Sandy Low
Maybe "charisma" isn't quite the right descriptive word, but there was an unforgettable quality about Sandy. He loved people and his hospitality, unfailing backed by Ginny's patience (Virginia Low, Sandy's wife) and cooperation, was non-stop. No one who enjoyed his shad bakes or chowder parties will ever forget them.
He was unquestionably the most important driving force in lifting the New Britain Museum out of the doldrums. Here is just one example (to which I was a witness) of his extraordinary ability to communicate his enthusiasm for American painting.
Mr. Alix Stanley, retired Chairman of Stanley Works, was a lonely widower with no particular aim in life. In less than one half hour, never having met him before, Sandy aroused his interest to such a pitch that he purchased several paintings on the spot, embraced collecting American paintings for the museum as his full time goal, and gave the first large wing to the museum.
The group of enthusiastic donors and workers for the Museum in general who Sandy gathered around him genuinely had fun in the process. An excuse to work with him was all any of them wanted in recompense. He was a remarkable man.
Robert C. Vose Jr.
Vose Galleries
Boston
Oak Bluffs Storm
Landscape - may be Woodstock, Vermont
c. 1935
Martha's Vineyard Fancy
1935
Low Tide c. 1937
(Menemsha)
Black and white photograph (Irving Blomstrann) of watercolor painting
One Way - Village Street c. 1937
(Oak Bluffs Campground)
Black and white photograph (Irving Blomstrann) of water color painting
Menemsha c. 1937
Black and White photograph (Irving Blomstrann) of water color painting
The Boatyard 1946
Upisland House
c. 1960
Early Morning Off Season - Seaview Avenue, Oak Bluffs
c. 1960
City Lights
c. 1960
Birds
c. 1950
_______________
The Museum School
Sandy attended the famous Museum School in Boston from (about) 1925 to 1927. While there, he founded the school's first football team.
Charles Mahoney, wrote about the team in a memoir of that period: “Sandy was very popular with everyone. He had a warm, infectious smile. In 1925 we organized the first, and maybe the only, art school football team. Sandy was our leader and star. With him, our success was assured. When we graduated there were no more football teams at the Museum School.”
Amazingly, while searching the Smithsonian archive one day, I discovered a series of photographs that Charles took of my father and other classmates at the school. Here they are...
This one is wonderful - it must have been a double exposure. Mahoney (right) and Low (center) seem to be reacting to the ghost image of Happy Horrigan - one of the men they palled round with.
Sandy (right foreground) at the famous Museum School auction where, every year, students sold their work.
Sandy and Happy Horrigan on Museum Road, Boston.
Sandy with Ukulele at the school.
Group Photo of a men's life class at the museum.
Front row: Freeman Garniss, Walter Heffron, Laurence Hobbs, Alphonse Shelton and Vitale Terietsky.
Middle row: Charles Richenberger, (unknown) Brown, Sandy Low, (unknown) Weiss, Harold K. Zimmerman and Samuel Thal
Back row: Elliot Laucks and Benjamin Lanza.
Photo by Charles Mahoney.
In this picture Sandy Low is to the far right. The others, in no order, are Mahoney, Horrigan, Burt Coughlin, Tucker Curry, Elliot Laucks and George Runyon.
But more importantly, my father had found his calling. From a letter to his sister Clorinda Lucas, written on March 17, 1924 when he was 19 he said: “Now here's the point. Without a doubt of any kind, the only thing I'll ever succeed in will be the art line. I've been made for it and I can feel it in me.”
In 1927 Sandy graduated from the Museum School . He went on to New York City where he rented a loft at 21 West 35 th Street . While in New York he studied at the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Student League. He spent four years there as a commercial artist.
(all photogaphs above courtesy of the Smithsonian)
_____
Martha's Vineyard Victorian
(somewhere in Oak Bluffs)
c. 1960
Coal Wharf - Edgartown
Lighthouse - Day's End
c. 1955
Sandy was experimenting with using Pollack's "drip painting" technique in a unique way to create representational (as opposed to abstract) paintings
The Last Flight
1958
Sea Spray
c. 1958
Menemsha
c. 1935
Menemsha Nets
c. 1935
Landscape - probably Kent, Connecticut
c. 1935
Sandy and Ginnie Low painting
by Stephen Dohanos
c. 1959
Biography
Sanford Ballard Dole Low was born on September 21, 1905 in Kohala, Hawaii. In 1921, he traveled to attend Loomis School in Windsor, Connecticut where he stayed for a semester, then ran away to sea. In 1923, he was accepted into the Museum School in Boston where he spent four years and organized the school’s first and only football team. In 1927 he went to New York City where he studied at the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Student League and made a living as a commercial artist. In 1930, he married Virginia Hart and moved to New Britain. He started an art school called the Art League. With his colleague, Walter Korder, he painted dozens of murals beginning in 1937 with a series called “The Connecticut Murals.”
Sandy Low was co-founder of the Connecticut Watercolor Society and its President for nine years. He was also President of the Association of Connecticut Artists, an elected member of the Salmagundi Club - the oldest art club in the United States – a member of the American Watercolor Society, the New York Watercolor Club and President of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. One of his paintings was selected to represent Connecticut in the 1939 World’s Fair. Sandy began working in oils, and then became a well known watercolorist. He experimented with acrylics and wood sculpture.
In 1939 he was asked to be a member of the Board of Directors of the New Britain Museum of Art. In the beginning there were only 24 paintings in the collection. Sandy became the museum’s first Director, holding that position until his death in 1964. Under his leadership, the museum became one of the finest small museums in the country, acquiring more than 1500 works of art – many of them recognized today as masterpieces.
Martha’s Vineyard Island, one of Sandy’s favorite places, reminded him of his beloved Hawaiian Islands. He became a consummate fisherman. Every year he gathered a group of artists to paint together for a week. At the end of their stay in Harthaven, the artists displayed their work on the porch of Sandy’s gingerbread house. Most everyone came to drink gin and tonics and old-fashioneds and admire their work.
Sandy’s Vineyard connection led to one of the most amazing acquisitions of a work of art by a small museum – or maybe even a large one - the five Benton Murals which were acquired from the famous Whitney Museum in New York in 1954. Tom Benton was a “regionalist” artist. He traveled through our country to put his finger on America’s pulse. He painted life in the raw - dance halls and cowboys, business tycoons and poverty stricken farmers. Today, he is considered one of our country’s greatest artists. Benton and Sandy became fast friends on the Vineyard which led Benton to help Sandy acquire the murals for the New Britain Museum of American Art.
Flora Bentley, Sandy Low, Tom Benton - at the museum in front of one of Benton's murals.
To be sitting in the company of Sanford Low even for a few hours was like sitting before a glowing fireplace on a chilly evening. One could warm one's soul in the exchange of conversation, humor, and sense of companionship. Even though Sandy has been gone these many years, the warmth remains.
Judith Brown, Editor, New Britain Herald.