The St. Albans Historical Museum on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011 officially unveiled its new Civil War murals with the artists’ son in attendance.
Ron Levenson speaks about his late father, Sol, who painted the three Civil War murals that now reside in the St. Albans Historical Museum. One of those is visible behind him.
The three, four-by-8-foot, murals depicting a battle between North and South, was the final work of Sol Levenson, whose son, Ron Levenson, was at the museum to see their new home.
The murals, on loan from Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital in Lebanon, N.H. now hang from the ceiling of the Robert G. Bliss Sr. Memorial Auditorium.
Levenson said his father, who died in 2005 at age 96, would always introduce him as “my little boy.” The younger Levenson, adding, “What the hell, I was only 50.”
Sol Levenson’s artwork is visible behind Elisabeth Gordon, art program director, of Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital.
Levenson, who for 25 years was a professional photographer before moving into a new career, said he only began to fully appreciate his father’s work after his father’s death.
Sol Levenson was perhaps the last of the artists who were hired by the federal government during the Roosevelt Administration’s New Deal era. The Works Progress administration hired artists nationwide.
Levenson also was a three-time winner of a Fullbright Scholarship and “a national treasure,” said Elisabeth Gordon, arts program director at Dartmouth Hitchcock.
The hospital was looking for a suitable home for the murals and settled on St. Albans, which saw the northernmost action of the Civil War: the St. Albans Raid on Oct. 19, 1864.
Gordon first met the artist almost 10 years ago when she took the hospital position in Lebanon. She said Levenson was a wonderful artist and storyteller and that patients took great pleasure in watching the daily progress on his paintings.
She said Levenson created art at the hospital four days a week and taught art to inmates at a nearby prison one day a week.
Nine of Levenson’s murals hang at Dartmouth Hitchcock and represent the best of his father’s work, said his son. Gordon invited area residents to visit the hospital to see them.
The murals now in St. Albans are unique, said Gordon, because they provide insight into the artist’s mind. He died before completing them and they bear the outlines in chalk of additional features he planned to add.
Levinson said his father honed his talents as a realist in an era of abstract art. Since his father’s death he has begun to paint, and said, “I didn’t realize how much you had to know about reality to be a realist. … I’ve really come to know how much he had to know to do what he did.”
The guests were greeted by Warren Hamm, the museum’s president, who reminded the audience that they were in the same room in which men enlisted for service in the Civil War and where women volunteered to make bandages to ship to the battlefields.
Hamm said he could think of no better place for the murals and Gordon and Levenson agreed.
“The Levinson family is really thrilled that they have finally found a home where they will really be appreciated,” said Ron Levenson.
The murals will be at the museum through 2014 and the 150th anniversary events related to the St. Albans Raid.
By Gary Rutkowski
St. Albans Messenger Staff
