In Focus Podcast
Episode 132
…the town’s great treasures are its local painters of renown…
William Bradford
As related by: Kyle DeCicco-Carey
Welcome, Kyle DeCiccio-Carey to In-Focus Podcast Number 132! Kyle is the Library Director at the Millicent Library in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and speaks with us about celebrated Fairhaven resident and painter Lemuel D. Eldred.
This is the second of five, Fairhaven Cultural Council grant-supported podcasts with Kyle who will be telling us about some of the town’s artists from days gone by. Lemuel Eldred is a great artist to begin this mini-series of podcasts!
WILLIAM BRADFORD
William Bradford was born in Fairhaven in 1823. He developed an interest in painting as a young man and taught himself to draw by copying drawings from a book of illustrations repeatedly. In the early 1850s, he started his own clothing retail store in New Bedford. However, his art distracted him from his business which eventually failed.
He took lessons with Albertus van Beest, a Dutch painter living in New Bedford, and set up a studio on Union Street in Fairhaven. After a small success in selling paintings of boats, he opened a studio in Boston.
Bradford had been inspired to visit the Arctic and after he found success in Boston he was able to finance several trips to Labrador in the 1860s. In 1869, he went further north along Greenland taking photographers with him.
In 1873, he published an account of the voyage using photographs to illustrate the volume. He would use the photographs of the seascapes taken in the Arctic as a guide to creating paintings. He noted that despite the power of the camera to photograph the terrain, the “glorious phases of color remain unexpressed” until he painted what the camera had captured.
His work may be seen at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, and Harvard University’s Art Museum.
Listen in on this conversation as The Artist Index’s Co-Founder/Host – Ron Fortier – delves more into Bradford’s life, work, and legacy with Kyle DeCicci-Cary, the Library Director of The Millicent Library. Kyle holds a master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons University and, a digital archives specialist certification from the Society of American Archivists.
He also holds certifications from the Academy of Certified Archivists and the Harvard Extension School in nonprofit management. He has over twenty years of library, archive, and museum experience.
We continue using Zoom, our podcast host’s studios, and our studio at the Spectrum Marketing Group in Howland Place in New Bedford. Until then, we will continue to podcast remotely, in order to accommodate our guests’ schedules and, in some cases, because they don’t live in the South Coast of Massachusetts or, to allow them to remain in the comfort of their homes.
The whole concept of The Artists Index and our journey is still in the making and very organic. If you would like to be a guest or, have a suggestion, please let us know!
Willaim Bradford
BORN: 1823
DIED: 1892
MORE: New Bedford Whaling Museum
Kyle DeCicco-Carey
Library Director
MS LIS, CA, DAS
The Millicent Library
45 Center St
P.O. Box 30
Fairhaven, Massachusetts, 02719
Phone: 508-992-5342
Fax: 508-993-7288
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Fairhaven Cultural Council, a local agency that is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
This In-Focus podcast episode is made possible with the support of Heavenly Spirits, who invites you to celebrate the art of life and creative communities everywhere.
Heavenly Spirits, Importers Of Exceptional French Spirits.
