Henry Rodman Kenyon did not exert himself to seek fame, and, as a result, public awareness of his career and work is nearly nonexistent’ Yet Kenyon was a dedicated painter who produced a large body of work, the bulk of which has only recently come to light. Kenyon’s inherent modesty was mixed with a strong dose of contrariness, and the combination served to leave him in the shadow of his contemporaries and friends who achieved fame in their day and are today undergoing revival and re-evaluation. Kenyon’s paintings are small oil sketches that were from his point of view adequate enough, but because of this they tended to be overwhelmed by larger paintings in an exhibition. Interestingly, in recent exhibitions where works by Kenyon were included, his sure sense of design, sensitivity of color, and handling of brush showed that he competed very well: many of the larger paintings nearby were, despite their saturated color, weaker images.’ For the most part, the paintings Kenyon sold were to those people who expressed a real liking for them. If he perceived their interest as anything less than genuine, the transaction would never be concluded. He signed his works only if he exhibited or sold them, and rarely was anything dated. It was, therefore, of great value to find in one place a significant body of paintings that ranged over the whole of Kenyon’s career as well as an old suitcase filled with drawings, sketchbooks, and miscellaneous letters that served not only to give a sense of chronology to his artistic career but also to reveal it as nothing else could.

Henry Rodman Kenyon was born on March 29, 1861, at Centerville, Rhode Island, to Mary (Rodman) and Charles Dake Kenyon. Kenyon’s father was a successful merchant of the Quaker faith, and when the future painter was of age he was enrolled in the MosesBrownSchool, a prestigious Quaker institution in Providence. Here he would have had a rather guarded education, since the students were sheltered from such vain customs of this world as music, drama, and the fine arts. Clearly this goal of the school was not successful in Kenyon’s case, for upon graduation he enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. He studied there for three years (1879 to 1882), then packed his bags and like so many other aspiring American artists left for Europe. This abrupt change for the twenty-one-year-old Kenyon was the initiation of a twenty-year period when the artist plied the Atlantic Ocean again and again to immerse himself in the culture of Europe. When he first arrived in Paris he enrolled at the Academie Julian, where he painted under the direction of Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger.’

Kenyon’s many trips back and forth between the United States and Europe, as well as his travels about once there, make it difficult to pinpoint when and how often Kenyon attended classes at the Academie Julian, but it is clear that he thought of himself as a student as late as 1889, when he declared he would leave school for good.’ This event is somewhat deceiving, for Kenyon was comfortably off and could have prolonged his “student” years as long as he wished. In 1884 another American painter came to Paris for the first time and, like Kenyon, enrolled at the Academie Julian. It was probably here that Kenyon first met Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922). This meeting was important, for the two men were to become lifelong friends. It was through Dow that Kenyon was introduced to Ipswich, Massachusetts, which became his home and the ultimate source of his creative output. The only comment A. W Johnson, Dow’s first biographer, makes about this long and close relationship is a curious one:

Kenyon was an older man and he had been a student in Paris before. These two men met and found in each other a common bond of idealism. Henry Kenyon was of the Quaker faith, gentle, sincere and of profound though quiet convictions. It was to him that Dow turned in his many perplexities and found understanding and sympathy. These problems of the young artist do seem very minor ones to us of another generation. No doubt they seemed quite insignificant to the mature Dow, but at that period they were very real and very vital in his living.⁵

One is left to guess what these problems were, but it is likely that Kenyon became a confidant to the moral conflicts that arose from the puritanical Dow experiencing for the first time the libertine art student’s life and the worldly environment in Paris.

