Artist lived in North Adams, studied in Williamstown

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    Two of the paintings displayed as part of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute’s exhibition “Noble Dreams Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930,” are by an artist who lived for 10 years in North Adams and took art lessons in Williamstown.     That artist, Henry Siddons Mowbray, lived in North Adams because his adoptive father — actually his uncle — was George Mowbray, a chemist and expert on explosives, who blasted the Hoosac Tunnel through the Hoosac mountain range. The aspiring young artist took art lessons in Williamstown. And subsequently, when he was well established, he married, successively, two North Adams sisters.     H. Siddons Mowbray, as he signed his paintings, painted many smaller works, or easel paintings, but he went on, after 1890, to concentrate on murals, and these ornament venues such as the Pierpont Morgan Library and the University Club in New York City.     The two paintings on view at the Clark are The Calenders (1889), loaned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Rose Harvest (1887), loaned by the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, N.C.     Another easel painting, titled Le Repose, can be seen locally at the Park-McCullough House in North Bennington, Vt.     This artist with local ties was born Henry Siddons in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1858 to English parents. His father, who worked for a branch of a British bank, died soon after his son’s birth. And the boy was left an orphan when his mother, who had brought her young son to the United States to live with her sister and her sister’s husband, was burnt to death when an oilcan exploded as she poured its contents on a fire at the home of friends in Brooklyn, N.Y.     The boy was sent to Titusville, Penn., where he was adopted by his aunt and uncle. And that uncle, George Mowbray, used trinitroglycerine, an electric blasting fuse, and an air drill — all technological innovations at the time — to engineer blasting the tunnel through the mountain. Before his arrival here, in 1869, 195 lives had been lost in the attempt. His success at accomplishing the previously impossible, achieved the tunnel’s opening in 1873, shortening the distance between Boston and Albany, and improving the prosperity of North Adams.     During his youth in North Adams, where he moved at age 11, Mowbray attended Drury Academy, and was taught by Mary Hathaway, who noted his interest in art. The academy was located at the site of the present Conte Middle School. He spent a year at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but his interests were artistic rather than military.     During the winter of 1877-78, Mowbray took twice-weekly art lessons in Williamstown from A.C. Howland, a New York artist and member of the National Academy of Design. In his memoirs, Mowbray recounted that Howland’s studio was in an unused room in an old museum building of the college, the walls of which were lined with cabinets containing specimens.     “I never as long as I was taking lessons with him did more than copy his landscapes,” Mowbray later wrote.     An article in Art & Architecture magazine from July-August 1980, noted that A.C. Howland not only had years of formal training, but encouraged his pupil to study in Europe, as he himself had done.     Mowbray left for Paris in 1878 to further his career. Mowbray had not, in fact, found North Adams a congenial incubator for a budding artist. The only artist he remembered meeting there was the cartoonist Thomas Nast, who once gave a lecture in town. He recalled, with whatever degree of accuracy, that “a flat, deadly blanket of commonplace covered everything.”     In Paris, where he lived from 1878 to 1883, he studied at the Atelier Bonnat, he travelled, and he took his work for criticism to the noted artist Jean Léon Gérôme, whose exotic Near Eastern scenes were much admired. Gérôme’s The Slave Market and The Snake Charmer are perhaps the most striking images in the second room of the exhibition at the Clark.     In less than two years, Mowbray had a painting exhibited at the Spring Salon of 1880, and in 1883, two more. That spring he returned to the United States, settling in New York, but by 1885, he also had a studio in North Adams.     His paintings and drawings, many of them with Orientalist themes, were in demand. A work titled Attar of Roses was listed as the loan of North Adams industrialist A.C. Houghton for an exhibition of his work at the Knoedler gallery, at 355 Fifth Ave., in February, 1897.     In North Adams, he became reacquainted with an old schoolmate, Helen Amelia Millard, and married her in 1888. After her death in 1912, he married her younger sister, Florence Gertrude Millard, in 1915.     Beginning in 1886, he taught life drawing and painting at the Art Students League in New York and occasionally at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s classes. He also did illustrations for magazines such as Harper’s Monthly.     He also, according to his granddaughter Terry Eddy, interviewed by telephone from Connecticut, was friends with painters William Merritt Chase and John Singer Sargent, and with architect Charles F. McKim, of the prestigious firm of McKim Mead, White. Increasingly influenced by the Italian Renaissance, Mowbray turned to mural paintings, and through his friendship with McKim, received numerous commissions for important buildings. His first, in 1892, for decorating the Fifth Avenue mansion of Collis Huntington with allegorical depictions of concepts or disciplines such as Music, Literature, Tragedy, Comedy, Electricity, Astronomy, Painting, gained him a then-substantial fee of $7,000. Subsequently, he executed murals for the library ceiling of the University Club, designed by McKim Mead, White. He painted a mural on the ceiling of the east room of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and executed a small frieze in the appellate courthouse at the foot of Madison Avenue.     He also painted murals for the Federal Building in Cleveland and on the ceiling of the Gunn Memorial Museum in Washington, Conn., where he lived after 1898.     He also painted murals at St. John’s Church in Washington, Conn., and at St. Michael’s Church in Litchfield, both designed by architect Ehrick Rossiter.     He was director of the American Academy in Rome from 1903-04. In the early 1920s he returned to easel paintings, with scenes from the life of Christ, but his later years — he died in 1928 — were spent on mural commissions and administrative work for the American Academy in Rome and as a member of the National Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.     Showing a viewer through the exhibition at the Clark, guest curator Holly Edwards praised Mowbray’s technique, noting particularly the fresh, glowing skin of the girl in the foreground. A contemporary Scribner’s Magazine article about illustrators of the period, by Mowbray’s friend William A. Coffin, praised his simple arrangements and the gracefulness of his figures, a style different from that of his mentor, Gérôme, who filled his canvases with figures and architectural backgrounds. In contrast, Mowbray’s works focus on the central figures.     The Calenders — the title refers to wandering dervishes — said Edwards, is “totally contrived,” in that women listening to the high-hatted dervishes are “clearly American,” wearing kimonos rather than Middle Eastern garb, and “sprawling in an American kind of way.”     In her Art & Architecture story of 1980 on Mowbray as an easel painter, Gwendolyn Owens wrote that his easel paintings, which had been all but eclipsed by his murals, “seem more interesting and far more original than the artist’s later large-scale decorative schemes.”          Editor’s note: Informaiton provided by Linda Neville of North Adams, formerly curator of the North Adams Historical Collection at the North Adams Public Library, was also used in writing this story.          
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Friday Front Porch Feature: A Charming House Like New

