North Kingstown, Rhode Island
North Kingstown is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States, and is part of the Providence metropolitan area. The population was 27,732 in the 2020 census. North Kingstown is home to the birthplace of American portraitist Gilbert Stuart, who was born in the village of Saunderstown. Within the town is Quonset Point, location of the former Naval Air Station Quonset Point, known for the invention of the Quonset hut, as well as the historic village of Wickford.
History.
The area was first settled by Roger Williams and Richard Smith who set up trading posts near Wickford where Smith's Castle is today. The town of Kings Towne was founded in 1674, by the colonial government, and included the present day towns of North Kingstown, South Kingstown, Exeter, and Narragansett. In 1723, Kings Towne was split into two parts, North Kingstown and South Kingstown, with North Kingstown, having the earliest settlements, retaining the 1674 establishment date. In 1742, the town of Exeter was taken from the western part of North Kingstown.
On September 17, 2024, the National Park Service announced that North Kingstown was named a World War II Heritage City.
Geography.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (25.28%) is water. It is bordered on the east by Narragansett Bay.
Demographics.
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As of the 2020 census, there were 27,732 people and 11,338 households in the town. The population density was . There were 12,189 housing units in the town. The racial makeup of the town was 89.59% White, 1.27% African American, 0.57% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.90% Asian, 1.19% from some other race other races, and 5.42% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.65% of the population.
There were 11,338 households, out of which 28.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.7% were married couples living together, 23.6% had a female householder with no spouse present and 14.2% had a male householder with no spouse present. 11.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.98.
In the town, the population was spread out, with 18.4% under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 22.6% from 25 to 44, 28.1% from 45 to 64, and 21.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years.
The median income for a household in the town was $120,565, and the median income for a family was $144,898. The per capita income for the town was $61,280. About 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.1% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over.
Transportation.
Wickford Junction is a terminus station on the Providence/Stoughton Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail, providing weekday train service to Providence Station and Boston's South Station. At 63 miles from Boston, it is the most distant station in the MBTA's 135-station commuter-rail network, and the only one in its most expensive fare zone.
RIPTA also services in the town inbound to Providence and outbound to Narragansett or Newport.
North Kingstown is also served by a passenger ferry connecting to the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Education.
North Kingstown School Department is the municipal school district. It operates North Kingstown High School.
Other National Historic Places in North Kingstown.
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Wickford, Rhode Island
Village in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, US
Wickford is a small village in the town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States, which is named after Wickford in Essex, England. Wickford is located on the western side of Narragansett Bay, just about a 20-minute drive across two bridges from Newport, Rhode Island. The village is built around one of the most well-protected natural harbors on the eastern seaboard, and features one of the largest collections of 18th century dwellings to be found anywhere in the Northeast. Today, the majority of the village's historic homes and buildings (most in private hands) remain largely intact upon their original foundations.
History.
Wickford is generally said to have been settled around 1637, when theologian and Rhode Island state founder Roger Williams bought a parcel of land from sachem Canonicus and established a trading post there. Prior to European contact, the lands in and around Wickford had long served as dwelling, fishing, and hunting grounds to the Narragansett people, who were one of New England's more powerful and prominent tribes at the time when Williams found his way to their shores.
Richard Smith established a trading post on Narragansett Bay near the mouth of Cocumscussoc Brook at about the same time as Williams' purchase. He was a Puritan from Gloucester, England who had originally settled in the Plymouth Colony's town of Taunton. In 1637, he built what appears to have been a rather grand, gabled house on the site, which Williams described in his letters as the first English house in the area. This house was also heavily fortified, and thus became known as "Smith's Castle".
During 1651, Smith purchased Roger Williams' trading post, and continued expanding his holdings over the years, building what came to be called the "Cocumscussoc Plantation". His plantation became a center of social, religious, and political life in the area. During King Philip's War, the only incident of an individual being hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason on American soil took place at Smith's Castle in 1676. Joshua Tefft was executed by this method, an English colonist accused of having fought on the side of the Narragansetts during the Great Swamp Fight.
During King Philip's War, many of the homes were destroyed that had been built during this brief period of expansion. One of the homes that went was Smith's Castle, which was burned to the ground in 1676. Two years later, Richard Smith Jr. built a new home on the old foundation, retaining the name "Smith's Castle". This structure remains standing today and is one of the area's most visited historic sites.
Following King Philip's War, Wickford grew steadily as a port and shipbuilding center. To this day, the waterfront remains very active. Captain Lodowick Updike developed much of the early village between 1709–1715 after inheriting the land in 1692 from his grandfather Richard Smith, owner of Smith's Castle and the surrounding lands. The village was often interchangeably called "Updike's New Town" or "Wickford" in honor of the English home town of the wife of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut. In 1707, the Old Narragansett Church was founded in downtown Wickford, and survives as the oldest Episcopal church building in the northeastern United States. The British military attempted to raid Wickford during the American Revolution in 1776, but the "Wickford gun" was used to thwart the invading British expedition, a single cannon commissioned by the General Assembly for the town to defend itself. Later, the gun was taken to Point Judith, despite local Tories' attempts to disarm the weapon. There it was used to force a British ship to surrender its crew. The prisoners were removed to Providence.
In the 1800s, the Washington Academy was established as a crucial institution to meet the growing need for public education. Founded in North Kingstown, with contributions from leaders in Providence and Newport, this academy aimed to train young men as educators. Samuel Elam, a prominent businessman from New York and Newport, served as its first president. He maintained a summer estate near the small mill village of Annaquatucket in North Kingstown.
The prosperity of Wickford began to decline when it was bypassed by the Providence and Stonington Railroad in the late 1830s. Additionally, a shipping dispute with Providence, fueled by exorbitant wharfage prices set by waterfront property owners, deterred major trading companies like Brown & Ives from utilizing Wickford.