Between May and December of 1885 the two were staying in Brittany at the famous pension of Marie-Jeanne Gloanec at Pont-Aven, France. During this period Kenyon worked diligently and produced more than thirty Breton landscapes that he brought back with him to the United States. On March 10, 1886, at Hooper’s ArtGallery in Providence, Rhode Island, Kenyon opened his first major exhibit; it consisted of thirty-three paintings. A newspaper clipping preserved among the artist’s effects dated March 11, 1886, noted that in the first day ten paintings had been sold. By the exhibit’s closing thirty-two of the thirty-three had been sold, netting the artist $2,000.⁶ His efforts were handsomely rewarded, and a major step toward a financially and critically successful career as a painter had been taken. The clipping lauded Kenyon’s exhibit:

The work is broad in handling, but yet restful, and while the coloring is brilliant it does not offend by its brilliancy. All but one of the pieces are French scenes…. Two of the most taking pictures are a Shrimp Girl, which is a very striking thing and grows on one the more one looks, and a street scene in a French town, which is excellent. The largest canvas, Fog Coming in at Raganesse, is a taking picture, while for quiet scenes, Mill at Pont-Aven and Rainy Morning, another French village scene, are very fine. The critic writing these words is unknown, but the comments entice one to want to see the paintings; alas, none of them has come to light.

Riding high on this success, Kenyon returned to France in September 1886. He went directly to Brittany, where he stayed at Concarneau, making numerous short trips from there to visit Dow at Pont-Aven. Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was also in Pont-Aven at this time, but there is no record that Kenyon met him; nor, for that matter, was he in the least influenced by this colorful presence. Dow, on the other hand, did meet Gauguin, and years later in a letter to Kenyon he reminisced about the Post-Impressionist who was by then quite famous: “When I hear of Gauguin I can see him thumbing his nose at [Otto] Wigand and me. I can’t see anything in his work or Van Gogh’s that isn’t in the most ordinary Japanese print.” This was a rather flip statement by a man who had made a deep study of Japanese art, the principles of which gave direction to his teaching, his writings on art, and his own painting.

The American painters in Brittany stuck very much together, and if there was one who was considered a leader among them at this time it was Thomas Alexander Harrison (18531930). When away from his Paris studio Harrison set himself up at Concarneau. It was here Kenyon was staying in 1886, and from this conjunction Kenyon produced a small undated pencil sketch of Harrison working at his easel (figure 1, page 14). Seen from the back he appears to be at work out-of-doors, for he wears a hat set at a rakish angle with his sleeves rolled up as if it were a hot sunny day. It is a lighthearted record of this much admired plein-air painter.

Although everything seemed to be going Kenyon’s way, events were about to conspire to place him at a point in time whereby he was to be a participant in and survivor of a tragedy. At the end of October he closed his studio at Concarneau and left for Paris where he spent a week visiting the Salon. With paintings and sketches that were the result of fifteen months of effort packed, he left on November 5 for a week in Holland before his planned departure for America on the twelfth. However, on the morning of his intended departure he was taken severely ill and was confined to bed for a week. His departure was, as a result, postponed until the morning of November 19, when aboard the Dutch steamer W A. Scholten he left the port of Rotterdam. That night in a fog ten miles off the coast of England the ship collided with another and sank in twenty minutes with extensive loss of life.8

In later years Kenyon related to his family that he had made his way up to the bridge of the ship as it proceeded to list more and more precariously. There he found himself in the company of the ship’s captain and was a witness when he shot himself just before the ship went under. The captain was listed among the missing in the newspaper accounts, but there was no mention of his suicide.9 Kenyon, in writing his own account to a friend shortly after the event, also omitted this gruesome detail1° Whether Kenyon censored his original account or in later life embellished it will never be known. He spent nearly six hours in the cold channel waters and was listed among the missing. He was not reported as saved until one week after the sinking. The New York Times in reporting this incident included the following: “The father of Henry Kenyon, who had gone to make inquiries about the vessels of the line, not being certain that his son had been on the Scholten, learned that the name of his son was among those reported saved yesterday…. The old man departed rejoicing. Kenyon is an artist. “I’

The effect this had on Kenyon the painter-beyond the fact that he lost all he had produced that year-seems to have been nonexistent. His desire to be in Europe obviously overshadowed any misgivings he might have had for travel by sea, for in April 1888 Kenyon sailed for France. This time he was in the company of Dow and Dow’s fiancée, Miss Minnie Eleanor Pearson 12 This party went immediately to Pont-Aven upon their arrival and resided there from May to July. They departed just as Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard were to meet there.

