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Checkers Artist H (Horace) Boylston Dummer

• This American artist was a painter and illustrator, who depicted his diverse subject matter in the Impressionistic style during his earlier years and then in the mode of Realism.
  
  
• Dummer spent his life in Massachusetts and derived his artistic inspiration from genre scenes, landscapes and nature in the surrounding environments and towns.
  
  
• Through his academic study in art at the Eric Pape School of Art and the Art Students League in Woodstock, New York, Dummer’s style was greatly influenced by the brushwork and Impressionism of his teacher, John Carlson.
  
  
• He held the position of staff artist at the Boston Post for many years and was also illustrator for The Youth's Companion, which was a national weekly children’s magazine.
  
  
• At first, Boylston enjoyed his artistic activity in the Provincetown art colony but he soon became discouraged because he felt that it had become too crowded.
  
  
• Dummer created his motifs throughout his artistic career with lively brushstrokes, well developed plain air effects and bold, broken colors.
  
  
• In his oil painting, Checkers Players, the artist represented a simple, every day motif of a checkers game between two friends and he situated on player in a wooden chair and seated the other on an old wooden barrel; between the checkers players on their knees Dummer painted a wooden board that held the checkerboard with the game in progress.
  
  
• The realistic treatment of the theme displayed a setting that could be a workshop, a cabin or an old kitchen and Dummer’s detailing and warm tones created a rustic, cozy atmosphere that fit these two old timers.
  
  
• The Checkers Players also depicted by use of broad strokes of co lour and sound details the natural postures of the players at the checkerboard such as the bearded figure ready to move his checker piece and it reflected the contemplative and pensive mood of each friend.
  
  
• Dummer highlighted the genre scene with afternoon sunlight coming in and caressing the checkers players from the right, thus creating natural shadows and a three dimensionality within the composition.
  
  
• The vivid scene was painted to allow the viewer to become a third person in the room, the spectator watching the checkers game and waiting to see the outcome.
  
  
• Boylston believed that drawing was still the foundation of painting and so he would ‘draw’ with his paints in his plain air artwork depicting the mood,lighting and natural setting within the framework of his Impressionist or Realist artistic mode of expression.
  
  
• His renditions of rural landscapes and Cape Cod seascapes were inspired and his wildlife motifs easily displayed how he ‘captured’ the animals and their natural habitat in the wild.
  
  
• In 1921, Dummer and his wife moved from Provincetown to Rockport and soon became known as a leading ‘Rockport Realist’ and then the artist became founding member of the Rockport Art Association; however, he was also involved in the North Shore Arts Association between 1926 and 1945 as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
  
  
• As he approached his winter years, Boylston recognized the fact that the style of art he loved was quickly being replaced by Abstract Expressionism and other surrealistic modes of art that was popular in New York; however, he remained true to his art and the circle of Rockport Realists continued to be inspired by the beauty of nature around them and by the simple, picturesque views of old worn out docks, rock quarries and the activity witnessed in town festivals.
  
  
• Dummer died suddenly towards the end of 1945 and was survived by his wife and daughter, but he left behind a legacy of inspired motifs of an era gone by.
  
  
• Earlier that year, before Dummer’s own passing, his art teacher, John Carlson, died in New York and the town of Rockport purchased the venerable fish shack known as Motif No. 1, as many feared that the favorite haunt of local painters might otherwise be torn down and it remained as a memorial to numerous artists who had favored the locale.

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