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A Collection of 200 Drawings
Artist was drawn to Country Homes
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette
He slept in barns and relieved the pain of rheumatism with alcohol.
He spoke broken English and died at the Montgomery County almshouse in Yosts in 1900. And he left a collection of 200 drawings that became the subject of an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City in 2003. The retrospective was also displayed in Cooperstown and Orlando, Florida.
No one knows what Fritz Vogt did during his first 48 years of life in Germany, where he was born in 1841, wrote New York Times reviewer Ken Johnson. In 1890, Vogt came to America and spent his last ten years as a traveling artist, recording what Johnson called “lucid descriptions” of the homes of his clients, primarily farmers in Schoharie and Montgomery counties. He did 40 drawings of farms, churches and other buildings in the town of Sharon, for example, and 25 in Canajoharie.
W. Parker Hayes, Jr., project director for the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition service, produced the catalog for Vogt’s retrospective, ‘Drawn Home: Fritz Vogt’s Rural America.’ The catalog was published by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown.
At first, Vogt drew realistically with graphite pencils then switched to colored pencils and his work became more complex with multiple perspectives.
“Somebody could have happened to buy him a set of colored pencils,” Hayes said. “Or somebody said ‘I want this in color’ and all of a sudden his constituency decided, ‘Hey I want my work in color.’”
Why did farmers want pictures of their homes? Hayes said New York State agriculture was facing competition from the Midwest. There was nostalgia for the dwindling numbers of gentleman farmers. Vogt’s drawings also mirror another19th century social trend: publication of county atlases depicting homes of wealthy people.
Hayes chronicled Vogt’s life from oral histories recorded in the 1960s, interviews with people who had known Vogt when they were children. Hayes created a database of Vogt’s work to fill in biographical details in that the artist dated and described each drawing.
The oral histories state that Vogt picked hops. “In August of every year from 1891 until he died he didn’t do any drawings,” Hayes said. August is the beginning of the hops picking season. You can prove or verify what’s out there about Fritz Vogt through what the drawings say.
A few drawings indicate Vogt was paid a couple of dollars for a specific piece. Vogt was more often paid with a place to stay, meals or alcohol.
Vogt fit in with the region’s existing German-American population. “He relied on an ethnic network to get the basic things in life and to find patrons,” Hayes said. Vogt had a “good rapport” with children and may have earned money by teaching German.
Hayes wrote that Vogt was “a short, smallish man with a quick step, yet slightly rotund.” Hayes added: “He wore five or six second-hand shirts layered over each other, the underlying shirts visible through holes in the outer layers. He slept in the shelter of barns between two buffalo-hides on a pile of hay.
When Vogt entered a home to complete his drawings, he wore a pair of slippers fashioned from carpet remnants.
“There often are little things in his drawings,” Hayes said. “The way a certain cornice has some flourish. He saw those things. He knew the homeowners who lived there were very attuned to that. But at the same time he had a perspective that was different because he didn’t have a home.”
Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.
518 346 6657
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By Bob CudmoreArtist was drawn to Country Homes
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette
He slept in barns and relieved the pain of rheumatism with alcohol.
He spoke broken English and died at the Montgomery County almshouse in Yosts in 1900. And he left a collection of 200 drawings that became the subject of an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City in 2003. The retrospective was also displayed in Cooperstown and Orlando, Florida.
No one knows what Fritz Vogt did during his first 48 years of life in Germany, where he was born in 1841, wrote New York Times reviewer Ken Johnson. In 1890, Vogt came to America and spent his last ten years as a traveling artist, recording what Johnson called “lucid descriptions” of the homes of his clients, primarily farmers in Schoharie and Montgomery counties. He did 40 drawings of farms, churches and other buildings in the town of Sharon, for example, and 25 in Canajoharie.
W. Parker Hayes, Jr., project director for the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition service, produced the catalog for Vogt’s retrospective, ‘Drawn Home: Fritz Vogt’s Rural America.’ The catalog was published by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown.
At first, Vogt drew realistically with graphite pencils then switched to colored pencils and his work became more complex with multiple perspectives.
“Somebody could have happened to buy him a set of colored pencils,” Hayes said. “Or somebody said ‘I want this in color’ and all of a sudden his constituency decided, ‘Hey I want my work in color.’”
Why did farmers want pictures of their homes? Hayes said New York State agriculture was facing competition from the Midwest. There was nostalgia for the dwindling numbers of gentleman farmers. Vogt’s drawings also mirror another19th century social trend: publication of county atlases depicting homes of wealthy people.
Hayes chronicled Vogt’s life from oral histories recorded in the 1960s, interviews with people who had known Vogt when they were children. Hayes created a database of Vogt’s work to fill in biographical details in that the artist dated and described each drawing.
The oral histories state that Vogt picked hops. “In August of every year from 1891 until he died he didn’t do any drawings,” Hayes said. August is the beginning of the hops picking season. You can prove or verify what’s out there about Fritz Vogt through what the drawings say.
A few drawings indicate Vogt was paid a couple of dollars for a specific piece. Vogt was more often paid with a place to stay, meals or alcohol.
Vogt fit in with the region’s existing German-American population. “He relied on an ethnic network to get the basic things in life and to find patrons,” Hayes said. Vogt had a “good rapport” with children and may have earned money by teaching German.
Hayes wrote that Vogt was “a short, smallish man with a quick step, yet slightly rotund.” Hayes added: “He wore five or six second-hand shirts layered over each other, the underlying shirts visible through holes in the outer layers. He slept in the shelter of barns between two buffalo-hides on a pile of hay.
When Vogt entered a home to complete his drawings, he wore a pair of slippers fashioned from carpet remnants.
“There often are little things in his drawings,” Hayes said. “The way a certain cornice has some flourish. He saw those things. He knew the homeowners who lived there were very attuned to that. But at the same time he had a perspective that was different because he didn’t have a home.”
Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.
518 346 6657