Miss Pearson, who saw a great deal of Kenyon in 1888 and 1889, apparently did not think much of him, for she wrote her parents early in 1889 saying, “Mr. [for Henry] is singularly lacking in ambition and says his only desire is to paint nice bits of color! Bah!-His father is a man of means and an uncle stands ready to furnish him with funds and he is crazy.-It is far from being the most disturbing thing in the world that he stinks of money-.”13 Both artists were working hard on major works that they were to submit to the jury of the 1889 Salon. It was a period of much trepidation, and the fact that Kenyon was at work on a major painting does not totally bear out Miss Pearson’s assessment of him. However, her comments are not without insight, for they read prophetically. It must be remembered that very often the friendships between two single men can be strained by one of the pair making a commitment outside the relationship-such as Dow made for Miss Pearson-and that such friendships often diminish with marriage. She was an ambitious woman with ambitions for Dow, and her “Bah” might well have been inspired in part by jealousy.

Kenyon’s entry in the Salon exhibit of 1889 was a painting entitled A Foggy Morning, Venice, which received no critical acclaim; Dow’s painting won an honorable mention. Kenyon did not go unrewarded, however, since he sold his painting. It was an important year in Paris, for the World’s Exposition was being held there, and it drew people from all over the world. The paintings in the Salon exhibit were seen by an international crowd numbering in the thousands; among them was Augustine Jones, who bought Kenyon’s painting and subsequently gave it to Kenyon’s alma mater, the MosesBrownSchool. The painting has since disappeared from the school, and there is no record of its whereabouts. Kenyon did produce many studies of Venice, all without date; since they are full of sun and very colorful they are of little help in surmising the appearance of this foggy Salon entry.

With the acceptance of his painting in the Salon of 1889 Kenyon decided he was no longer a student and ended his association with the Academic Julian.” In August the trio of Dow, Pearson, and Kenyon returned to the United States, whereupon Dow introduced Kenyon to Ipswich, Massachusetts. Dow must have spoken to many American artists while he was in Europe about his home town, for by 1890 there was a small artists’ colony there.” Kenyon referred to the site as a “regular Pont-Aven,”16 and the group found a wealth of what they considered to be “French views.” The IpswichRiver was spanned by the oldest stone arch bridge in the United States, and the town that flanked the river’s banks must have made the parallel to Pont-Aven inevitable.

As they had done in Paris, Kenyon and Dow shared a studio in Ipswich. A photograph dated 1890 (figure 2, page 16) shows the interior of this studio with Dow wearing a tam and Kenyon strumming a guitar. It was clearly a shared studio, for in another photograph taken at the same time there is on the easel a small version of Dow’s Salon painting Au Soir (Ipswich Public Schools, Ipswich, Massachusetts), and the repousse platter that appears in both photographs belonged to Kenyon. The two men obviously did their best to make this studio as much like the one they shared in Paris as possible. Copies of one or both of these photographs are to be found in the effects of both Dow and Kenyon, clearly souvenirs of their close relationship.”

Sometime in the 1890s, with a goodly number of paintings in hand of subjects both in Europe and in the Ipswich area, Kenyon had an exhibit at the galleries of the Providence Art Club that was sensitively reviewed:

Mr. Kenyon’s work… is not of the kind that artists and connoisseurs only enjoy, the varying aspects of nature which he has fixed on his canvases, are as easily recognized and enjoyed by the untrained as well as by the educated eye, and although many of his pictures show that, like all young painters who have had the advantage of European training, he has paid homage to the oft-depicted beauties of the Italian.

Kenyon was back in Europe in 1897 and 1898, as dated sketchbooks reveal, spending much of his time at Etaples in northern France and in the area around Dordrecht in the Netherlands. He found Holland a “happy hunting-ground,” as he put it, for the artist. His pencil sketches are often daring and sure compositions that tease one into wishing there were a painting derived from them. If any do exist they have not come to light; the scenes of windmills in France and Holland that are included in this exhibition, although exquisite in color and paint handling, are more conservative in composition.

