A Happy Ignorance > IDEAS & IDEALS

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A year ago, on April 12, 2005 to be exact, I published an essay "To An Unsung Artist" in this column. In it I introduced two pieces of landscape paintings I had bought for two dollars (one dollar for each) in a garage sale in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, during my sojourn in the United States as a graduate student of English at Villanova University (1972-1975). The two paintings have been with me for more than 30 years, but I have not paid any attention to the painter, simply because I thought he or she would not be a famous or an important one. I discovered the painter's name, G. Cherepor, at the left bottom corner of the paintings, and I made some searchings on the web sites with this name but with no results as I had expected. I dismissed that the painter must be one of those so many gifted artists in the world, but who was not lucky enough to leave his name behind. I felt sorry for the fact that I could not let the painter know that his works have been so much appreciated by a Korean, far, far way from his homeland, for so long.  

     Just a week ago, on November 24, I received an e-mail from a total stranger, a woman living in the United States, which reads as follows: "I, too, have a painting by G. Cherepor. It has a red barn, with a farmer in overalls leading a horse to the barn. It has a wagon on the left of the picture and a white fence around the barn. My father died a few years ago and this painting hung in his house. I would like to find out more about this artist but don't know where else to look. Did you have any luck finding out about yours? Thanks a lot. Martha Laws, Orlando, Florida."

     Immediately I wrote back to her: "I am very surprised and delighted, and even thrilled to learn that there is at least one more person in the world who owns a painting by G. Cherepor, and the painting you have matches exactly with the one of the two I have. Very unfortunately, however, I have not succeeded in finding out more about the painter yet. And, by the way, I wonder how you came to send this e-mail to me. How did you get my e-mail address? I presume that you might have read my newspaper column in The Korea Times in which my story about G. Cherepor's paintings appeared, but chances that you may have come across it are very slim, since you are living far from here. I am curious."

     Reply from Martha arrived promptly. As most of the owners of good and old paintings in their house quite naturally do, she got interested in the painter and the real worth of the old painting handed down to her from her father, and she put the name G. Cherepor on the Google web site, and there surfaced a part of my newspaper article about the same painter. She clicked on The Korea Times' web site provided there, and could read whole text of my essay, and obtained my e-mail address written at the bottom of the article.

     I relayed these e-mail correspondences between Martha Laws and me to my personal web site, leewell.com, and there came immediately a simple but a stunning information from one of my former students. He, who is a very well-informed man and who frequents my web site, read the messages, and informed me that the last letter of the painter's last name is v, not r. Yes, I could have read it v, not r, although it looked like r in the painter's signature on his paintings. If I had read it v, instead of r, everything about the painter and his paintings would have been utterly different, including the title of my first essay. How stupid, ignorant and near-sighted I was!

     I clicked on www.askart.com as I was told by him. There, lo and behold, the brave new world of George Cherepov (1909-1987) appeared before my eyes like a high mountain after the morning mist has gone. At first, I felt deeply ashamed to discover what I had assumed about the painter proved to be ungrounded. Contrary to my ignorant assumption, he was not an unsung painter to begin with. Far from it. He was one of the most successful, famous and popular American landscape painters in the 20th century. Born in Lithuania, he moved to the United States and settled down in Greenwich, Connecticut. He fell in love immediately with New England countryside, especially with the brilliant displays of fall foliage. He produced countless canvasses representing the various moods of these captivating landscapes. He quickly established himself as a very popular painter in his area and gave exhibitions in Vermont, Philadelphia, and New York. He received many awards including the Gold Medal from the Hudson Valley Art Association in 1969. He was a member of Allied Artists of America, and of many others. Besides being widely distributed throughout the United States, his works have been mostly collected in several art museums in Germany and in the Museum of Art in Tuscon, Arizona, U.S.A.

     Now George Cherepov has been dead for almost 20 years now. I am very happy and relieved to learn that he lived a happy life, enjoyed longevity and popularity as much as an artist could hope and desire during his lifetime. My initial shame caused by my ignorance about the famous painter has subsided significantly, when I consoled myself with the unchanging love and unbiased aesthetic taste I had for his works themselves in complete ignorance of the painter. I proved the truth that good works of art can stand without artists, but not vice versa.

     Now I am standing before the two landscape paintings I have on the wall of my study. It is the same paintings I have been looking at for the past 30 years and more, but I find today they are not the same ones. They look better, more beautiful and technically maturer than ever before. I fell into some nostalgic thought. I could have met the painter himself, since he was 65 only (younger than me by one year) when I bought these paintings in Pennsylvania, and he lived then in the adjacent Connecticut. If I had just known about George Cherepov then, I could have visited one of the museums or exhibitions in which his works were displayed. Or, I could have passed by him without recognizing him.
                                                                                                (December 1, 2006)