When painter and musician Eric von Schmidt, a Westport native, passed away in 2007, he was remembered both for his large historical paintings and for helping pioneer the music explosion of the late 1950s and early ‘60s with his spirited style of folk and blues guitar.
An exhibit of a selection of von Schmidt’s paintings drawn from his entire life and curated by his daughters, Caitlin and Megan, will be on exhibit from March 29-June 26 in The Great Hall of Westport Library. An opening reception for the exhibit, entitled “Eric von Schmidt—A Life in Art,” will be held on Friday, April 5 from 6 - 7:30 p.m. in The Great Hall and is free and open to the public (for access, use the Library’s upper-level entrance).
Born in 1931, von Schmidt grew up in Westport, spending much of his time as a child in the Evergreen Avenue studio of his father, Harold von Schmidt, a successful illustrator and one of the founders of the Famous Artists School. Encouraged to follow in his father’s footsteps, Ric, as he was then known, was a precocious artist who was selling his own work by the time he was a teenager.
In the mid-1950s, he received a Fulbright Scholarship and spent time in Italy, where his style began to move away from the realism he had learned in his father’s studio. By the late ‘50s, he was living in Cambridge, Mass., where his musical side came to the fore. He shared his extensive knowledge of old blues and folks songs—the music he had become interested in as a teen back in Westport—with performers who were then new on the scene, such as Tom Rush, Chris Smither, and Bob Dylan, who mentioned Eric on his recording of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” He recorded six solo and two collaborative records during the ‘60s and ‘70s, one of which wasn’t released until 2002; his one other album was recorded in 1995.
By the early ‘70s, he had come full circle, painting again in a more realistic style, which suited his new interest in creating the most accurate painting ever done of Custer’s last stand. In turn, he became an expert on the history of the event and completed Here Fell Custer in 1976. He went on to research and paint two more large historical paintings, Osceola and the Treaty of Seminole Removal and The Storming of the Alamo; but his plan to make a last painting of the Battle of Lexington, meant to complete the series geographically, never got past the sketch stage. He moved back to Westport in the mid- ‘80s, after the deaths of his parents, Reb and Von. His final large project was the series Giants of the Blues 1920-1950, which featured the seminal blues musicians who had gotten him interested in music way back in his teens and early twenties. He was still working on Giants of the Blues when he died in 2007 at age 75.
Thanks to the thorough curatorial instincts of their grandmother, Reb, Eric’s daughters, Caitlin and Megan, had at their disposal almost all of their father’s work from nearly the cradle to the grave. This show represents the development of an artist, says Caitlin, “who was always encouraged and who felt free to make his way towards a style of his own.”