看看未知的未来和希望：造船厂和博物馆工作人员艺术家Thomas C. Skinner的艺术品

Thomas Catlett Skinner’s office was a loft overlooking the dry dock at the Newport News shipyard. Frequently he would gather his tools and wander through the yard, stopping to observe and document the many scenes unfolding before him. A vat of molten steel. Red hot metal beams being bent into shape. Yards of canvas transformed into sails. The welcome respite of a lunch break. The intensity of a foreman’s face. A ship being refitted for the next voyage. Scenes that were rarely seen by anyone outside the shipyard and activities that many people never knew existed.

Skinner的工具是油漆，铅笔，画布和纸。他的阁楼工作空间震撼了无休止的锤击和重型机械振动的震动。当他将画架设置在码头，干燥的码头和工人旁边时，他被噪音和污垢所包围，并暴露于天气的斑节上。尽管有逆境，但他创造了惊人的绘画和绘画，使观众及时地将观众带回了。他的作品包含醒目，丰富多彩的图像，使您很容易想象造船厂中的所有声音，在船上发挥作用的波浪和感觉的声音和战斗的刺耳声音。今天，作为我们90的一部分^th周年庆典，我们看一下水手博物馆的工作人员托马斯·斯金纳（Thomas Skinner），他的一些作品及其重要性。

The Early Years

Thomas Skinner probably never imagined that one day he would end up in a shipyard. Born in Kittawa, Kentucky in 1888, he spent most of his childhood in Waynesville, North Carolina. From an early age, he was almost always seen with a pencil and sketch pad in hand, drawing whatever caught his fancy, and his parents were very supportive. So when the time came for the family to move back to Kentucky, they probably weren’t surprised that Thomas decided he wanted to head to New York City to study art.

He arrived in New York at the right time. An informal group of artists who called themselves the Ashcan Painters or the “Ash Can School” was in its heyday. Their tongue-in-cheek name was a dig at the numerous ‘schools of art’ in New York and a description of the group’s subject matter, gritty, realistic portrayals of street life and the city’s inhabitants. Paintings that didn’t romanticize, but showed it all, the ash cans on the sidewalks, prostitutes, street urchins, mud, and even the horse dung in the streets. The work by these artists dubbed “New York Realists” and his travels in Europe to study realistic paintings by Dutch and French artists with Ash Can painter Robert Henri would highly influence Skinner’s own work.

26岁,1914年在巴黎,Skinner married French artist Therese Louise Desiree Tribolati. He brought her back to his home in New York City that August. He continued to work on his art during the war years, exhibiting and selling some pieces for the commercial market and magazine covers. One of his paintings, an impressionistic depiction of flags flying from the porches of a row of houses, was shown in the prestigious Allied War Exhibition in 1918. This non-juried show, which was organized by well-known art collector Duncan Phillips, didn’t offer any prize money, but being included as one of the featured artists did serve as recognition of Skinner’s talent and exposed more of his work to the public. That same year, Skinner would be called up for military duty at the end of the war. He spent his entire military career (September 1918 to March 1919) at Camp Hancock in Georgia. The camp served as an airfield and a training facility for National Guard troops before they were sent overseas. Skinner achieved the rank of private First Class but what his job entailed appears to have been lost to time, and if he spoke of his military service to friends and fellow veterans, that information apparently never made it into articles or his biographical information. After his return from service, Skinner decided to study at one of the “schools of art” in New York and attended the well-known Arts Students League from 1920-1921 and at some point he also attended the National Academy of Design.

The Shipyard Years

In 1930, Skinner was asked by his brother-in-law, Homer L. Ferguson, to move to Newport News and serve as the staff artist for the newly opened Mariners’ Museum. Ferguson, married to Skinner’s sister Eliza, was President of the Newport News Shipyard and the museum’s first Director. He tasked Skinner with creating art for the museum, while at the same time documenting the scenes at the yard. Was the job offer made because of any financial issues the Skinner’s might have been having? Was it influenced by Archer Huntington who was an avid art collector and step-son of the shipyard’s founder? That is unknown, but what did happen, whether or not it was Ferguson’s intent, was that the drawings and paintings Skinner created served to promote not only America’s industrial might, but also the prosperity of the shipyard. Both noble causes for a country in the midst of the Great Depression, citizens who were desperately looking for hope for the future and their own lives, and the local community who relied heavily on the shipyard as an employer. It is difficult to determine whether Skinner’s salary was paid by the shipyard, the museum, or both institutions, but years later his 1942 World War II draft card lists both institutions as his employers.

When he began work at the shipyard, Skinner was still finding his way artistically. His style was still evolving but it was becoming more and more influenced by what he saw around him. The grit, sounds, smells, and industrial scenes, that didn’t lend themselves to an impressionistic or romantic interpretation, began to take over, harkening back to his Ash Can School influences. The longer he would work there, the more the style took over his artistic vision.