In the summer of 1899 Kenyon married the proficient pastel portraitist Caroline A. Savary (1864-1943), and in keeping with his now-to-be-expected wanderlust departed with his bride for a working honeymoon trip to Europe that lasted more than a year. The inevitable sketchbook was ever at hand, and sketches and notes let us know that in January 1900 he was taking bicycle trips about England. They also spent time in Holland.

By 1901 Kenyon and his wife had settled at Ipswich in a house he had built that came to be called Riverbank House, for although it faced a lane off Labor-in-Vain Road, the rear of it overlooked a bend in the Ipswich River very close to where he had painted a decade before. Except for a trip to the Netherlands in 1908, Kenyon modified his wanderlust to traveling about New England. He would often rent the Mary Ann Cottage at Wilton, New Hampshire, to paint the color and hills of autumn. Trips to Ogunquit, Maine, resulted in some thickly painted, nearly expressionistic images of the coast. He also spent some time at the Griswold house (today the FlorenceGriswoldMuseum) at Old Lyme, Connecticut, where one of his studies is still to be found mounted on the wall of the dining room.

How often or when exactly Kenyon was at the Griswold house is not known, but his presence there is indisputable. He also must have been acquainted with many of the painters that formed the “School of Lyme” such as Childe Hassam (1859-1935) and Willard Metcalf (18581925), as well as those who had also settled in or frequented the Ipswich area like Theodore Wendel (1859-1932). Kenyon was a friendly man, but he preferred to be alone and did not go out of his way to exploit his friendships with other painters.

Ipswich was now at the heart of Kenyon’s artistic output. Here he settled into a painterly descriptive style of landscape painting that was a mixture of BarbizonSchool and Impressionism. He did not theorize on the use of arbitrary color or experiment with daring compositions. He did not seek to jerk the gallery-goer’s head around by any of those means; in fact, he was disdainful of large paintings that were, to his way of thinking, competing for attention in the marketplace. What he sought was a sincerity and a sureness of touch and vision that reflected his desire to know but also to escape. He did so by identifying with nature, not in any mystic or symbolic way but honestly so that he could capture his bits of the world. The life he lived from this time on was quiet and relatively sedentary compared to his early career. The major events of his life for the next two decades were to be the paintings he painted-subtly strong works in all seasons without fanfare and with little acknowledgment.

The marshes that occupied so much of his interest have a rich subtlety of color that shifts and changes according to the season or time of day. Kenyon tramped about them on foot or rowed his “yacht” through the tidal streams seeking out and capturing with infinite variety the soft mood of this transitional world between land and sea with its subtle give and take. Always direct, honest, and sensitive, Kenyon’s paint is in the service of what is seen. A smudge of paint becomes the haze of tree branches seen from a distance. In the spring it is a soft green, in winter a purple or rust. Thick impasto is used for billowing clouds, reflections, or snow. These are the painterly touches that those who know paint delight in, for it has an evocative power beyond their descriptive abilities, and Kenyon clearly understood this fact and exploited it. Nothing is tightly rendered so that it is detailed and frozen. The sketch with its painterly freedom gives a sense of life through the balance of broad forms and the broken touches and tints of color that evoke an evanescent flux, giving the whole a vitality reflecting the life behind the image.

Kenyon became an easily recognizable figure to the residents of Ipswich as he passed through town making his way to some lonely painting site, for he perpetually wore what might be called his plein-air uniform consisting of old battered hat, suit jacket, puttees to protect his lower legs, and his painting kit strapped over his shoulder. A slightly out-of-focus and scratched photograph from the family album shows him fitted out in this fashion with a very proper tie at his neck and a hankie showing in his breast pocket (figure 3, page 18).