The revitalization of Wickford commenced with the construction of the Sea View Trolley Line about two decades later. Wealthy Narragansett casino owners, eager to facilitate access to their resorts and beaches, largely funded this initiative, following the success of the Newport Line.
Notable residents.
In 1755, painter Gilbert Stuart was born in Saunderstown, a village to the south of Wickford, in a snuff-mill that still stands and is open to the public in season. Other famous residents have included novelist Owen Wister, who for decades summered in a home just to the south of the village. Wickford was also home to Paule Stetson Loring, artist for "Yachting" magazine and other publications, and longtime editorial page cartoonist for "The Providence Journal". A popular urban legend maintains that novelist John Updike hailed originally from Wickford—but this is not the case. Updike was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Updike did, however, use Wickford as the model for the fictional village of Eastwick in his novel, "The Witches of Eastwick" (Knopf: 1984). (Nevertheless, a branch of the Updike, or Op Den Dyck, family was among the first settling families of Wickford; the original village was at one time called "Updike's Newtown". The descendants of Richard Smith and Lodowick Updike intermarried and the Updikes were residents of Smith's Castle in the colonial era.) Christian leader Joshua V. Himes grew up in Wickford.
Wickford Art Festival.
The Wickford Art Festival—held in July of every year since 1962 and hosted by the Wickford Art Association—is one of the leading such events on the eastern seaboard, attracting hundreds of prominent artists and thousands of spectators from across the country and around the world.
References.
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Wickford
Town and civil parish in Essex, England
Wickford is a town and civil parish in the south of the English county of Essex, with a population of 33,486. Located approximately 30 miles (50 km) east of London, it is within the Borough of Basildon along with the original town of Basildon, Billericay, Laindon and Pitsea.
Wickford has a main high street which includes a wide range of shops. It also has a swimming pool, library, open-air market and a community centre within the vicinity of the town centre.
History.
Wickford has a history going back over two thousand years. There is evidence that the area itself was inhabited in prehistoric times probably by a tribe of Britons called Trinovantes. There was a Roman military marching camp on the Beauchamps Farm site, which was succeeded by a Roman villa. This is now the site of Beauchamps High School. This area on higher ground was the historic core of Wickford, the site of the manor house and the parish church of St Catherine's. Over time, the commercial centre of Wickford has migrated westwards towards the modern High Street on the other side of the River Crouch.
The place name 'Wickford' is first attested in a Saxon charter of 995, where it appears as "Wicford"; it appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Wincfort". The name means 'ford by a wych elm or ford by a dairy-farm'.
Before the 20th century, Wickford was an agricultural village. At the time of the Domesday Survey, six land-holders were recorded. Historically, there have been only two considerable estates in Wickford: the manor of Wickford Hall and the manor of Stilemans. Robert Wikeford or de Wickford (c.1320–90), Archbishop of Dublin, was born in Wickford and his family are thought to have been Lords of the Manor of Wickford Hall.
Governance.
Wickford was an ancient parish in the county of Essex and, from 1894, had a parish council. In 1934, the parish council was abolished when the town became part of Billericay Urban District. The civil parish was re-created on 1 April 2022. The first town councillors took office following an uncontested election in May 2022, and the council held its first meeting on 16 May 2022 at the Wick Community Centre.
American relations.
The village of Wickford in Rhode Island, United States, is believed to have been named after this town.
Wickford was also the English birthplace of Elizabeth Reade (1615–72), the second wife of John Winthrop the Younger (1606–76), Governor of Connecticut; she was also a step-daughter of Hugh Peter (1598–1660), a prominent supporter of the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War.
Naturism.
Wickford became the birthplace of Naturism in the United Kingdom; in 1924, the English Gymnosophist Society was formed and had its home in the town.
Second World War.
During the Second World War, the edge of the town was hit by a German doodlebug and, on 6 December 1944, a V-2 rocket fell in Branksome Avenue, about a mile west of the town centre. Around the town, in amongst the hedgerows and fields, there are numerous pillboxes constructed as a part of British anti-invasion preparations.
1958 flood.
In 1958, Wickford town centre was hit by a flood which made national news headlines. The most striking image of the flood was a double-decker bus, left stranded at Halls Corner overnight, partly submerged by the floodwater. A second flood, in 1960, meant that changes were made to the course of the River Crouch; this included turning the river into a concrete channel through the centre of the town, although this may be removed in the coming years, depending on the scale of the Wickford Masterplan (see below).
Geography.
For the most part, Wickford is flat and above sea level. The highest point, on the outskirts of the town, is above sea level. The River Crouch flows through the town, from the west to the east. The River Wick flows into the River Crouch from the south.
The built-up area of Wickford extends into the neighbouring parishes of Runwell to the north and Shotgate to the east.
Wick Country Park.
The Wick Country Park comprises of former agricultural land, with over 2 km (1 1/4 miles) of easy access trails around the site. The trails leads visitors past old hedgerows, the lake, ponds, World War II pillboxes and recent woodland plantings; bridges and boardwalks allow the trails to continue over the North Benfleet brook.
Transport.
Railway.
Wickford railway station is situated on the Shenfield to Southend Line, which provides services between London Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria. A journey to London takes approximately 40 minutes.
In addition, the Crouch Valley line has services between Wickford and Southminster.
Greater Anglia manages the station and operates all of its passenger services.
Buses.
Bus services in Wickford are operated primarily by First Essex, but also by Stephensons of Essex and NIBS Buses.
Routes include:
Roads.
The town can be reached easily via the A127, which connects east London and Southend-on-Sea, and by the A130 from Chelmsford.
Media.
Local TV coverage is provided by BBC London and ITV London which is received from the Crystal Palace TV transmitter. BBC East and ITV Anglia can also be received from the Sudbury TV transmitter.
Local radio stations are on BBC Essex on 95.3 FM, Heart East on 96.3 FM, and Gateway 97.8, a community based radio station which broadcast from Basildon on 97.8 FM.
The town is served by the local newspaper, Southend Echo.
The Master Plan.
