The Oldness of Things

Site 14

This is the farthest point of the Academy’s property. These “little cottages” provided accommodations for the married students from 1934 on and, of course, a space for the students to set up their easels. Sarah Jane Blakeslee’s painting. “The Pink Roof, Chester Springs” highlights the quaintness of the buildings and evokes the idyllic quality of the Chester Springs landscape.

In a 1971 interview, artist and former student, Simone Titone, (1923-1984), commented on the special kind of light in the Chester Springs work after World War II – not “the broken color of the Impressionists, but a kind of dramatic approach to light…”

This contribution of a very definite and thoroughly developed treatment of light came out of the Chester Springs experience. It was a place where people became completely absorbed by it-the beauty of everything there, the beautiful light, the trees, the oldness of things, the surfaces, particularly the surfaces.

Titone and other former students have stressed the special influence of Francis Speight on both his contemporaries and his students. “The way Francis Speight treated light almost gave you a feeling that you were there while he was painting and felt what he felt.”