“EXHIBIT OF WEEKS HALL A CAUSE OF REJOICING BY MANY, STIRS HOPE THAT GREAT ART MAY COME FROM LOUISIANA”
The Shadows as Weeks Hall envisioned it looked when his great-grandmother, Mary Weeks Moore, lived in the home.
c. 1923, oil, NT 59.67.77 A
This headline appeared in The Morning Tribune, a New Orleans newspaper, on February 15, 1928, announcing Weeks Hall’s first one-man show at the Arts and Crafts Club. Artist and reporter Vera Morel praised the exhibit, “as fine and inspiring a show as we have seen in local art galleries. Not alone for good painting and serious study, for successful color, design and volume experiments, but because it shows that here in Louisiana is a painter who is not only conscious of the unusual beauty about him, but able—because of his intellect and skill—to express in an original and impressive way the spirit of what he sees and experiences.”
Unfortunately, this 1928 show was uncatalogued, so we neither know how many paintings were in the show nor what they were. Morel alludes to the infamous Rhapsody in Blue canvas, the Shadows-on-the-Teche landscape, and a still-life featuring a grouping of tombstones and century plant, among others.
“A painting is a very personal thing. It is a revelation, an artist’s point of view—a gesture, as it were—something that comes from within himself…. It is only important that we approach the work of a serious artist with respect and an effort to understand. To denounce, ridicule or be intolerant merely because pictures do not please our personal fancy is but an admission of our own inability to understand them.” [Vera Morel about Weeks Hall’s exhibit, 1928]
Originally published in The Shadows Service League monthly newsletter, Fall 1995.