The Wickford Masterplan was first unveiled at the Wickford Community Centre in December 2004 and published in November 2005 by DTZ Pieda Consulting, at a budget of £125 million, and many of the developments are currently in progress. At the heart of the proposals is the redevelopment of the High Street, which will be redesigned to be the town's premier meeting place. The Masterplan would create new public spaces, enhance the retail environment through the renewal of retail floor space and bring the market into the street scene, promoting urban living above shops and on the existing market site.
Adjacent to the River Crouch, a number of high quality residential developments promoted as the "Town Centre Riverside Living" complex would revitalise the riverside as a public asset and promotion of new eating and drinking opportunities. In addition, a new residential development to the west of Market Avenue will be constructed.
Promoting the station entrances on both sides of the railway line as key gateways to Wickford are also key areas of the plan, which would enhance transport interchange facilities and bring forward the car park site on Station Road for development as a new multi-storey car park and mixed-use development. As of present only the northern side of the station facing The Broadway is easily accessible, with the southern London-bound track only accessible from the outside though a small out-of-way footpath from Market Avenue as a courteous entrance for wheelchair-using passengers.
Public and health services would be improved under the scheme, with the re-organisation of existing health, library and community services into a new 'iconic' building to the east of Market Avenue as an integrated community service facility.
The Eastern Extension would create a better presence and new linkages to the east of the town centre by redeveloping the car park into a multi-storey development with residential and live-work uses and a new housing scheme to the east of Wickford Bypass. The Southern Gateway area, which surrounds London Road and the southern end of the High Street, are also planned to undergo a transition with a strong leisure and recreational theme, building on existing eating and drinking facilities and incorporating compatible residential uses.
Overall 650 apartments are planned to be built as part of the Masterplan as officially stated by councillor Tony Ball, although other sources opposed to the project claim this figure is closer to 735.
Opposition.
The Masterplan has met with resistance with many residents of Wickford, mainly due to overall cost, and also the fear from some older residents that raising the level of the river could see repeats of the floods in 1958 and 1960.
There have also been criticism over the number of developments being constructed, which some say threaten to overdevelop and cause environmental and aesthetic damage to the town centre whilst providing minimal improvements to public services; one such group is the Wickford Action Group who has campaigned against many of the revisions made prior to the public approval of the plan.
Progress.
Construction began in earnest in February 2007, which saw the demolition of many of the buildings in Lower Southend Road to make way for a new residential area. As of December 2009 this development has been partially completed (Riverside Place phase 1 + Riverside Court), however the compulsory purchase order of the post sorting office has been withdrawn leaving the fate of Riverside Place Phase 2 in doubt.
As of April 2010, the whole of the Masterplan project is facing serious delays and construction has halted due to the global financial crisis. In May 2009 the construction company Bradgate Developments released a statement assuring residents the project was still on track.
Proposed super-max prison.
Plans to build a prison capable of accommodating up to 1,500 inmates on land formerly of the Runwell Hospital mental institute were scrapped. The land is now a housing estate.
References.
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Wickford Junction station
Railway station in North Kingstown, RI
Wickford Junction station is a commuter rail station located in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States. It is the southern terminus of the MBTA Commuter Rail Providence/Stoughton Line and serves as a park and ride location for commuters to Providence and Boston. The station consists of a single high-level side platform on a stub-end siding next to the Northeast Corridor mainline.
The first station at the site opened in 1844. In 1870, the Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company was opened from the station to Wickford Landing, where it connected with steamships to Newport, Rhode Island. The station was rebuilt in 1871, expanded in 1887, and rebuilt again around 1890 after a fire. Branch service ended in 1925, but the station remained open until 1981. A new station and parking garage opened on the same site on April 23, 2012, as part of the South County Commuter Rail project, which also included the new T. F. Green Airport station.
History.
Former station.
In 1844, seven years after the Rhode Island section of the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad opened, a small station was placed at Wickford. The Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company opened in 1870 as a branch from the mainline to Wickford Landing, where wealthy riders would board steamships to the resorts and summer homes of Newport, Rhode Island. A new station named Wickford Junction was built in 1871 at a cost of $8,000; a $3,500 addition was added sixteen years later. The station burned and was replaced by a smaller structure around 1890. Passenger service on the branch ended in 1925, though some mainline service continued to stop.
The station building was torn down in 1969 as rail service declined, leaving just the stone foundation, which was later filled with gravel. The pedestrian overpass was moved in 1971 to Route 128 station, where it remained until Route 128 station was rebuilt in 2000. The station, by then just bare platforms, was served by a single New London-Providence round trip (cut to Westerly-Providence by Penn Central on November 22, 1971). The commuter train was discontinued on June 3, 1977. Amtrak's New Haven-Boston "Beacon Hill" began service on April 30, 1978, including a stop at Wickford Junction. The "Beacon Hill" was discontinued on October 1, 1981.
The Wickford Landing branch's right-of-way is still extant, as are the remains of a turntable about north of Ten Rod Road. The state is considering building a bikeway along the right-of-way to connect the Wickford town center with the Wickford Junction development and station.
Modern station.
After "Beacon Hill" service ended in 1981, some residents proposed a new station and the restoration of service. Bob Coie, a local builder, had bought a strip of land along the tracks in 1959 and acquired a large parcel along their west side in 1982. In 1985, he convinced the town to upzone the land for commercial use with the intention of eventually building a "pre-planned business district" and commuter rail station there. A state study of rail corridors was completed in 1994 and the Northeast Corridor was designated as the highest-priority line for commuter service to Providence. An addendum in 1995, assuming a quick start to operations, projected that daily ridership from Wickford would be 2,869 in 2000 and 3,386 in 2020. An operations plan was released in 2001, and environmental assessment was completed in 2003.
By November 2006, the station and associated track work was expected to cost $43.7 million, of which $24.99 million would be Federal Transit Administration New Starts funding. The station received a total of $59 million in federal funds, including the $24.99 million from New Starts and $4.35 million in stimulus funds. In late 2009, the State of Rhode Island spent $3.2 million to purchase of land for the station and parking garage, with hopes that it could be in service in 2011.
