Walt Reed’s monograph, (Flesk, 2010) and in an article on Dunn written by Andres for Step-By-Step magazine, (March/April 1989). The images in this section are archival photos from Dunn's class at the Grand Central School of Art and Andres' student work painted in that class, included to present a flavor of the kind of paintings that he presented for critique.
Words may prove inadequate to convey to you what it was like to know Harvey Dunn or to get a sense of the group he taught known as "The Dunn Class." It was the most vital, quietly stirring place to be. A relative of Dunn’s, visiting New York City from the West, said rather than see the city’s many other attractions he preferred to sit in on the class because “he liked to be in a room with people who were in pursuit of an idea.”
"All I am doing is carrying on the Howard Pyle idea," Dunn maintained. He had absorbed the spirit of Howard Pyle's teaching and carried it forward as no other. “Good fortune has certainly been mine,” said Dunn, “but I count the greatest piece of it the opportunity that placed me under the instruction of Howard Pyle. He made me unafraid to be dramatic. ‘Throw your heart into your picture and jump in after it,’ Pyle said.”
Professional Illustrators, art directors and painters sensed that Dunn had a spark that they lacked. Donald Lynch, monitor of the Dunn class, said the class was full of professionals. He said he once counted 100 in the class. These men all had an art education at schools like the Art Student’s League, The National Academy, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They could draw and paint beautifully. Why then would they give up their evenings for a night class? Certainly not for a technical tip. It was the approach to making pictures and the sense that they were hearing about an essential ingredient they needed. “Merely knowing your craft will never be enough,” Dunn said. “If you ever amount to anything at all it will be because you are true to that deep desire within you which made you seek artistic expression through pictures. The artist, like the scientist, sooner or later comes to the place where the material possibilities of his craft are exhausted—it is then he realizes there is something greater than his paint. He recognizes this something is an idea which is back of the picture, and that idea is more than a collection of words: it is the spirit and heart of the picture, the pictorial concept, which must be grasped and held as death to a mummy….”
"Throw your heart in your picture and jump in after it."
The pictorial concept was that essential ingredient. The pictorial concept will indicate or suggest or in some manner make clear how to express it. This may sound mystical or spiritual, but since it deals with spirit anything less is incidental or literary. Howard Pyle realized this, and finding the art schools inadequate, he started his own through which N.C. Wyeth, Harvey Dunn, Frank Schoonover, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Stanley Arthurs and others developed what is called “The Brandywine Heritage.” In 1915 when Dunn as a successful illustrator saw little change in the school situation, he along with Charles S. Chapman started in Leonia, NJ what eventually became “The Dunn School.” Dean Cornwell, Lyman Anderson, Harry Wickey, Harold Von Schmidt, Saul Tepper, Mead Shaeffer, Mario Cooper, John Stuart Curry, Amos Sewell and many others came out of this rich tradition. “Howard Pyle did not teach art,” said Dunn. “Art cannot be taught any more than life can be taught. Pyle did however lay constant stress upon the proper relationship of things. His main purpose was to quicken our souls that we might render service to the majesty of simple things.” Dunn said he considered teaching the most important work he had done.
I once asked Dunn: "What's a picture?" To which he replied: "A picture is the simplest, most complete and effective expression of a pictorial idea."
“The question is not ‘How will I express this idea?’” Dunn said. “The question is “How does this idea desire to be expressed?’ Ideas are intelligent, active things which present themselves to you for expression. You can only be receptive and express them as they will be expressed. Ideas are finicky things and will not run in double harness with human opinion. Consider the needs of your ideas and follow thankfully in the paths to which only they can direct you.” Regarding the statement of a student that he had ideas but was afraid to produce them feeling he lacked the ability, Dunn said: “Give your ideas some credit for their intelligence. They will not present themselves to an intellect incapable of executing them. If you get an idea—you can do it.”
Mr. Dunn was able to reach each person in a way that brought out their best. In criticizing a painting Jes Schlicke had done of a barroom brawl that lacked adequate structure, Dunn said, “I could take a 42” canvas stretcher bar and take on that whole crowd single handed.” None doubted his ability to do it, but they also understood and valued the criticism. He said, “It takes a lot to beat me, but until you are willing to be beaten by the picture and do it the picture’s way rather than your way, you will not be successful.” One time he tried to do it his way and found himself passed out on the floor from exhaustion. “Picture making is the hardest work I have ever done,” he said. This from a man who could plow two acres in a day growing up in South Dakota, and who had fought in WWI as a combat artist.