Despite his recognizability, Kenyon took no part in the community life of the town. He protected his privacy with care but was, at the same time, a kindly man who was fast friend to a select few. An indication of his gentle and giving nature is found in a story told about him. For a number of days when Kenyon was out painting, thinking he was quite alone, a young boy would suddenly pop up, watch him at work for a while, and then disappear. Obviously he was being followed from site to site. Kenyon did not let it bother him, for he had a warm affinity with children and often delighted in having the children of relatives stay for a time with him and his wife in their Ipswich home. One day there was a knock on the door, and the very same boy stood on the stoop looking up asking to see Mr. Kenyon. When he came to the door, the boy announced that he had come to purchase a painting. Kenyon asked how much he had to spend and was told twenty-five cents. Kenyon’s reply to this was that he just happened to have a twenty-five-cent painting, and the boy left the proud owner of a Kenyon. This direct approach was Kenyon’s preferred way of making sales, for then he could decide if he liked the person or not, and if not, there was no way one could prize a painting from him.

Kenyon had inherited enough money that he never had to worry about making a living whether by his painting or any other means. He used his modest but comfortable income to provide himself with a pleasant home where he could live, paint, entertain his few painter friends, and suffer now and then the more social life that his wife pursued. There was no ostentation in this, just as there was none in any other aspect of his life, for, in keeping with his art, modesty was an integral part of his privacy. The contrariness that he exhibited toward the art world was apparent in his dislike of much that the twentieth century had to offer. He deplored the telephone, finally having one installed only to please his wife; even then it was installed in her room, and he would not touch it. He also avoided the automobile, but here again Caroline bought one for herself and became something of a terror on the road. Kenyon eventually came to let her drive him to distant painting sites, but walking and bicycling remained his favored means of seeking out motifs.”

At the age of fifty-two Kenyon began to concern himself with his fame-or lack thereof: in 1913 he exhibited a painting in the National Academy of Design Exhibit in New York City. In so doing he joined the company of Childe Hassam, Daniel Garber (1880-1958), George Bellows (1882-1925), Cecilia Beaux (1863-1942), Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939), and others exhibiting there that year. Kenyon continued to exhibit one or two of his small paintings every year for the next five years. He also had an exhibit of his works in 1914 at the Saint Botolph Club in Boston. This “flurry” of exhibition activity on Kenyon’s part slowed down after 1918, with works shown occasionally here and there 19

His efforts were too little and probably too late if he had hoped to make a mark with his small paintings, but he had probably reached an age at which he felt he had to see if the art world would take note of his work. He had painted all his life and had achieved a direct sensitive vision that continued despite his efforts to win acclaim. His contrariness continued to deny him what he tentatively sought, for the scale of his works still caused them to be intimidated by larger neighbors. Then, too, his prices were often seen as ridiculously low, which made many wonder why and therefore to shy away from them. In spite of this he did have sales when he made the effort to get his work out and about.

Kenyon’s drawings and paintings are of lonely moods. His early work that depicted Brittany, Venice, and Holland might well be dominated by buildings, but rarely do people figure in them; and where people are depicted it is inevitably as a lone shepherd or field worker who serves to point up a sense of lonely isolation. The wealth of images that Kenyon produced in and around Ipswich and in his travels about New England in the twentieth century reveal a sensitivity to rare fleeting moods in nature. On a scrap of paper he copied out a quotation attributed to Ando Hiroshige: “Enter into nature and forget her. Depict nature and transcend her.” Kenyon, who had his painter’s feet firmly planted on the ground, never let transcendence carry him into non-objectivity, but his private lifelong immersion in nature resulted in works that depict and subtly express his own feelings-which is perhaps, in keeping with Kenyon’s nature, a modest transcendence, one which no doubt made him take note of the quotation.

