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Folinsbee's “Shad Boat" was painted three years later than the Trenton work and in a brighter palette, depicting fishermen at the start of their workday.
When he traveled, John Fulton Folinsbee often sketched from the train’s baggage car, where he stayed with his wheelchair. That was the case with “Outskirts of Trenton," (above).
OUR ART: Arrangements in gray (and a little blue)

Reprinted from the Jan. 20, 2008 Sunday Gazette-Mail Life & Style art section

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1892, John Fulton Folinsbee came down with polio at 14, leaving him dependent on a wheelchair to get around the rest of his life.

In 1918, he settled near New Hope, Pa., joining the landscape painters of the New Hope School. Unlike Edward Redfield and other New Hope artists who painted brightly colored Impressionistic landscapes, Folinsbee captured many grayer, grittier industrial scenes.

When he traveled, Folinsbee often sketched from the train’s baggage car, where he stayed with his wheelchair. That was the case with “Outskirts of Trenton,” (above) which he then finished in his studio, he informed Arthur Dayton by letter.

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Dayton’s widow, Ruth Woods Dayton, gave the painting to the Huntington Museum of Art as part of the Daywood Collection, selections from which are now on exhibit through March 30. Dayton gave a second Folinsbee, “Shad Boat,” (at right above) painted three years later in a brighter palette and showing fishermen at the start of their workday, and also now on display.

A touring exhibit, “Painting the Beautiful: American Impressionist Paintings from the Michener Art Museum Collection,” goes on exhibit at the Huntington museum Jan. 27 through March 26, bringing to the museum 25 more works by 12 Pennsylvania Impressionists of the New Hope School. Five works by Redfield and one by Folinsbee come to the museum as part of that exhibit.

Folinsbee is a master of paint handling, and a wonderful colorist, said Jenine Culligan, the museum’s senior curator. His loose brushstrokes appear quickly made. He is less interested in the details than the overall mood — light, weather, time of day — as an Impressionist should be.

“One can feel the heavy snow beginning to turn to slush,” Culligan said. “With the blanket of white melting, the old snow and ice takes on beautiful rendered sheens of pinks, grays and blues. The industrial city of Trenton is emerging with its winter dreariness, but here it is beautifully depicted in subtle shades of browns, grays and blues. Imagine this painting without the touches of red that bring it to life!”

— By Bob Schwarz