RUNS APRIL 5- MAY 27, 2013

In 1947, Omer  T. Lassonde was declared one of America's great painters by Benjamin Bradlee in the NH Sunday Times.  Sixty-six years later the Portsmouth Historical Society is delighted to present a retrospective of Lassonde’s work that celebrates his spirited landscapes and expressive use of bold color. (Continued below)

"Omer T. Lassonde: New Hampshire Modernist" begins April 5, 2013 with the opening reception 5-8PM and will run through May 27, 2013.  It is located in the Portsmouth Historical Society's Academy Gallery at Discover Portsmouth, 10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, NH. The exhibit is funded in part by the Charles S. Parsons Fund of the NH Charitable Foundation. Admission is free and open to the public 7 days a week from 10-5PM. 

Born in Concord, NH of French-Canadian stock, Omer Thomas Lassonde (1903-1980) was schooled at Manchester and Philadelphia, while painting at Monhegan Island and Gloucester with some of the great colorists of the 1920s. No matter what style he later adopted, Lassonde remained a committed colorist throughout his career. He studied at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts and the Hugh Breckinridge School of Color, East Gloucester, MA.  Originally expecting to become a portraitist, one of his subjects, NH Governor John G. Winant, suggested he go to the South Pacific like Gauguin to paint.  Indeed, Lassonde is most famous for the year he spent painting the landscape and native life of West Samoa in 1930. 

He weathered the later years of the Great Depression, however, as Administrator of the WPA Federal Arts Project in his native New Hampshire from 1935 to 1942. In this work, arranging exhibitions of art across the Granite State, Lassonde met many like-minded artists and in 1940 he helped found the NH Art Association to exhibit and further the work of contemporary artists throughout the state. In 1934 he exhibited at the Grand Salon of Paris in Paris, France and was elected to Societé Des Artists Francais.  

He met his future wife, Louisa W. Tompkins (1895 – 1991) while attending a watercolor class in Manchester and in 1940 he joined the U.S. Army engineers immediately after Pearl Harbor.  Lassonde served at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard painting scenery for Army films and later painted scenes of Portsmouth. 

In the post-war years he became a more outspoken advocate for artistic modernism, painting in a series of new styles. In 1947 Bradlee, later editor of the Washington Post, claimed that he had "done more than any man living to put New Hampshire on the map artistically." As a tribute to his artistic legacy, his widow donated the Boscawen house and his many paintings to the NH Art Association after his death in 1980. 

This exhibit illustrates works of Lassonde’s early training and exhibitions in Manchester and Concord, to Monhegan, Gloucester, and Philadelphia and, later Tennessee. It explores Lassonde’s attempt at making portraiture a livelihood, his work in Samoa and Tennessee, as well as his modernist work in New Hampshire, California, and elsewhere. Always a conscious and arresting colorist, his later work reveals a flexibility of style for themes of political and religiously inspired artistic rhetoric.

The Portsmouth Historical Society would like to thank the following lenders for making this exhibit possible: Alva de Mars Megan Chapel Art Center, Saint Anselm College, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester NH Historic Association, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, NeighborWorks of Southern NH, New Hampshire Art Association, Melissa Anderson, Peter Casey, Robert S. Chase, Richard Connor, Sally Gallagher, The Hackler Family, Douglas A. Nelson, Richard and Margaret Nelson, Thomas S. Ordeshook, Joseph Perry, Richard and Ann Thorner and Timothy M. Zalenski. Special thanks to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation's Charles S. Parson Fund.  

For more information about the Omer T. Lassonde: NH Modernist exhibit please call (603) 436-8433 or visit www.PortsmouthHistory.org.