The Power of Positive Thinking, Edwardian-Style

Some folks these days may believe that the benefits of positive thinking originated with "The Secret." But a little art nouveau-styled chapbook uncovered at the Pottery City Antique Mall this weekend-- dating back to 1907-- proves that we have been reminding ourselves to put a sunny spin on life for years and years now.

Today, I thought I'd share with you just a bit of their upbeat wisdom!

Personally, I think it would be impossible to remain in a rotten mood just cracking open a book so lushly and colorfully illustrated as "Good Cheer," published by the Berger Publishing Company of Buffalo, NY...
They don't make 'em like that anymore! All the beauty of early 1900s postcards seems to be layered into this little booklet. We begin, greeted with roses and Ruskin...

Happiness is everywhere
and its
spring is in
our own heart.
Ruskin.

Turning the next page we get snippets from a number of well-known writers, all on the idea of keeping a positive perspective on the daily trials we face...

The day returns and brings us the petty rounds of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end, the gift of sleep.
Robert Louis Stevenson.

Life is a mirror; if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.
Thackeray.

The habit of viewing things cheerfully, and thinking about life hopefully, may be made to grow up in us like any other habit.
Smiles.

On Mondays, I may have to pop back here myself and, um, remind me of these things.

Here, we are treated to some rather magical blue wildflowers...
The page reads:

Cheerfulness
is like money
well expended in
charity-- the more we
dispense of it, the
greater our possessions.
Victor Hugo

In life
there is
but one sure
happiness--
to live for others.
Leo Tolstoi.

Not that I previously viewed Tolstoi as a particularly perky guy-- but hey, we all have layers, I suppose. Some of the wisdom is shared in violets and verse...

Oh, heart of mine, we shouldn't
Worry so!
What we've missed of calm
We couldn't have, you know!
What we've met of stormy pain,
And of sorrow's driving rani
We can better meet again,
If it blow!
James Whitcomb Riley

Some of it in spreads of fiction and rural landscape...

But most of it is picked from fresh cheerful bouquets of reminder...

A
sunny
temper
gilds the
edge of
life's blackest
cloud.
Guthrie.

Here's wishing you the joys of the week ahead, and the patience to find their hiding place if they get shy about in stepping into the light.

Who in the art world is Chester K. Van Nortwick?

His name rests on the bottom of 30s calendar prints, and is emblazoned in the pages of nursery tales of the time. Yet, for a collector trying to learn more about the man, Chester K. Van Nortwick-- like so many artists from the Golden Age of Illustration-- seems almost as intangible as the fairy book characters he painted.

His work imitated the popular style of Maxfield Parrish in the same way calendar artists like R. Atkinson Fox did. But a close look at Van Nortwick's little scenes, with their lively characters, rich color and magical detail, reveals the illustrator's ability to successfully capture much of the humor, depth and quality of Parrish work that few of his contemporaries achieved.

A good example of this can be seen by comparing Parrish's famous Life magazine cover of Humpty Dumpty (first image below), with Van Nortwick's own delightful rendering (second image) of the animate egg in "A Tiny Book of Nursery Rhymes."




Yet it's interesting that Van Nortwick's beautiful and whimsical works, in period frames, are still possible to uncover in antique malls, flea markets and on Ebay-- and fairly economically, too. I've seen Van Norwtick prints run on average from $20-$85, where a good vintage Parrish print-- and even many an Atkinson Fox-- runs in the hundreds and upwards.


Okay, so it's nice work of the era, and can be found at a good price-- But who exactly IS this Chester K. Van Nortwick? A bit of sleuthing on our friend C.K. almost feels like research into absence. For instance, I discovered that while both Fox and fellow illustrator George Hood are acknowledged in books like "Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists," not a peep is said about Mr. Van Nortwick.

It's enough to make you question whether he was nothing more than a pseudonym, dreamed up by an imaginative publishing company (which, in the case of Atkinson Fox, was done quite regularly during this time)!


But then I turned up some information from "Vintage illustration: Discovering America's Calendar Artists. " There, author Rick Martin comfirms the reality of the man's existence-- and has this to say about Van Nortwick:

"C.K. Van Nortwick was an early art print and calendar illustrator who was born in Rhode Island and moved to Denver, Colorado, at an early age. He studied at the Art institute of Chicago. His work first appeared from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s.

"Van Nortwick's work was published almost exclusively by the Gerlach Barklow calendar company of Joliet, Illinois. Gerlach Barklow's publicity releases gave little personal information about Van Nortwick. They described him only as a 'well-known painter of allegorical subjects whose works suggest the quality of Maxfield Parrish.'

"Van Nortwick's earlier works seem to display many of Parrish's stock-in-trade images: urns, fountains, mountains, and languid beauties reposing in lush romantic landscapes. But between 1927 and 1930, Van Norwick painted three sets of twelve paintings intended as prints for monthly mailings. The sets were entiled 'Mother Goose,' ''Fairy Tales' and 'Boyhood Heroes.'"



And AskArt.com shares the following information regarding Chester Van Nortwick:

"Chester K. Van Nortwick was born in Providence, RI on December 21, 1881 and died in Brewster, MA on October 8, 1944. He was the son of George Washington van Nortwick, an accomplished and celebrated engraver.

"Chester lived in Colorado during his youth and served as staff artist on the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. He received private instruction for several years and then entered the Chicago Art Institute."


Also, my search turned up Van Nortwick's work as a part of the permanent collection of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), though no detail is listed online regarding him there, or what pieces reside in the collection.

Chester K. Van Nortwick may never gain the recognition of illustration great Maxfield Parrish, or the dedicated following of R. Atkinson Fox. But his work was a quietly present part of childhood reading and home decor in the 20s and 30s.


From the Golden Age of Illustration, so many artists-- Alice Adams, George Hacker, DC Lithgow and others-- seem to have slipped from the walls and bookshelves of American family homes and into relative obscurity. Here's hoping the age of technology will help us dust off a few, and bring them into the light again.

--

If anyone has any additional information they'd like to share about Chester Van Nortwick, I'd love to hear from you!

And for the rest of you good folks-- if you'd happened to miss my special thriftshopromantic.blogspot.com-only Wednesday post-- "Treasure Box Wednesday: The Adventure Begins," click here.

Otherwise, I hope you see you THIS Wednesday as I share a few of my latest finds, including the seizure of one gorgeously gaudy vintage lamp!