Ground was broken for the new station on August 18, 2010. Primary construction work on the station platform and garage was completed on time and under budget in December 2011, and a test train was run to the station in March 2012. The station opened on April 23, 2012. A major part of the modern station is the four-story parking garage, which was modeled after the nearby Lafayette Mill. The garage includes an indoor waiting room—rare in the MBTA system—and a small coffee/snack shop. An -tall bronze sculpture celebrating the history of rail service at Wickford Junction was completed in October 2015.
Ridership.
Ridership at Wickford Junction has been far below projections, some of which had assumed that transit-oriented development would be constructed at the station. Daily boardings were projected to reach 3,544 in 2025 according to the 1995 analysis. This was reduced to 1,669 by 2020 in the 2003 Environmental Assessment, but raised again to 3,386 by 2020 in a 2005 analysis.
Initial ridership in May 2012 was 130 inbound riders per day, of whom 80 percent rode to Providence and 20 percent to Boston. Ridership increased to 150 riders per day by early June and to 175 daily by February 2014.
Ridership averaged 292 daily boardings in the first quarter of 2017. For the second half of 2017, the state offered free intrastate rides in an attempt to promote the under-utilized T.F. Green Airport and Wickford Junction stations. The six-month promotion was expected to cost about $102,000. Ridership increased by 50% within the first month of the promotion. However, a 2018 count totalled only 235 daily boardings.
As of 2017[ [update]] the station only has weekday service, but planners hope to add weekend service eventually. Previous official discussions about adding weekend service to T. F. Green Airport and Wickford Junction took place in 2014.
Bus operations and consolidation.
Wickford Junction's drop-off lane also serves as a busway, which RIPTA bus route 66 URI/Galilee briefly served before it was rerouted to a park-and-ride closer to Route 2. In January 2013, RIDOT began planning to sell the park-and-ride property and reroute the 66 and the new 65X Wakefield Express to Wickford Junction on all trips; however, the plan was held up by concerns about eliminating free parking in the lot in favor of the paid garage. In July 2015, the agency renewed plans to sell the park-and-ride lot for an estimated $1.9 million and reroute the buses, but similar concerns were voiced at a public meeting. A judge blocked RIDOT's sale plan in July 2017 over concerns that the family of the original property owners (from whom it was taken by eminent domain in the 1930s) may have had the right to buy back the property.
In August 2015, RIDOT announced that it would be taking over operations and maintenance at Wickford Junction from a private contractor. The savings from the change—estimated at $340,000 annually—were to be used to increase frequencies on the 65X route. At the same time, RIDOT began a two-week, $372,500 project to allow bus operations to be shifted to the station, which involved constructing a bus depot next to the garage and a new access driveway from Route 102.
Only several days of "preliminary work" were completed by August 31 when Coie's company, owner of the adjacent shopping plaza, filed a lawsuit against RIDOT. The suit alleged that the changes would reduce traffic to the shopping center and cause a safety issue. RIDOT answered the claim, saying that the 2009 land deal gave the agency exclusive rights to the transit facility land. The state settled the lawsuit with the company in November 2015 by agreeing to pay $750,000 by July 2016. Effective December 7, 2015, all 65X and 66 trips were rerouted to Wickford Junction, with the garage now open 24/7. The restrooms and waiting room had full hours beginning in January 2016.
Rail operations.
The station opened on April 23, 2012, with ten trains in each direction on weekdays. Two off-peak trains ran only as far as Providence, while the other eight—including five rush hour trains—ran to Boston. Travel time is approximately 35 minutes to Providence and 100 minutes to Boston.
The station is located on a siding which connects to the southbound mainline track of the Northeast Corridor at Stony interlocking, north of the station. The siding allows Amtrak trains to pass while a commuter train is stopped at the station and laying over. Wickford Junction station is located at milepost 165.8 on the Northeast Corridor, from Providence and from Boston.
The 2014 "State Rail Plan" recommended the implementation of shuttle service between Wickford Junction and Providence via T.F. Green Airport with half-hour headways. The service, which could be operated with multiple units rather than conventional locomotive-hauled commuter trains, was expected to increase ridership at Wickford to as much as 3,400 riders per day.
References.
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Wickford railway station
Railway station in Essex, England
Wickford railway station is a junction stop on the Shenfield to Southend Line and also the western terminus of the Crouch Valley Line in the east of England, serving the town of Wickford in the Basildon district of Essex. It is down the line from London Liverpool Street and is situated between Billericay to the west and, to the east, Rayleigh on the Southend Line and Battlesbridge on the Crouch Valley Line. The Engineer's Line Reference for the line is SSV, the station's three-letter station code is WIC.
Most Southend services connect to the Great Eastern Main Line at Shenfield for northbound connections. Peak-time trains to/from Southminster also run through to London. Wickford station, and all trains serving it, are currently operated by Greater Anglia.
History.
The line from Shenfield to Wickford, along with the station, were opened for goods on 19 November 1888 and for passengers on 1 January 1889 by the Great Eastern Railway.
The station was previously called Wickford Junction, when the Crouch Valley route to Southminster also included a branch to Maldon West and more agricultural traffic passed through the station.
At the London end of the station, there once was a goods yard and turntable for steam locomotives; it was closed in 1954. A couple of sidings remain here for storing engineering vehicles or failed trains, but much of the railway land here is now in use as a car park for passengers. The line from Wickford to Southend Victoria was converted from semaphore signalling to 3-aspect, automatic and semi-automatic, colour light signals on 26 June 1938. At the same time, the signal boxes at Fanton, Rayleigh, and Rochford were decommissioned.