他不仅在记录他在院子上看到的东西，还在制作院子建造的每种类型的航空母舰的绘画。他的第一幅画中的第一幅和第二幅是第一艘船完成，在1934年6月举行洗礼前不久，就显示了USS Ranger。Skinner创作了两幅不同的画作，因此船长和执行官可以选择他们想要的哪个在船上展出。他只花了六个星期的时间来制作初步草图并完成两幅画作，并且在风格上截然不同。被军官拒绝的人具有大胆的色彩，更具工业外观，并更加专注于前景中的造船厂工人和设备。另一个是对船的更浪漫的描绘，当雾部分遮盖了码头和工人时，它具有微妙但仍然准确的视野。造船厂的工人为这幅画创造了一个金色彩绘的木制框架，其雕刻的角落看起来像绳子，并用海军航空和海军观察徽章盖上了木头。斯金纳（Skinner）的《游侠》（Ranger）的“被拒绝”画在1934年的博物馆收藏中。

很容易想象斯金纳fondness for each of the ships as he watched them being built, launched, christened, and then sent out to sea. Possibly even feeling like he shared a small part in their creation. But during World War II, he saw some of those ships leave and never return. Skinner’s 1937 painting of the USS Yorktown shows the aircraft carrier in her full glory, plowing through the waves. The ship was lost during the Battle of Midway in 1942.

The same thing would happen to some of the workers he stood beside, spoke to, and painted. Men like him, who sometimes carried a bottle of beer to work in their lunch bag to help beat the oppressive heat in the yard. In 1947 Skinner created his Memorial Mural, a three panel, 23 foot long and 6 foot high painting dedicated to the 28 shipyard apprentices who lost their life during WWII. Battle scenes take up a large portion of the mural, but the right side depicts a soldier mourning a flag-covered coffin and the left side features a young apprentice amid his tools, holding his draft notice and looking out into the yard. The names of the 28 apprentices are included on the mural.

尽管他仍将莱克阀门做其他类型的工作e portraits and some nursery rhyme wall murals for a children’s nursery on a passenger liner, Skinner had become known both locally and beyond as a prominent and very talented maritime artist. Locally, his works were featured in the museum, in shipyard ceremony programs and on the cover of shipyard and apprentice school publications. Nationally, they appeared in newspapers, magazine articles and books. When the museum decided to create prints of some of his paintings and drawings to sell in the gift shop, these versions of his artwork found their way around the globe and some still turn up in auctions today.

对于博物馆来说，斯金纳还创建了一系列大型，丰富多彩的壁画，使1930年代的造船厂及其工人保持了前所未有的景象。14幅绘画范围在10到12英尺之间，高度超过6-1/2英尺。用于质地和深度的鲜艳色彩和油漆层，使这些作品具有坚韧而诚实的外观，显示出汗水，紧张以及造船厂和建筑商的力量。斯金纳（Skinner）对造船厂50,000平方英尺的机械车间的描述显示了装满巨大工具（例如车床和钻机和钻孔机器）的空间。一个完美的例子，说明为什么该商店被认为是该国同类产品中最大，最昂贵，装备最佳的商店。他对造船厂铸造厂的描绘看起来是如此逼真，观众期望感受到倒在模具中的熔融金属的热量。

Also in the museum’s collection are 51 tiny pencil sketches on simple brown paper that Skinner may have used to experiment with potential subjects, line placements, shading and highlighting before he created the larger works. The smallest of these sketches measures about 2 inches wide and 2 inches high and the largest is about 5-1/2 inches long and 2 inches high. Despite their tiny sizes, each is meticulously executed and incredibly detailed.

Outside the Shipyard

斯金纳似乎是一个谦虚或非常私人的人，或者是两者兼而有之。他的所有叙述都高度地谈论了他的艺术才能和个人作品，但没有其他内容。有关他的兄弟是当地律师的报纸文章，他的姐姐荷马·弗格森夫人有时会包含一些有关他或他的童年的信息。有时，有些社会专栏简介说，斯金纳和他的妻子在他们家中旅行或接待了各种亲戚。他的itu告，人们期望阅读他所有的荣誉，也非常简洁。而且找不到任何信息表明他在院子里工作了多长时间。但是，似乎斯金纳（Skinner）一直在积极绘画，直到1955年去世，享年66岁。

Perhaps it is more fitting that Skinner’s works are his accolades and speak for him. That they describe him best. The individual brushstrokes and the pencil lines that offer a view through his eyes of a shipyard, men, and wartime loss. The areas on his paintings where he put thick layers of paint to suggest a weathered beam or worn wood. The grit, the sounds and the smells in our imaginations, and the ships. The museum’s first, and only, staff artist during our 90 year history left an incredible legacy that has been enjoyed since we opened and will continue be enjoyed and appreciated by researchers and visitors far into the future. A legacy that allows us to celebrate our shipbuilding past and the shipbuilders that made it possible.

感谢您成为我们90年的一部分，并感谢您的阅读。