Copyright © 2020 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett
Henry C. Tryon was a friend and colleague of Thomas G. Moses. During the early 1880s Tryon was working in the western states as a scenic artist for the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver, Colorado, and the Salt Lake Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1884, Tryon returned to Chicago for a year, working alongside Moses at Sosman & Landis Studio on Clinton Street. The two would even take a sketching trip to West Virginia in 1885.
There are many reasons why Tryon was considered an asset to any studio. As a skilled scenic artist, he was well-versed in painting Masonic scenery, having delivered two collections to the Indianapolis Scottish Rite from the onset of their staged degree work. He entered the Masonic scenery scene at a time when scenic studios were starting to identify this new and lucrative client. He also came with connections to theatre managers and artists across the country. Well-known scenic artists on staff helped studios secure contracts.
However, Tryon was considered a fine artist, as well as a trade artist. This would prove to be a challenge for any employer, as profit margins were not always first and foremost in an artist’s mind when creating a masterpiece. As Tryon wrote in 1883, “The true artist will approach nature with awe, reverence and fear. It is audacious of him to attempt to represent with pigments his feeble thoughts.” This would have been difficult to do when painting an exterior scene in a shop with an imposing deadline.
Tryon published his thoughts about art in a “Deseret News” article in 1883 (Salt Lake City, Utah, 9 Feb 1883, page 3). It provides a little insight into this interesting character whom Moses described as “clever, but awfully eccentric.”
Here is Tryon’s 1883 article in its entirety:
“Bright Beams
Artistic Flashes From the Pen of H. C. Tryon
Some time since we published a few flashes from the artistic mind of Mr. H. C. Tryon, scenic artist of the Salt Lake Theatre. We understand that they many of our readers perused them with pleasure. We present another collection of intellectual gems form the same source:
“The higher order of true genius usually manifests itself in the child. It is developed in the man. “Art is long and time is fleeting.” The world’s greatest artists are old men, and with all their power of genius it has required the study and experience of a long lifetime to develop the possibilities. As a rule the artist who early develops his genius never reaches a very exalted position. His precocity promises great results in the future, but they are seldom realized. If we build a pyramid of sand, the height we can reach is proportionate to the width of the base. If that be narrow the pyramid, is soon erected, but it cannot reach a great height. It is so with the human mind. If it is not wide, deep and comprehensive, it cannot rise to great heights or accomplish really great things. What we understand by the title a “smart man” is never a great one.
The true artist will approach nature with awe, reverence and fear. It is audacious of him to attempt to represent with pigments his feeble thoughts. But he cannot help but to symbolize the love and awe which nature impresses on every sensitive soul. He cannot have out door nature in his dwelling, so its counterfeit must suffice him there, but he will forget, when he approaches her, all ideas of egotism and proceed to his task with veneration. “Take the shoes from off thy feet, for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground.” The simplest object in nature is a thousand times more beautiful than he van paint it. The most common weed he cannot imitate. The stagnant water by the roadside is palpitating with the most exquisite hues. The pure ethereal blue and the clear brilliant amber he can merely suggest with his crude pigments. But when nature pours its flood of brilliant sunshine over the face of all the landscape, lighting up with its Master Artist’s touch each point of sublimity and beauty, arising out from the delicious mystery of its veils of transparency, glittering gems in the rivulets sparkling among the streaming silver; the grand infinitude of interest bewildering even in its detail, massed and thrown together with such power, such delicate art. Think of the beauty of a leaf of a twig, of a cloud, of any object which is purely nature’s. Think of all this design, this loveliness, multiplied into infinity, and arranged with nature’s matchless art, and then think of man in his puny efforts to get this on canvas.
How poor and pitiful must be the work on the grandest mind in competition! How small a thing an artist seems to himself when he throws aside his vanity and tries to catch some inspiration from nature’s art! I think if we could at all times have nature’s grandest work before us, that no true artist would dare copy her. Whoever saw a real artist that was not ashamed to have you look over his shoulder while sketching outdoor nature? He knows he is guilty of an impertinence, yet cannot help it. He must try. He must study her, he must adore her, and he must realize the pain and humiliation of feeling, how poor are the powers of the human mind. But when he gets that same sketch in his studio, how vain he is, where he has not nature present to show him his feebleness.
The artist should never let sentiment run away with him. He should consider every poetic and sentimental thought to be precious to him and to the world, and use it legitimately on his canvas, never forgetting that this is a practical world, and that tangible and practical means are the only ones that can disseminate sublime and beautiful thought. Is not Shakespeare an example of proof? He put his grand poetic thought into his plays. He did not waste it among the low associates whom he seemed to prefer as companions. I cannot help thinking that if artists would be more practical in their ordinary lives, and more poetic on canvas their influence (being better directed) would be far greater.
Do not sacrifice a grand object for a petty one. It is of greater importance that the graceful, wide spreading undulating infinitude of glittering, twinkling foliage of that grand old elms, be fitly expressed, than that bird’s nest be given conspicuous and undue prominence among the boughs. You did not see it until it was pointed out to you. Nature did not intend that you should see it, still less that you should sacrifice that tree for it. The bird knows where it is; that is enough. Nature intended that you should see the tree. When you paint a tree, paint a tree and paint the nest some other time; but then don’t want the tree. Don’t falsify nature by attempting, with your petty vanity, to improve upon her work. You will fail, because nature as an artist is pre-eminently superior to you.”
To be continued…
