The Sidney E. King Arts Center- Part 1

The Sidney E. King Arts Center is located at 121 North Main Street, in Bowling Green, Virginia. It is open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM. It contains a large collection of original paintings Mr. King did for the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park as well as other originals relevant to the Civil War. My visit here along with the personal tour conducted by R. Wayne Brooks, President of the Sidney E. King Foundation for the Arts, was one of highlights of my Overland Campaign travels. The paintings are truly amazing. My pictures don’t do them justice, please visit the center and see them for yourself. There are also other paintings Mr. King did on display that did not relate to the war that are not shown here.

In 1954 the National Park Service (NPS) commissioned Sidney King to make a series of paintings of early Jamestown houses and buildings. His work for the NPS expanded over the ensuing decades resulting in about 180 large historical paintings. He was the first artist to introduce oil paintings in an outdoor environment for the NPS. In an interview conducted circa 1980-1983, by Buck Pennington and Herbert Collins, for the Archives of American Art, Mr. King described how he came to do the work for the NPS and the techniques he used to ensure that these paintings would last for generations in a harsh outdoor environment. The full transcript can be found at the link. Excerpts are shown below.

In the words of Mr. King- Well, I met up with a sign painter from Buffalo, New York, and between the two of us, we opened up a shop in Fredericksburg (in the early 1930s). Of course, I had to rely upon sign painting, although that was not my ambition. And for about five years, I worked in the sign shop. During the time that I was there, painting signs, a great deal of work came from the national parks. At that time, the tourist trap was a trickle, a very small amount of people would travel. The historical guides would take people out into the field and the areas where these famous battles took place, and they narrate. Of course, most tourists when they come there, they have seen trees and fields and they have seen the same thing at home. So, to me, there was a potential, a greater potential in just simply word-of-mouth narrative explaining the battles. I decided that maybe there was good potential in that field and there was a possibility that we could do –illustrate history on the spot where these events had taken place. I undertook to experiment with pigments and paints, and I got in touch with most of the big paint laboratories throughout the country, and I undertook tests, paint tests and so forth, for weather conditions and such. Of course, it’s known fact that paintings will last for thousands of years indoors under controlled temperature and such. The heart and core of this whole project was to try to reproduce indoor conditions outdoors, which would give some reasonable guarantee of long life of the painting. There are two factors that are detrimental to the life of a painting, ultraviolet rays of the sun and moisture. The combination of those two destroy the painting. So the idea was to eliminate both of those, which through – by the help of the Rohm and Haas Plexiglas company in New York City, I was able to get them to develop a new type of Plexiglas, UV-10, which would screen out ultraviolet rays of the sun. Then again, of course, the exhibit case itself was the second factor. And not only that, but the pigments, paints that were used were of the utmost durability. Epoxy, I developed the use of epoxy in recent years although other paints have been used with the UV compound, which is a powder that is mixed with the pigments, which screens out the ultraviolet rays in the pigments as well as the plex itself, which will do the same. I was able to develop a technique that could make it possible for a painting to stay outdoors for a reasonable length of time. Today, I mean, just last week, I came across two paintings that were done in 1961. And I have any number throughout the eastern states that were done 25 and 30 years ago, and they’re just as bright as the day they were done.

I am thankful to say that the National Parks have patronized me. The first ones that I had received were from Jamestown, 1955, they started there. That was the first big opportunity that I had. I got acquainted with some of the parks-men before them, and Paul Hutchins [phonetic] was the first one to contact me for the 1957 celebration of the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of America at Jamestown. A series of paintings were developed and used on the tour route, a five mile tour route, the only thing like it in the United States. And they kept me busy from about the end, from ‘55 to ‘57. The National Parks, of course, furnished me with all the historical reference. I was in contact with the archeologists, the geologists, the historians and Lawrence Kocher who was a historical architect. He was the chief consultant in the reconstruction of Williamsburg [VA]. So I had the advantage of his knowledge as well to reconstruct pictorially some of the places and events that took place down here 385 years ago. So this work was completed before 1957. And the National Parks, of course, showed quite a bit of interest in it, but they were a little skeptical, so they waited about five years before they began to give the orders. Well, at the present time, there is something like 50 million people out through the summer months, Mr. and Mrs. America in the eastern states, to see, to travel on their vacations. So this was an opportunity to make their trip a little more interesting, educational and entertaining as well. So these paintings, were the only thing of its kind of the United States where a tourist can come to a historical area and right in the area adjacent to the event as it took place, these paintings will show just exactly – it’s like an eye into the past. So they could see as well as hear; we had sound effects too. You press a button, and of course, you’d hear the narrative. So throughout the eastern states, all the national parks east of the Mississippi practically have my work. And I have quite a few west of the Mississippi River that are in park areas there. I don’t consider myself an artist in the true sense, as an artist would be. I am an illustrator. I have been illustrating all my life, and I have been quite busy illustrating history. Some work I have done on the side, of course, additional work and murals. I have done quite a few murals throughout Virginia. I have one that is in Salt Lake City, Utah, the largest mural in North America. This is 400 feet long and 75 foot tall; it’s in the rotunda of the Mormon Information Center in Salt Lake City.

At the center when walking in the front door straight ahead on the right wall is a painting of Chatham Manor.

I turned left and in the part of the building housing the Historical Society is a painting of Stonewall Jackson being brought to the farm office building at the Fairfield Plantation at Guinea Station where he died.

On entering the front door to the right is the main gallery

In the first room there are two paintings relevant to the Civil War. On the left is a painting of the Washington Artillery at the Battle of Fredericksburg on Marye’s Heights.