The Shenfield to Southend Victoria line was electrified using 1.5 kV DC overhead line electrification on 31 December 1956. This was changed to 6.25 kV AC in November 1960 and to 25 kV AC on 25 January 1979. Platforms 1 and 4 were electrified when the Southminster branch was electrified on 12 May 1986.
The signal box that was formerly located at the end of platforms 3 and 4, before the bridge crossing Wickford High Street, was demolished in the early 1990s following the introduction of new signalling controlled from Liverpool Street. The upper floor of the original Great Eastern Railway station buildings on platforms 1 and 2 were destroyed by fire in the late 1990s; however, the ground floor (including the ticket office, waiting room and staff accommodation) was saved and remained in use until 2021.
In 2020, Greater Anglia submitted plans to demolish the station building so that platform 1 could be extended for the new longer trains. It was demolished in 2021. The extended platform was opened on 26 June 2021.
Description.
Wickford station comprises four platforms:
Services.
All services at Wickford are operated by Greater Anglia. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is:
Additional services operate during peak hours.
On Sundays, services between London and Southend are reduced to 2 tph and services to Southminster are reduced to hourly.
! Preceding station
! colspan="3" | National Rail
! Following station
References.
Citations.
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Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company
Railroad in Rhode Island (1871–1909)
The Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company was a railroad and steamboat operator in Rhode Island. It was first chartered in 1862 as the Wickford Branch Railroad, and intended to connect Wickford Junction station to downtown Wickford, Rhode Island, by rail, and Wickford to Newport, Rhode Island, by steamboat. The company changed its name to the Wickford Railroad in 1864, before adopting its final name in 1870. Construction was completed in 1871, when the railroad began hauling both passengers and freight with a single locomotive and two railroad cars. Steamboats were purchased to connect to Newport. The railroad operated under the control of the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad, but maintained its own corporate identity until a 1909 takeover by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Passenger trains and the steamboat service were both ended in October 1925, and the final half a mile to Wickford Landing was abandoned in 1938. The rest of the line was abandoned by the New Haven in 1962.
History.
Formation and construction.
The New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (known as the Stonington Line) was the first railroad to be built in southern Rhode Island, completed in 1837. The company planned to route their line directly through the coastal village of Wickford, but surveyors were chased out of town by local farmers armed with guns. As a result, the Stonington Line avoided Wickford, passing by west. By the 1860s, Wickford residents had come to regret rejecting the railroad, and therefore decided to form their own company to connect Wickford to the Stonington Line.
The railroad would also connect to Wickford's port, where steamboats could be run to Newport, Rhode Island, a popular summer destination for wealthy New York City residents. At the time, the connection between trains from New York


The Painter's Studio
Painting by Gustave Courbet
The Painter's Studio (; in full, "The Painter's Studio: A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life") is an 1855 oil-on-canvas painting by Gustave Courbet. It is located in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.
Courbet painted "The Painter's Studio" in Ornans, France in 1855. "The world comes to be painted at my studio," said Courbet of the Realist work. The figures in the painting are allegorical representations of various influences on Courbet's artistic life. On the left are human figures from all levels of society. In the center, Courbet works on a landscape, while turned away from a nude model who is a symbol of Academic art. On the right are friends and associates of Courbet, mainly elite Parisian society figures, including Charles Baudelaire, Champfleury, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Courbet's most prominent patron, Alfred Bruyas.
The 1855 Paris World Fair's jury accepted eleven of Courbet's works for the Exposition Universelle, but "The Painter's Studio" was not among them. In an act of self promotion and defiance, Courbet, with the help of Alfred Bruyas, opened his own exhibition (The Pavilion of Realism) close to the official exposition; this was a forerunner of the various Salon des Refusés. Very little praise was forthcoming, and Eugène Delacroix was one of the few painters who supported the work. Of the painting, Courbet stated that "The Painter's Studio" "represents society at its best, its worst, and its average."
Description.
The painting was produced during Courbet's involvement with Realism in art in the mid-19th century. Due to the short amount of time Courbet had to paint it, many original plans for the work had to be discarded. The most noticeable example of this is in the background of the painting. On the back wall of the studio in the painting, Courbet planned to paint replications of other works of his. He ran out of time to paint these in their entirety, so he then covered them up with a reddish-brown preparation color, leaving the partially-finished paintings still relatively visible.
Left side.
The left side of the painting depicts people of everyday life in France. The Jewish man and the Irishwoman were seen on a trip Courbet took to London in 1848, according to a letter Courbet wrote to Champfleury describing what the painting would look like. There is also a "lay figure"/"crucified figure" directly to the left of Courbet's easel. This figure appears contorted and potentially mangled. Art historians Benedict Nicolson and Georges Riat both interpret this figure as a symbol of the "death" of the art of the Royal Academy of Art in France.
Center.
The center of the painting depicts Courbet painting a landscape, a nude female figure, a young boy, and a white cat. On his canvas, Courbet paints the Loue River valley. This valley in the Franche-Comté region of France is a tribute to Courbet's homeland of Ornans, France. The female figure is based on an 1854 photograph by J. V. de Villeneuve and has been interpreted as a representation of the art of the Academy or as Courbet's Muse for Realism.
Right side.
The right side of the painting depicts a large number of Paris "élites", including friends of the artist. These are figures who played a role in the development of Courbet's career as an artist, or who inspired him in some way. Portrayals included on this side of the painting include Alfred Bruyas (a patron of Courbet's), Champfleury, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Charles Baudelaire, and a wealthy pair of art collectors, among other prominent society figures. A majority of these portraits were copied from previous portraits or from photographs, since the painting was entirely made in Ornans but the subjects on this side of the painting resided in Paris. For example, the portrait of Charles Baudelaire was directly copied from Courbet's 1847 portrait of the writer. Courbet was in written correspondence with Champfleury in regards to this painting (from which much of the interpretation of "The Painter's Studio" is derived) and requested a photograph of Proudhon, the philosopher and anarchist, so that he could be included in the painting. It is the photograph Courbet received from Champfleury on which Proudhon's portrait is based.