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff

The home prior to renovations.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Are you looking for a newly renovated home with great space? Then this might be the perfect fit for you!

Our Friday Front Porch is a weekly feature spotlighting attractive homes for sale in Berkshire County. This week, we are showcasing 100 Autumn Drive.

This three-bedroom, two-bathroom split level was built in 1965 and is 1,396 square feet on 0.32 acres.

The house was completely renovated recently. It includes a one-car garage, and comes with appliances including a dishwasher and stove/oven, and other major appliances.

The house is listed for $359,500.

We spoke with owners Michael Zeppieri and Chris Andrews, who did the renovations. Zeppieri is an agent with Alton and Westall Real Estate Agency.

What was your first impression when you walked into the home?

Zeppieri: I purchased this home to do a full renovation flip and saw tremendous potential in this mid-century split level home that had not been updated since it was built in the 1960s, in a great North Adams neighborhood.

 

Andrews: The house was a much different house when we first purchased it in 2022 (photo attached is from about 2010.)  The interior was painted all in dark colors and we brightened it up with neutral colors. The transformation makes you feel like you are in a totally different house.  

 

 

What were the recent renovations, any standout design features?

 

Zeppieri: The house has had a complete reconfiguration including new kitchen with high-end appliances, ceramic tiled baths, hardwood floors, new windows and roof ... just to name a few.  All a buyer has to do is move in and enjoy.

 

Andrews: Yes, we renovated the entire house.  New windows, new roof, all new custom black gutter system, new blacktop driveway, hardwood floors were installed through out the house. New kitchen and bathrooms as well as painting the exterior and interior of the house.  New paver patio in the back yard.

 

What kind of buyer would this home be ideal for?

 

Zeppieri: The buyer for this home could be a first-time homebuyer or a retiree ... the location is close to attractions in North Adams ... and the property is located in Autumn Heights, which is a very small residential development with several long-term owners.

 

Andrews: This home is truly ideal for a variety of buyers. Whether a first-time homebuyer, a small family or even someone looking to downsize from a larger home.

 

 

What do you think makes this property stand out in the current market?

 

Zeppieri: The location, price and move-in condition of this home make it a true market leader in the North Adams Market.

 

Andrews: This house is completely renovated and in a desirable location of North Adams. The natural light in the home really makes the interior pop. And with all the upgrades the home stays quite cool in the summer months.

Do you know any unique stories about the home or its history?

Zeppieri: This home was built for the Gould family in 1969 and they lived there till 2010. It was always a family home during that time in which the Goulds had two children ... and Virgina Gould managed Mohawk Forest Apartments and was a very active resident of North Adams.

 

Andrews: Built in about 1965.

 

What do the current owners love about this home?

 

Zeppieri: As the current owner it was a fun project to transform this home and get it ready for its next adventure with a new family to enjoy for many years.

 

Andrews: No one has lived in the house since we purchased the home. The new owners would be the first to live in the house since the renovations have been completed.

 

 

What would you say to a buyer trying to imagine their life in this space?

 

Andrews: I would suggest seeing the house either on a sunny day or at twilight to really get a vision of how special the home feels.  

 

You can find out more about this house on its listing here.

*Front Porch Feature brings you an exclusive to some of the houses listed on our real estate page every week. Here we take a bit of a deeper dive into a certain house for sale and ask questions so you don't have to.

 

 

 

 

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