At the age of sixty-five Kenyon was taken once again by the wanderlust that had dominated the early decades of his career and in 1926 set out to see for the first time the southwestern and western states. Stopping in New Orleans in January he caught pneumonia and died suddenly. Little note was made of his death, and Kenyon’s wife was left with a legacy of hundreds of unsold paintings. She held what must have been a sad memorial exhibition of his work in her garage and continued as best she could to promote his work. In the 1930s she was selling his paintings through the Rental Gallery at the Dayton Art Institute, occasionally signing the unsigned works herself. As her eyesight became worse, she managed to add a second signature to those already signed. Upon Mrs. Kenyon’s death in 1943 the remaining Kenyon paintings in her possession were sent to her niece. In the ensuing years occasional attempts were made to interest galleries in his work with only occasional success.²⁰

Kenyon’s works are of a size that causes them to be private treasures, and for that very reason most of them have remained in private hands. The few that entered public collections in many cases were later deaccessioned or simply disappeared.” Because of the tenacious belief of the inheritors of Kenyon’s estate in the worth of the artist’s work, his paintings and drawings have been preserved. After the death of Kenyon’s wife Caroline in 1943, the works were passed on to her relatives and were subsequently packed with less than appropriate care. Some of the paintings were framed and adorned the walls of the various houses the family lived in, but the bulk of the collection remained in boxes that were shunted from basement to garage over decades with a mixture of awe and frustration. Except for this dedication and the recent work of a couple of scholars, Kenyon would be little more than a lost footnote.” After having had the unique opportunity to pore over this collection as well as Kenyons in the hands of various private collectors-to sit as I have with one painting after another propped up before me two to three feet away in good light and to be carried away again and again by Kenyon’s sureness and vision-it is beyond question that Kenyon is deserving of more recognition than he has heretofore received.

Whether he was in England, France, Italy, Holland, or New England, Kenyon always observed and recorded scenes in sketchbooks, on odd scraps of paper, and on small panels. It was as if he had found a way to keep the world in his pocket or in his kit. Kenyon’s sincere intimate confrontation of nature, standing before it as he did, was profound in its quiet conviction that nature was there to be known and loved. This oneness with nature was a characteristic firmly rooted in the nineteenth-century painting of the BarbizonSchool and Impressionism, for Kenyon was not a romantic but a sincere Yankee. As a result, his paintings would never dissolve into formlessness or exploit the arbitrary. He sought, instead, to know his world through paint. This was not a modern thing for him to do in an art world that was progressively seeking what was modern, often at all costs. In spite of this Kenyon’s honesty still rings true, and in this period when American Impressionism is undergoing a re-evaluation, Kenyon’s small, quietly wonderful paintings, which mark a trail through the seasons of some forty years, deserve a place.

Notes

1. I wish to thank Mr. Arnold Klein of Arnold Klein Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan, who first brought Kenyon to my attention; the late Mr. and Mrs. Russell C. Chapman, who shared with me their Kenyon memories and paintings; and Dr. and Mrs. Walter Rothwell, who kindly allowed me to examine the Kenyon paintings in their possession. The College of Arts and Letters at MichiganStateUniversity supported my research by supplying me with travel funds, for which I am most grateful. I must, with much gratitude, also thank Mrs. Elsie Reinert of the Ipswich Historical Society, who shared with me her intimate knowledge of Ipswich and Arthur Wesley Dow, and who introduced me to the residents of the area who had known and remembered Kenyon. Ms. Judith Ocker, gallery manager of Childs Gallery in Boston, has taken an active interest in Kenyon and has been of valuable assistance to me. Ms. Marjory Dalenius, gallery secretary of the Providence Art Club, willingly searched out information on the club’s early activities.
2. Two exhibitions in the summer of 1987 included works by Kenyon: an exhibition of Ipswich painters held at the Ipswich Historical Society (John Heard House), Ipswich, Massachusetts (May 20-October 31, 1987), and the exhibition Rediscoveries in Essex County Art held at the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts, to inaugurate the opening of the Frederick A. and Jean S. Sharf Gallery.
3. The number of American painters enrolled in the Academie Julian in the 1880s was large and included Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951), John Leslie Breck, Theodore Butler (1876-1937), Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Roland Hinton Perry (1870-1941), Robert Reid (1862-1929), Edmund Tarbell (1862-1938), John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902), and Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933). See also note 2, page 28, below.
4. This information is related in a letter from Minnie Eleanor Pearson, who was Arthur Wesley Dow’s fiancée, to her parents early in 1889. The correspondence between Minnie Pearson and her parents between 1888 and 1889 is on file with the Arthur Wesley Dow papers housed in the Ipswich Historical Society, Ipswich, Massachusetts, and on microfilm, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
5. Arthur Warren Johnson, Arthur Wesley Dow, Historian, Artist, Teacher, Ipswich, Mass.: Ipswich Historical Society, 1934, p. 33. It should also be noted that Johnson’s reference to Kenyon as an older man is incorrect. Kenyon was born in 1861 and Dow in 1857.
6. Frederick C. Moffat, Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts [National Museum of American Art], 1977, p. 137, note 61.
7. Letter from Dow to Kenyon dated Jan. 12, 1915, private collection.
8. Kenyon left in his own hand an account of his adventure, which appears below in its entirety and without editorial comment since it is a fascinating tale and a revealing view of Kenyon himself. The letter, written from his parents’ home in Centerville, Rhode Island, was dated December 15, 1887, and was addressed to Benjamin Tupper Newman. The letter is from the Benjamin Tupper Newman papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C. Another lengthy account dealing with Kenyon’s experience was published in The Providence Sunday Journal, December 11, 1887. Newspaper reports of the total number of lives lost range from 130 to 167.