References.
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Gustave Courbet
French realist painter (1819–1877)
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.
Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. Courbet was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.
Biography.
Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). Anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's sisters, Zoé, Zélie, and Juliette were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish, and find inspiration.
Courbet went to Paris in 1839 and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he soon left, preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work.
Courbet's first works were an "Odalisque" inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and a "Lélia" illustrating George Sand, but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles. These include "Self-Portrait with Black Dog" (c. 1842–44, accepted for exhibition at the 1844 Paris Salon), the theatrical "Self-Portrait" which is also known as "Desperate Man" (c. 1843–45), "Lovers in the Countryside" (1844, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), "The Sculptor" (1845), "The Wounded Man" (1844–54, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), "The Cellist, Self-Portrait" (1847, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, shown at the 1848 Salon), and "Man with a Pipe" (1848–49, Musée Fabre, Montpellier).
Trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists, notably Champfleury.
Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting "After Dinner at Ornans". The work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state. The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon—an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).
In 1849–50, Courbet painted "The Stone Breakers" (destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in 1945), which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called "the first of his great works". The painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey: "It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning."
Realism.
Courbet's work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest him, for he believed that "the artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ..." Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. He and Jean-François Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants and workers.
Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor. His work, along with that of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known as "Realism". For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness of life, and in doing so challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. One of the distinctive features of Courbet's Realism was his lifelong attachment to his native province, the Franche-Comté, and of his birthplace, Ornans.
"The Stone Breakers".
Considered to be the first of Courbet's great works, "The Stone Breakers" of 1849 is an example of social realism that caused a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1850. The work was based on two men, one young and one old, whom Courbet discovered engaged in backbreaking labor on the side of the road when he returned to Ornans for an eight-month visit in October 1848. On his inspiration, Courbet told his friends and art critics Francis Wey and Jules Champfleury, "It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting."
While other artists had depicted the plight of the rural poor, Courbet's peasants are not idealized like those in works such as Breton's 1854 painting, "The Gleaners".
During World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, the Allies continuously bombed the city of Dresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks. "The Stone Breakers" was destroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the Königstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.
"A Burial at Ornans".
The Salon of 1850–1851 found him triumphant with "The Stone Breakers", the "Peasants of Flagey" and "A Burial at Ornans". The "Burial", one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in historical narratives, but in "Burial" Courbet said he "painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople". The result is a realistic presentation of them and life in Ornans.
The vast painting, measuring , drew both praise and fierce denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a prosaic ritual on a scale which would previously have been reserved for a religious or royal subject.
According to art historian Sarah Faunce, "In Paris, the "Burial" was judged as a work that had thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing a genteel party, and in terms of that tradition it was, of course, found wanting." The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in a genre work: Courbet's mourners make no theatrical gestures of grief, and their faces seemed more caricatured than ennobled. The critics accused Courbet of a deliberate pursuit of ugliness.
Eventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet well understood the importance of the painting, and said of it, ""Burial at Ornans" was in reality the burial of romanticism."
Courbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius, a "terrible socialist" and a "savage". He actively encouraged the public's perception of him as an unschooled peasant, while his ambition, his bold pronouncements to journalists, and his insistence on depicting his own life in his art gave him a reputation for unbridled vanity.
Courbet associated his ideas of realism in art with political anarchism, and, having gained an audience, he promoted political ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular French press.
In 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:
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During the 1850s, Courbet painted numerous figurative works using common folk and friends as his subjects, such as "Village Damsels" (1852), "The Wrestlers" (1853), "The Bathers" (1853), "The Sleeping Spinner" (1853), and "The Wheat Sifters" (1854).
"The Artist's Studio".
In 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the "Exposition Universelle". Three were rejected for lack of space, including "A Burial at Ornans" and his other monumental canvas "The Artist's Studio". Refusing to be denied, Courbet took matters into his own hands. He displayed forty of his paintings, including "The Artist's Studio", in his gallery called "The Pavilion of Realism" (Pavillon du Réalisme) which was a temporary structure that he erected next door to the official Salon-like "Exposition Universelle".
The work is an allegory of Courbet's life as a painter, seen as a heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include the art critics Champfleury, and Charles Baudelaire, and art collector Alfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant, and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as "the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death."
In the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then-current French Emperor, Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled mustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his "ownership" of France is an illegal one.
Although artists like Eugène Delacroix were ardent champions of his effort, the public went to the show mostly out of curiosity and to deride him. Attendance and sales were disappointing, but Courbet's status as a hero to the French avant-garde became assured. He was admired by the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he became an inspiration to the younger generation of French artists including Édouard Manet and the Impressionist painters. "The Artist's Studio" was recognized as a masterpiece by Delacroix, Baudelaire, and Champfleury, if not by the public.
Seascapes.
While Courbet's seascapes, painted during his many visits to the northern coast of France in the late 1860s, were decidedly less controversial than his salon submissions, they furthered his contributions (willing or otherwise) to realism with their emphasis on both the beauty and danger of the natural world. There is a distinct range in the tones of this period with "The Calm Sea" (1869) depicting the serenity of the receded tide, and "The Sailboat" (c. 1869) showing a sailboat wrestling with violent tides.
Realist manifesto.
Courbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it, he asserts his goal as an artist is "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation."
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.
Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name that nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.
I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of "art for art's sake". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.
To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855)
Notoriety.
In the Salon of 1857, Courbet showed six paintings. These included "Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)", depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life: "Hind at Bay in the Snow" and "The Quarry".
"Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine", painted in 1856, provoked a scandal. Art critics accustomed to conventional, "timeless" nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet's depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.
By exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself "both notoriety and sales".
During the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such as "Femme nue couchée", culminating in "The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde)" (1866), which depicts female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988, and "Sleep" (1866), featuring two women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited by a picture dealer in 1872.
