Ghost of puzzles past, part 2
When I was five, my grandparents visited and gave me two puzzles from Eaton Press, this one and a coastal lighthouse photo scene. While I was able to finish the latter, I would always give up on this one less than halfway through, no matter how many times I tried. Eventually, pieces went missing and the puzzle was thrown away. I loved the scene for its snake-like vines and startled felines, and its thick, purple-backed pieces.
A few years ago, a friend from the German puzzle forum posted a photo of this puzzle, the first time I had seen it in about 30 years. I was especially surprised because Eaton Press was largely a local company, based just a few towns south of Billsville, and I wondered how someone in Europe had managed to obtain a copy. I told her about my memories of this puzzle, and she sent her copy to me. Today, I put in the final piece and feel a sense of victory, over a puzzle that had been a nemesis in my youth.
With the non-grid piece format and the limited palette, the puzzle proved to be very hard for its size, even now, taking me almost 3 hours to complete.
The scene itself is by Victor Joe Gatto, and Eaton provided some information about the artwork on the box bottom. It reads as follows:
The painter of "Jungle Scene" or "Tigers in the Jungle," Victor Joseph Gatto, is a member of one of the art world's most exclusive groups - the genuine American primitive. Gatto's world was limited only by his imagination, and he has left us with his own magnificent interpretations of historic disasters, biblical scenes, well-known fables and even heaven.
Born in Greenwich Village in 1894, Joe Gatto was once described by Sydney Fields in the Daily Mirror as a man who was "never loved by luck." His early years consisted of little more than a series of odd jobs such as stock clerk, washing milk cans, movie extra and finally plumber's assistant. This period also included a six-year stretch when Gatto fought as a featherweight in New York's metropolitan arena. After 32 bouts, he decided the "sport" was too crooked and sought the physically less demanding occupation of steam-fitter. Gatto's first fight earned him a broken nose and $1, which he reportedly gave to a blind woman who was selling shoestrings outside the arena.
Whether it was the fact that Theodore Roosevelt visited the school in which Gatto, age 8, was enrolled and noted that Joe was the "best drawer in his class" or that illness forced Gatto to look for less strenuous work in 1940, a time when local artists were displaying their canvases in abundance in the Washington Square area - and fetching what seemed to Gatto to be enormous prices - that spurred this scrappy little man to pursue his interest in painting is not known. In any event, in his late 40's, this 5 foot, 120 pounder took his dime-store brushes and began turning out a series of primitive paintings which are now acknowledged as very significant contributions to American primitive art. A 1944 exhibition at the Charles Barzansky Gallery was reviewed by Howard Devree who wrote, in The New York Times, "If his technical facility more nearly lived up to his imagination, Victor Joseph Gatto could hardly escape being called an American Rousseau. Knights in a tournament, Cain and Abel in a primeval setting, Indian fur traders amid totem poles - so Gatto lets his fancy take wing. A Niagara scene is made literal through the presence of a vendor of view glasses. His most ambitious and successful picture is a herd of wild horses in the rocky pillars. Among our so-called primitives, Gatto ranks well up."
Gatto stuck to his favorite subjects - jungle animals, farm scenes, knights in shining armor and well-known New York City landmarks, painting them with childlike literalism and dreamy imagination. Despite the fact that he had never seen such scenes and his only contact with animals was at the Bronx Zoo, his canvases began to attract the interest of important collectors. Gatto's works found their way into the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of the City of New York and have been purchased by important primitive collectors such as Somerset Maugham, Laurence Rockefeller, Henry Luce, Huntington Hartford, Rosalind Russell and John Steinbeck.
In spite of Victor Joseph Gatto's successes, he seemed to prefer a life style of spartan solitude to that of Greenwich Village's artist colonies. Gatto was much more at home in a dingy, furnished West Side apartment where he could prop up his canvases on an upholstered chair and laboriously layer on his brilliant paints for hours on end. Although his paintings sold for as much as $1,000 apiece, the little artist was a man who gave his money to family and friends as fast as he earned it. When he died in Miami in 1965, Joe Gatto was living mainly on Social Security payments.
At a time when primitive collectors reluctantly admit the species is doomed, the Joe Gattos, the Grandma Moses and the Morris Hirshfields take on an even greater importance. The world is closing in on the primitive artist as well as the rest of us and, for primitive art, progress is self-defeating.
Completed in 2 hr., 47 mins. with no box reference. Total pieces: 503. 19.9 secs./piece; 180.7 pcs./hr. Difficulty rating: 2/10. Special thanks to Sylvia.
