Home: Exploring the Life & Legacy of Loring W. Coleman

BY ERICA LOME, Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Associate at the Concord Museum

On a cold winter’s day in 1982, Loring Wilkins Coleman (1918-2015) embarked on one of his favorite activities: driving around Massachusetts to look at old barns and houses. On the recommendation of his son Andrew, Coleman went to the town of Sterling in search of a “superb grouping of buildings,” and struck gold. “It was indeed one of the most handsome New England farms I had ever seen,” recalled Coleman. It took ten days to complete a detailed pencil drawing of the farm buildings, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Coleman finished his painting of the view. By that point, all but one of the original buildings had been demolished and Coleman used his imagination to color in the details he remembered. He called the painting Home. “The title speaks for itself, for the painting represents the old farmhouses that still remain in New England and in my thoughts,” wrote Coleman in his autobiography, published only a few years before his death in 2015. Coleman’s paintings reflect a fascination with, and a sadness over, the changing landscape and ephemeral architecture of an agrarian Massachusetts.

Home, 2003

All photos courtesy of Concord Museum Collection; Permissions Courtesy of the Family of Loring W. Coleman

In 2017, the Concord Museum received an anonymous gift of forty-seven works of art by Loring Coleman. A selection of the works is now on display in a new exhibition, Home: Paintings by Loring W. Coleman, which will run through January 31, 2021. This exhibition celebrates the work of an accomplished artist who had a strong Concord connection and who explored New England with a sense of wonder and authenticity.

Loring Coleman spent most of his childhood in Chicago, but some of his fondest memories were of his grandmother, who lived in Concord. Her house, Tanglewood, was on 200 acres overlooking the Sudbury River. When he was thirteen, Coleman moved to Concord and began attending Middlesex School, where he showed great promise as an aspiring artist. At Middlesex, Coleman found a teacher and mentor in Russell Kettell, who taught his students to keep an open mind when it came to art that was not strictly “traditional.” Kettell, a national authority on American antiques, was integral to the 1930 building project that put the Concord Museum on the map as a destination for history lovers.

After graduating from Middlesex in 1938, Coleman continued to train as an artist and began teaching classes in Vermont and Boston. During his service in World War II, he eventually became head of the art department at Fort Lee, producing training aids and other visual materials for the U.S. Army. After the war, Coleman returned to Concord to resume his teaching and painting. He taught for 27 years at Middlesex School while exhibiting his work across the country. During this time, he was also an Academician of the National Academy of Design and a member of the American Watercolor Society, Allied Artists of America, Guild of Boston Artists, New England Watercolor Society, and Salmagundi Club.

Loring Coleman’s paintings reward close looking. Drawn from real-life subjects in and around Massachusetts, they are often monumental in size and incredibly detailed. Though he trained in oil painting, Coleman primarily worked in watercolor, a technique he taught himself. Watercolors let him play with tone, texture, and abstraction; they also required precision and speed. When he could, Coleman painted plein air, or outdoors, capturing his subjects at different times of day and under diverse weather conditions. As with many an artist before him, direct observation of nature was preferable to the camera’s lens. Inside the studio, he consulted sketches and preliminary watercolors when putting together the final artwork.

The Four Winds Are the Ringmaster

All photos courtesy of Concord Museum Collection; Permissions Courtesy of the Family of Loring W. Coleman

Coleman’s paintings are composites of familiar subjects, including old barns, houses, or roads, set within dramatically scaled, and even haunting, compositions. Dilapidated buildings, bare trees, peeling paint, and rusted vehicles are common features. Yet there is beauty amidst the wreckage. The passage of time is an ever-present theme in his work, and this ephemerality is reflected in his art. Take, for example, Coleman’s description of Spectral Barn (1995).

“As I began my drawing, a light drizzle soon changed to a very fine snow, almost like salt. The effect was startling. The barn gradually began to fade away, enveloped by the grey mist, so that the sky and barn became the same color. Only the faintest outline of the barn remained, accented by a few barn windows. I wondered at the value change in the grey-green stone wall as it receded. The ground was covered with frozen leaves. They too receded, lightened and disappeared in the distance. Only the striking dark tree and the black opening of the shed doors seemed to hold the composition together.”

Spectral Barn, 1995

All photos courtesy of Concord Museum Collection; Permissions Courtesy of the Family of Loring W. Coleman

Coleman’s paintings are also love letters to the people and places he cherished as a young man, and which no longer remain. On his painting New England Classic (1985), Coleman recounts a “quintessential New England farm” in Groton, Massachusetts, whose owners would come outside each day to watch him sketch. But no humans are represented in the painting, only a German Shepherd (“from quite another farmyard”). Instead, the house appears lonely and abandoned within the snowy landscape.

New England Classic, 1985

All photos courtesy of Concord Museum Collection; Permissions Courtesy of the Family of Loring W. Coleman

Hugh Fortmiller, editor of Coleman’s autobiography, praised the artist’s ability to conjure striking contrasts: “sunlight and shade, lights and darks, summer and winter, sun and snow, life and death, idealism and realism, sentiment and pragmatism...” These juxtapositions are evident in the works on view in this exhibition, which strike a balance between the mundanity of his subjects and the beauty of their depiction. For art historian Henry Adams, his most vivid memories of Coleman were from the art classes he took at Middlesex School in the 1960s. Coleman taught his students the fundamentals of drawing and painting, but he also showed them how to appreciate art and enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. “Mr. Coleman made students feel that somehow, somewhere inside themselves, they had a touch of the miraculous,” recalled Adams in his foreword to Coleman’s book.

Coleman’s other legacy is with the Concord Art Association, where he was on the Board of Directors for over 25 years. Founded by Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts (whose paintings are also in the collection of the Concord Museum), the CAA was the first place Coleman ever exhibited: in 1936, when he was eighteen, he submitted two small oil paintings. Today, visitors can view works of art at Concord Art, just up Lexington Road from the Concord Museum, in their “Loring W. Coleman Gallery.”

Loring Coleman continued to paint while working a full-time job, teaching on the weekends, and raising a family. His last work was completed in 2008 before a hemorrhage in his right eye forced him to put down his brush. This incident prompted Coleman to record his life’s story and rekindle the memories which inspired his craft, all of which is recounted in Loring W. Coleman: Living and Painting in a Changing New England Landscape, published by Hard Press Editions in 2011. Even with his diagnosis, Coleman remained optimistic that he would paint again, for he believed that making art was his life’s purpose.

Home: Paintings by Loring W. Coleman opened November 6th at the Concord Museum. The Concord Museum is grateful to the sponsors of the exhibition: Middlesex Savings Bank; Elise and Pierce Browne; Kate and Robert Chartener; Middlesex School; Powers Gallery; Three Stones Gallery.

Erica Lome is a museum and public history professional, currently serving as the Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Associate, sponsored by the Decorative Arts Trust at the Concord Museum. She recently completed her PhD in history at the University of Delaware.