Until about 1861, Napoléon's regime had exhibited authoritarian characteristics, using press censorship to prevent the spread of opposition, manipulating elections, and depriving Parliament of the right to free debate or any real power. In the 1860s, however, Napoléon III made more concessions to placate his liberal opponents. This change began by allowing free debates in Parliament and public reports of parliamentary debates. Press censorship, too, was relaxed and culminated in the appointment of the Liberal Émile Ollivier, previously a leader of the opposition to Napoléon's regime, as the "de facto" Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870. His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour angered those in power but made him immensely popular with those who opposed the prevailing regime.
Courbet and the Paris Commune.
On 4 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Courbet made a proposal that later came back to haunt him. He wrote a letter to the Government of National Defense, proposing that the column in the Place Vendôme, erected by Napoleon I to honour the victories of the French Army, be taken down. He wrote:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />In as much as the Vendôme Column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorize him to disassemble this column." Courbet proposed that the Column be moved to a more appropriate place, such as the Hotel des Invalides, a military hospital. He also wrote an open letter addressed to the German Army and to German artists, proposing that German and French cannons should be melted down and crowned with a liberty cap, and made into a new monument on Place Vendôme, dedicated to the federation of the German and French people. The Government of National Defense did nothing about his suggestion to tear down the column, but it was not forgotten.
On 18 March, in the aftermath of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune briefly took power in the city. Courbet played an active part and organized a Federation of Artists, which held its first meeting on 5 April in the Grand Amphitheater of the School of Medicine. Some three hundred to four hundred painters, sculptors, architects, and decorators attended. There were some famous names on the list of members, including André Gill, Honoré Daumier, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eugène Pottier, Jules Dalou, and Édouard Manet. Manet was not in Paris during the Commune and did not attend, and Corot, who was seventy-five years old, stayed in a country house and his studio during the Commune, not taking part in the political events.
Courbet chaired the meeting and proposed that the Louvre and the Musée du Luxembourg, the two major art museums of Paris, closed during the uprising, be reopened as soon as possible and that the traditional annual exhibit called the Salon be held as in years past, but with radical differences. He proposed that the Salon should be free of any government interference or rewards to preferred artists; no medals or government commissions would be given. Furthermore, he called for the abolition of the most famous state institutions of French art; the École des Beaux-Arts, the French Academy in Rome, the French School at Athens, and the Fine Arts section of the Institute of France.
On 12 April, the Executive Committee of the Commune gave Courbet, though he was not yet officially a member of the Commune, the assignment of opening the museums and organizing the Salon. They issued the following decree at the same meeting: "The Column of the Place Vendôme will be demolished." On 16 April, special elections were held to replace more moderate members of the Commune who had resigned their seats, and Courbet was elected as a delegate for the 6th arrondissement of Paris. He was given the title of Delegate of Fine Arts, and on 21 April he was also made a member of the Commission on Education. At the meeting of the Commission on 27 April, the minutes reported that Courbet requested the demolition of the Vendôme column be carried out and that the column would be replaced by an allegorical figure representing the taking of power of the Commune on 18 March.
Nonetheless, Courbet was a dissident by nature, and he was soon in opposition with the majority of the Commune members on some of its measures. He was one of a minority of Commune Members who opposed the creation of a Committee on Public Safety, modeled on the committee of the same name which carried out the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
Courbet opposed the Commune on another more serious matter: the arrest of his friend Gustave Chaudey, a prominent socialist, magistrate, and journalist, whose portrait Courbet had painted. The popular Commune newspaper, "Le Père Duchesne", accused Chaudey, when he was briefly deputy mayor of the 9th arrondissement before the Commune was formed, of ordering soldiers to fire on a crowd that had surrounded the Hôtel de Ville. Courbet's opposition was of no use; on 23 May 1871, in the final days of the Commune, Chaudey was shot by a Commune firing squad. According to some sources Courbet resigned from the Commune in protest.
On 13 May, on the proposal of Courbet, the Paris house of Adolphe Thiers, the chief executive of the French government, was demolished, and his art collection confiscated. Courbet proposed that the confiscated art be given to the Louvre and other museums, but the director of the Louvre refused to accept it. On 16 May, just nine days before the fall of the Commune, in a large ceremony with military bands and photographers, the Vendôme column was pulled down and broke into pieces. Some witnesses said Courbet was there, others denied it. The following day, the Federation of Artists debated dismissing directors of the Louvre and of the Luxembourg museums, suspected by some in the Commune of having secret contacts with the French government, and appointed new heads of the museums.
According to one legend, Courbet defended the Louvre and other museums against "looting mobs", but there are no records of any such attacks on the museums. The only real threat to the Louvre came during "Bloody Week", 21–28 May 1871, when a unit of Communards, led by a Commune general, Jules Bergeret, set fire to the Tuileries Palace, next to the Louvre. The fire spread to the library of the Louvre, which was destroyed, but the efforts of museum curators and firemen saved the art gallery.
After the final suppression of the Commune by the French army on 28 May, Courbet went into hiding in the apartments of different friends. He was arrested on 7 June. At his trial before a military tribunal on 14 August, Courbet argued that he had only joined the Commune to pacify it and that he had wanted to move the Vendôme Column, not destroy it. He said he had only belonged to the Commune for a short period, and rarely attended its meetings. He was convicted, but given a lighter sentence than other Commune leaders: six months in prison and a fine of five hundred francs. Serving part of his sentence in the Sainte-Pélagie Prison in Paris, he was allowed an easel and paints, but he could not have models pose for him. He did a famous series of still-life paintings of flowers and fruit during his confinement.
Exile and death.
Courbet completed his prison sentence on 2 March 1872, but his problems caused by the destruction of the Vendôme Column were still not over. In 1873, the newly elected president of the Republic, Patrice de MacMahon, announced plans to rebuild the column, with the cost to be paid by Courbet. Unable to pay, Courbet went into a self-imposed exile in Switzerland to avoid bankruptcy. In the following years, he participated in Swiss regional and national exhibitions. Surveilled by the Swiss intelligence service, he enjoyed in the small Swiss art world the reputation as head of the "realist school" and inspired younger artists such as Auguste Baud-Bovy and Ferdinand Hodler.
