Beaver Meadow

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, lower right: PAUL SAMPLE 39. Label on frame: From Paul Sample / Hanover N.H.

Label

Paul Sample, Dartmouth Class of 1920, was artist in-residence at the College from 1938 to 1962 and lived in Norwich, Vermont. This landscape depicts the small settlement within the rural township of Norwich known as Beaver Meadow. One of Sample’s most admired works, it is an eloquent expression of the aesthetics and ideals of the regionalist movement of the 1930s. Its lean, decorative composition, stripped of extraneous detail, recalls popular illustration, caricature, and American folk art traditions. In it, Sample celebrates qualities associated with a stereotypical Vermont village: the harmonious relationships between humans and nature, as reflected in the tidy fields and farm buildings nestled in the hills, and among members of this apparently idyllic settlement, whose sense of community is strengthened through weekly worship. Yet the picture also evokes an undercurrent of unease, suggested by the rigidity of the figures and their detachment from one another.

From the 2019 exhibition American Art, Colonial to Modern, curated by Barbara J. MacAdam, Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art

Course History

WRIT 5, Expository Writing, William Craig, Winter 2014

ITAL 1, Introductory Italian I, Scott Millspaugh, Spring 2014

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Katie Hornstein, Jane Carroll, Winter 2015

GEOG 24, American Landscapes and Cultures, Mona Domosh, Winter 2016

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2016

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2016

Exhibition History

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Art, Colonial to Modern, Israel Sack Gallery and Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-September 12, 2021.

American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-April 12, 1998.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in conjunction with the exhibition Looking for America: Prints of Rural Life from the 1930's and 1940's, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 3, 1994-March 5, 1995.

Image and Memory: Picturing Old New England, Smithsonian, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, April 2, 1999- August 22, 1999.

Images of the Vermont Landscape 1776-1976, Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, July 15-October 15, 1976.

In Residence: Contemporary Art at Dartmouth, Friends and Owen Robertson Cheatham Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 18-July 6, 2014.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 5, 2001-October 9, 2005.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 2, 2009-November 2, 2009.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 26, 1996-June 22, 1997.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 28, 1998-February 21, 1999.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 15, 2005-May 8, 2007.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-January 16, 1998.

Paul Sample, Montshire Museum of Science, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 27-June 1, 1976.

Paul Sample, The Picture Gallery, Saint-Gaudens Memorial, Cornish, New Hampshire, July 2-August 1, 1949, no. 12.

Paul Sample: Ivy League Regionalist, The Lowe Art Museum, Universiy of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, January 18-February 26, 1984.

Paul Sample: Painter of the American Scene, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 4-August 28, 1988.

Recent Paintings by Paul Sample, Native of Kentucky, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, March 24-April 22, 1951.

The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, March 29, 2016-June 30, 2018.

Publication History

Truettner, William H. and Stein, Roger B., Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 233 pp., ill. pp. 110 and 124. c. 1999

Humanities, The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, July/August 1999, ill. cover and page 2

Carl Little, Paintings of New England, Camden: Down East Books, 1996, ill. p. 76

Kim King Zea, Beaver Meadow Chapel on National Register of Historic Places, Museum Muse, Volume 2, Number 1, January-March, 1995, p. 1

Jay Stevens, Keeper of Vermont Character, Dublin, N.H.: Yankee Magazine, March 1992, ill.p. 81

Upper Valley Magazine, 1991

U.S. Air Magazine, "A Sample of Talent", page 15

Vermont Life Magazine, "Paul Sample, A Regionalist Painter Views Vermont",Volume XLIII, No. 2, Winter, 1988, South Burlington: The Lane Press, ill. p. 59

Upper Valley Community Land Trust, Community Lands or Annual Report, or both, 1988/1989

Robert L. McGrath and Paul F. Glick, Paul Sample: Painter of the American Scene, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1988, no. 32.

1990 Festival of the Arts: Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, Vermont, May 26-October 14, 1990. Illustration, page 19.

American Artist, "Paul Sample", April 1942.

Elsie Sniffen, Around the Horn to Norwich, The Norwich times, Fall 2000, Volume 4, Number 1, White River Junction: Dewey's Mills Media, 2000, ill. cover, p. 16.

Justus Bier, "Paul Sample: A Native of Louisville get a One-Man Exhibition," The Courier-Journal Magazine, April 22, 1951, cover illustration.

Sheila Barrett, Catalogue Designer, Harvard University Press-Fall/Winter 2001 Publication Announcement Catalogue, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001, 89 pp., Cover illustration.

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, General Editor, Marsden Hartley, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002, 334 pp., color ill. p. 178.

Elsie Sniffen, The Good Men Do: A Tribute to the Folks of Beaver Meadow Community, Hardy, Heck, Moore and Associates, 2003, 29 pp., ill. p.21(B&W) and Cover(Color).

Donna M. Cassidy, Marsden Hartley: Race, Religion, and Nation, Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2005, pp. 43-44, ill. p. 43.

Barbara J. MacAdam, Marks of Distinction, Two Hundred Years of American Drawings and Watercolors from the Hood Museum of Art, Manchester, Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 2005, pp. 16, ill. p. 16, fig. 8.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 102-103, no. 78.

Mary Cooper, New England as America: Jose Clemente Orozco's Anglo-America, The Collegiate Journal of Art, Spring 2008, Volume IV, 2008, pp. 82-96, ill. p. 93.

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.4, Fig.7.

Recent Paintings by Paul Sample, Native of Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky: J.B. Speed Art Museum Catalogue No. 124, Art Resources of Kentucky Series, 1951, no. 1.

Michael R. Taylor and Gerald Auten, In Residence: Contemporary Artists at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2013, ill. p. 33, no. 15

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 156, ill. plate no. 87.

Provenance

The artist (1896-1974), Norwich, Vermont; given to present collection, 1943.

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