Wednesday, September 21, 2016
It is our fortune to have them as our friends. Then adding to the fortune, a three-day journey with them. Among their many interests are history and folk culture.
So it was late afternoon when we were in the only surviving Workingmen’s Institute in Indiana, this one located in New Harmony, that he began plying the librarian with esoteric questions that must have quickened her fancy, for what other tourists would be so knowledgeable about New Harmony and its cultural history?
Then at one point he wondered whether she couldn’t direct him to a Jacob Maentel painting. In a minute we were headed into the locked vault to see two landscapes by Maentel.
“Why” asked my friend, “is this not exhibited in your gallery!” The librarian jovially responded that they couldn’t yet find a person to pay for the insurance.
Jacob Maentel was born in Kassel, Germany. He was a physician, soldier under Napoleon and itinerant artist and limner. Upon arriving in America he did most of his paintings in Lancaster, York, Dauphin, Berks and Lebanon Counties of Pennsylvania — my home stumping ground, yet I had never heard of his name.
Late in life he moved to New Harmony where he lived to be nearly 100 years of age.
The painting shown in this blog is important, says my friend, because of its landscapes that later became models for other paintings.
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