   My Dear Newman,

   Now that the calf has been killed and eaten and I have met every one in the village and shaken hands and told my story til I think of getting a chestnut bell for myself, It begins to quiet down a little and I have time to answer the letters from my friends. I never knew before I had so many. Don’t know if you have seen the various conjectures and surmises as to my fate in the papers they make me very tired. All I regret about the affair is the anxiety and worry my mother and father have gone through with. When I arrived at Sandy Hook a telegraph man was the first to tell me of my father’s running all over New York for news of me. Never dreamed it would be published in United States that is a list of lost. Well I realize as well as anyone I have had a most beautiful add. [adventure:] but can’t afford to do so every year. it is too expensive. Have seen my letter published as far west as Ohio don’t know if it was in the Maine paper so will give a brief statement-were run into about eleven and sunk in 20 min I was in my stateroom but not asleep, so felt/heard the shock which was very slight in my part of the boat that did not get up although heard shouting and soon it became still downstairs then the steward rushed in an aroused me I dressed fully put on my coat stuffed extra hat and some flannels into my pocket and rushed on deck if you can imagine a ship like you came over in with her bows under stern out and the starboard rail under water and tipping so fast you could see it so you heard the condition in ten minutes after collision the only thing that worried me was the awful screaming of the women and little children all hanging to each other on the forward deck. I saw right away it was to everyone for himself so didn’t try to save anyone In fact all our chances were equal as all had life belts The boats were lowered and a grand rush made for them I thought they were going to be swamped so stayed on deck and went with the ship the suction was not very strong and came right up and swam out of the crowd. but every once in a while some strong able bodied man would try to climb on my back never saw such fear or loss of all presence of mind. In half on hour the Elso appeared a steamship carrying a load of lumber I came near being run down by her so swam for all I was worth to get out of her course and then the tide was so strong I couldn’t get into her again saw men holding ropes over the sides and that the boats were being lowered got hold of a small stick of timber which got my shoulders up out of the water and was as good as a boat-I tell you it cheered my heart for my clothes and coat had got so soaked I was drinking every time I went up a wave. I drifted away to stern and lost sight of her but gave the Indian warwhoop occasionally and at last was hauled and thrown into a boat and have an indistinct recollection of having more piled on me being whacked by oar handles and pushed under seats and got up the side of the Elso myself but can’t remember much how there I caught my foot on the lumber and fell full on my face so next day when I came to count bruises don’t know whether I got them in water or from the fall. Sat around all night in my wet clothes and didn’t catch cold and was in good condition next day. The curious part was I had been sick in Paris two weeks with most awful cold the real old Pont Aven kind was in bed all the time and couldn’t eat and was run down to the last degree Richardson took care of me the very first day I could walk Rich took me to the Station and I started for Rotterdam and went on board the Scholten next morning and in the evening the accident occurred so I was fearful in Dover it would come back but have never had a bit of it since. The people of Dover were very kind and gave those that needed clothing and money, in three days we took the boat back to Rotterdam and were kept at the best hotel private parlor dining room etc. and sailed on the Calam the week after. I regret I saw so little of Holland as what I did see of it was full of motives [motifs?] and had the weather been warm should have stayed and made good my losses. Saved nothing but the clothes on my back. Had sent home by mail the little photo of Max. (the bust)