Important works from this period include several paintings of trout, "hooked and bleeding from the gills", that have been interpreted as allegorical self-portraits of the exiled artist. In his final years, Courbet painted landscapes, including several scenes of water mysteriously emerging from the depths of the earth in the Jura Mountains of the France–Switzerland border. Courbet also worked on sculpture during his exile. Previously, in the early 1860s, he had produced a few sculptures, one of which – the "Fisherman of Chavots" (1862) – he donated to Ornans for a public fountain, but it was removed after Courbet's arrest.
In May 1877, the state set the final cost of reconstructing the Vendôme Column at 323,000 francs for Courbet to repay in annual installments of 10,000 francs for the next 33 years. On 31 December 1877, a day before the first installment was due, Courbet died, aged 58, in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, of a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.
Legacy.
Courbet was admired by many younger artists. Claude Monet included a portrait of Courbet in his own version of "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" from 1865–1866 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Courbet's particular kind of realism influenced many artists to follow, notably among them the German painters of the Leibl circle, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Cézanne. Courbet's influence can also be seen in the work of Edward Hopper, whose "Bridge in Paris" (1906) and "Approaching a City" (1946) have been described as Freudian echoes of Courbet's "The Source of the Loue" and "The Origin of the World". His pupils included Henri Fantin-Latour, Hector Hanoteau and Olaf Isaachsen.
Courbet once wrote this in a letter:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.'
Courbet and Cubism.
Two 19th-century artists prepared the way for the emergence of Cubism in the 20th century: Courbet and Cézanne. Cézanne's contributions are well-known. Courbet's importance was announced by Guillaume Apollinaire, poet-spokesperson for the Cubists. Writing in "Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques" (1913) he declared, "Courbet is the father of the new painters." Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes often portrayed Courbet as the father of all modern art.
Both artists sought to transcend the conventional methods of rendering nature; Cézanne through a dialectical method revealing the process of seeing, Courbet by his materialism. The Cubists would combine these two approaches in developing a revolution in art.
On a formal level, Courbet wished to convey the physical characteristics of what he was painting: its density, weight, and texture. Art critic John Berger said: "No painter before Courbet was ever able to emphasize so uncompromisingly the density and weight of what he was painting." This emphasis on material reality endowed his subjects with dignity. Berger observed that the Cubist painters "were at great pains to establish the physical presence of what they were representing. And in this, they are the heirs of Courbet."
Nazi-looted art.
During the Third Reich (1933–1945) Jewish art collectors throughout Europe had their property seized as part of the Holocaust. Many artworks created by Courbet were looted by Nazis and their agents during this period and have only recently been reclaimed by the families of the previous owners.
Courbet's "La Falaise d'Etretat" was owned by the Jewish collector Marc Wolfson and his wife Erna, who both were murdered in Auschwitz. After disappearing during the Nazi occupation of France, it reappeared years later at the musée d'Orsay.
The great Hungarian Jewish collector Baron Mor Lipot Herzog owned several Courbet artworks, including "Le Chateau de Blonay (Neige)" (c. 1875, "The Chateau of Blonay (Snow)", now at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts), and Courbet's most infamous work — ("The Origin of the World"). His was looted by Nazis and many are still missing.
Gustav Courbet's paintings "Village Girl With Goat", "The Father", and "Landscape With Rocks" were discovered in the Gurlitt Trove of art stashed in Munich. It is not known to whom they belonged.
Josephine Weinmann and her family, who were German Jews, had owned "Le Grand Pont" before they were forced to flee. The Nazi militant Herbert Schaefer acquired it and loaned it to the Yale University Art Gallery, against whom the Weinmanns filed a claim.
The French "Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg)" has 41 entries for Courbet.
In March 2023, a museum at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, returned a painting "La Ronde Enfantine" by Gustave Courbet, which was stolen in 1941 by the Nazis in Paris. The canvas belonged to a Jewish member of the Resistance. The Spoliation Advisory Panel, a body created in 2000 by the British government, concluded on 28 March "that the painting was stolen by the Nazi occupation forces because Robert Bing was Jewish".
References.
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Further reading.
Monographs on the art and life of Courbet have been written by Estignard (Paris, 1874), D'Ideville (Paris, 1878), Silvestre in "Les artistes français" (Paris, 1878), Isham in Van Dyke's "Modern French Masters" (New York, 1896), Meier-Graefe, "Corot and Courbet" (Leipzig, 1905), Cazier (Paris, 1906), Riat (Paris, 1906), Muther (Berlin, 1906), Robin (Paris, 1909), Benedite (Paris, 1911) and Lazár Béla (Paris, 1911). Consult also Muther, "History of Modern Painting", volume ii (London, 1896, 1907); Patoux, "Courbet" in "Les artistes célèbres" and "La vérité sur Courbet" (Paris, 1879); Le Men, "Courbet" (New York, 2008).

John Mark Painter
American songwriter
John Mark Painter (born c. October 6 1967) is an American multi-instrumental musician, composer and arranger. He is best known for his role, with his wife, singer Fleming McWilliams, in the rock duo Fleming and John.
Painter grew up in Miami, and began playing trumpet, saxophone, bass, guitar and piano by age 11.
Painter met McWilliams while attending Belmont College in Nashville, and immediately began collaborating on songs. While pursuing a record contract, Painter began playing studio sessions for artists like Indigo Girls, Nanci Griffith and Jewel.
Fleming and John released its first album, "Delusions of Grandeur", in 1995 for independent label R.E.X. Records, then Universal Records. Their second album, "The Way We Are" in 1999 notably showcased Painter's skills as arranger and as instrumentalist on a panoply of uncommon instruments.
Painter continues to work heavily in the Nashville area as a studio musician, performing on albums by Carolyn Arends