Ghost of puzzles past, part 2
When I was five, my grandparents visited and gave me two puzzles from Eaton Press, this one and a coastal lighthouse photo scene. While I was able to finish the latter, I would always give up on this one less than halfway through, no matter how many times I tried. Eventually, pieces went missing and the puzzle was thrown away. I loved the scene for its snake-like vines and startled felines, and its thick, purple-backed pieces.
A few years ago, a friend from the German puzzle forum posted a photo of this puzzle, the first time I had seen it in about 30 years. I was especially surprised because Eaton Press was largely a local company, based just a few towns south of Billsville, and I wondered how someone in Europe had managed to obtain a copy. I told her about my memories of this puzzle, and she sent her copy to me. Today, I put in the final piece and feel a sense of victory, over a puzzle that had been a nemesis in my youth.
With the non-grid piece format and the limited palette, the puzzle proved to be very hard for its size, even now, taking me almost 3 hours to complete.
The scene itself is by Victor Joe Gatto, and Eaton provided some information about the artwork on the box bottom. It reads as follows:
The painter of "Jungle Scene" or "Tigers in the Jungle," Victor Joseph Gatto, is a member of one of the art world's most exclusive groups - the genuine American primitive. Gatto's world was limited only by his imagination, and he has left us with his own magnificent interpretations of historic disasters, biblical scenes, well-known fables and even heaven.
Born in Greenwich Village in 1894, Joe Gatto was once described by Sydney Fields in the Daily Mirror as a man who was "never loved by luck." His early years consisted of little more than a series of odd jobs such as stock clerk, washing milk cans, movie extra and finally plumber's assistant. This period also included a six-year stretch when Gatto fought as a featherweight in New York's metropolitan arena. After 32 bouts, he decided the "sport" was too crooked and sought the physically less demanding occupation of steam-fitter. Gatto's first fight earned him a broken nose and $1, which he reportedly gave to a blind woman who was selling shoestrings outside the arena.
Whether it was the fact that Theodore Roosevelt visited the school in which Gatto, age 8, was enrolled and noted that Joe was the "best drawer in his class" or that illness forced Gatto to look for less strenuous work in 1940, a time when local artists were displaying their canvases in abundance in the Washington Square area - and fetching what seemed to Gatto to be enormous prices - that spurred this scrappy little man to pursue his interest in painting is not known. In any event, in his late 40's, this 5 foot, 120 pounder took his dime-store brushes and began turning out a series of primitive paintings which are now acknowledged as very significant contributions to American primitive art. A 1944 exhibition at the Charles Barzansky Gallery was reviewed by Howard Devree who wrote, in The New York Times, "If his technical facility more nearly lived up to his imagination, Victor Joseph Gatto could hardly escape being called an American Rousseau. Knights in a tournament, Cain and Abel in a primeval setting, Indian fur traders amid totem poles - so Gatto lets his fancy take wing. A Niagara scene is made literal through the presence of a vendor of view glasses. His most ambitious and successful picture is a herd of wild horses in the rocky pillars. Among our so-called primitives, Gatto ranks well up."
Gatto stuck to his favorite subjects - jungle animals, farm scenes, knights in shining armor and well-known New York City landmarks, painting them with childlike literalism and dreamy imagination. Despite the fact that he had never seen such scenes and his only contact with animals was at the Bronx Zoo, his canvases began to attract the interest of important collectors. Gatto's works found their way into the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of the City of New York and have been purchased by important primitive collectors such as Somerset Maugham, Laurence Rockefeller, Henry Luce, Huntington Hartford, Rosalind Russell and John Steinbeck.
In spite of Victor Joseph Gatto's successes, he seemed to prefer a life style of spartan solitude to that of Greenwich Village's artist colonies. Gatto was much more at home in a dingy, furnished West Side apartment where he could prop up his canvases on an upholstered chair and laboriously layer on his brilliant paints for hours on end. Although his paintings sold for as much as $1,000 apiece, the little artist was a man who gave his money to family and friends as fast as he earned it. When he died in Miami in 1965, Joe Gatto was living mainly on Social Security payments.
At a time when primitive collectors reluctantly admit the species is doomed, the Joe Gattos, the Grandma Moses and the Morris Hirshfields take on an even greater importance. The world is closing in on the primitive artist as well as the rest of us and, for primitive art, progress is self-defeating.
Completed in 2 hr., 47 mins. with no box reference. Total pieces: 503. 19.9 secs./piece; 180.7 pcs./hr. Difficulty rating: 2/10. Special thanks to Sylvia.