   [Here he crossed off a bit to do with sending money to replace other photos and things he had lost.]

   On the whole think I will mail-till I see you then can tell better what I want Haven’t made any plans for Winter am at home taking it easy. Should be very happy to come up next summer a while don’t know anything to prevent how shall go to Boston to see Dow’s ex [exhibition?] when it comes on. Morriss left Pont Aven same time I did went to England quite a surprise to us all. Shorty has a big class in Paris doing very well. Cowles and Durand has thrown up his school says he “don’t want any more Americans” Harrison at work on his big twilight. Give regards to Mrs. Newman hope she left off that habit of wearing leather sabots. Love to that kid expect he is growing like a weed

   Your friend Henry R. Kenyon

9. Accounts of this tragedy were widely reported on both sides of the Atlantic: The New York Times, November 21 and 22, 1887, and The London Times of the same dates.
10. See note 8.
11. The New York Times, November 26, 1887, p. 8, col. 4.
12. Johnson, op. cit., p. 46.
13. Letter from Minnie Pearson to her parents dated January 23, 1889, Arthur Wesley Dow papers, Ipswich Historical Society, Ipswich, Massachusetts, and on microfilm, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
14. Ibid.
15. Johnson notes that Walter Gilman Page and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son, along with Kenyon, were painting Ipswich motifs in 1890, p. 51.
16. Moffat, op. cit., p. 40.
17. The second photograph is illustrated in Moffat’s study of Dow, p. 41. There is some confusion over the date of these photographs and the location of the studio. The copy of this photograph in the Kenyon papers identifies it as Kenyon’s Paris studio, which the two men shared in 1889; Moffat identifies it as Dow’s studio in Ipswich, 1890.
18. Much of this information was kindly given to me by the late Mr. and Mrs. Russell C. Chapman, who for so long preserved Kenyon’s paintings and treasured his memory.
19. In 1920 and 1923 Kenyon exhibited single works in the Copley Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and in December 1924 he exhibited eight paintings at A. and E. Milch, Inc., New York, New York. In 1922 Mrs. Kenyon initiated an arrangement with the Rental Gallery at the Dayton Art Institute to handle Kenyon’s paintings. She was in Ohio to carry out a commission to do portraits in pastel of the Ohio governor’s children. For some years after Kenyon’s death his widow maintained the arrangement with the Dayton Art Institute.
20. John P. Kelp Gallery, Houston, Texas, and currently the Arnold Klein Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan, and Childs Gallery, Boston and New York.
21. The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, has in its collection November Twilight, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches, and the Dayton Art Institute possesses March in November, oil on pressed paper board, 9¹/2 x 12 inches. The Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, owns Marshes with Haystack, oil on pressed paper board, 12 x 18 inches, and Snow Scene, oil on pressed paper board, 10¹12 x 14¹/2 inches.
22. Moffat in his catalogue Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), published in 1977 to accompany the Dow exhibit at the National Collection of Fine Arts, pointed up the close relationship between Kenyon and Dow but with little favor shown Kenyon. More recently David Sellin in his catalogue Americans in Brittany and Normandy 1860-1910, PhoenixArt Museum, 1982, illustrated a Kenyon (number 43) and gave a short paragraph entry to him, p. 162.