Dunn was capable of great compassion. He had the gentleness of a big man. The lyrical beauty and tonality in his Tristan and Isolde for Steinway and Sons showed his sentimental quality. Tristan’s sword seems to act as a stabilizing, vertical anchor. I was once trying for a similar lyrical effect and had a woman playing piano, with everything consumed by the flow of the music. Dunn said to “paint something ordinary and substantive in there like a chair rail constructed as a good carpenter would build it, then your audience will accept all your fantasy.”
At one point I failed to bring a picture for the Wednesday night criticism. When he asked me why not I replied that I just could not get an idea. “You can’t, eh? Well next week you get here with fourteen pictures.” This order, delivered so emphatically, propelled me to do anything I could possibly think of. At the end of the week, I brought in all I could manage, which was nine pictures in oil about 24x36” in size. I had broken the “log jam” in my head and was so stimulated by the procedure that when Dunn said to bring in nine more the following week I was eager to do it—and did. Then he asked the rest of the class what they were doing since my efforts were dominating the critique. This woke us all up and stimulated the class to greater effort.
Dunn’s was an advanced class. Much technical training was needed first. Dunn’s own ability to render is often overlooked. At one time he was urging me to do “a good still life” and he showed me one he had done of a Donatello bas-relief. I was stunned as I realized I was looking at a canvas painted in full color and not at the sculpture itself. No doubt some of this training came from his time with Pyle, who had his students draw in charcoal drapery from their imagination which showed evidence of its material—cotton, silk, linen, wool. He would place a white table against a white wall and put a white egg on a white plate and have them paint it in full color. Once when a friend in the Dunn class, Steven R. Kidd, visited Pyle student N.C. Wyeth, he showed Kidd a still life he had done of a big bottle on which he had so accurately painted dust that when Kidd tried to wipe it off Wyeth roared with laughter.
Dunn did not make us do these Pyle exercises, but when the model would arrive and try out various poses to reveal themselves in an attractive manner, Dunn would have them assume the most ordinary pose and then face us and say: “It is up to you to make that the most interesting thing in the world by the way you paint it.”
Dunn believed a picture could be painted only once. He did not believe in doing it in detail first on a small scale and then repainting it large. Dunn’s “sketches” were extremely simple and gestural, only indicating the direction of the idea. Pyle’s sketches followed this practice as well. Dunn painted at arm’s length, standing with the virility of a boxer or a fencer, holding a full bristle brush. His canvases were occasionally very heavy, causing him to say, “If it fell off the easel it would go through the floor to the cellar.” While this was an obvious exaggeration, I asked him why he painted so thickly to which he responded, “I paint them as thin as I can.” He kept at it until it was right no matter how long it took or how much paint.
Those of us lucky enough to study with Harvey Dunn knew him as a guide and friend. The first word which comes to mind is gratitude. “Gratitude to the Maker above all for the privilege of seeing the sun cast shadows,” as Dean Cornwell one said. I would add: Gratitude for the most enriching, stimulating and rewarding experience of a lifetime. We were a dedicated brotherhood attempting to paint good pictures worthy of the grand ones produced by Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell and Harold Von Schmidt. Our zealotry resembled the "band of brothers" Henry V spoke of in Shakespeare's play. In our business suits of the day we were in quest of that Holy Grail of spirit with Dunn as our mentor. Dunn demanded we dig out of the depths of our being whatever of beauty and appreciation of life we had. It was difficult, and some found it too difficult and tried to find an easier way. We were not always successful, but in those occasions when we followed an idea and got ourselves out of the way, true achievement was possible. Dunn said: “When we are successful we are not conscious of how we did it—we were just around when it happened.”
Many like myself have never known anyone to be his equal as an artist, as a teacher, or as a man. I found in him a kind and wise counselor, a warm sensitive and appreciative person of great strength and integrity. I was so lucky he found something in me worth bothering with.
In the words of Harold Von Schmidt, “HE was a teacher.”
When I was called up for active duty in 1941, I had written to him from a ship in the North Atlantic expressing my thanks and appreciation for all he meant to me as I thought I was not going to see him again. He replied that "it is so natural to love those with whom we are associated in the study of the deep things of life, for we cannot be so associated except there be a one-ness of spirit. You remember I have said that we love a man when we find ourselves in him. I have found my own youth and aspirations in you and you have found your own aspirations and expectations in me--perhaps. But do not endow me with qualities that I do not possess--it is embarrassing and imposes such a responsibility upon me." As you can perceive, he was modest as well as adamant in his convictions.
The memory of my time with Mr. Dunn is still strong. Approaching 90 years of age I observe my intensity of feeling for the man as undiminished; 55 years after that time we worked together, it is as strong as ever.
