For decades, the BRC founder has frequented museums, art festivals, and sculpture gardens hunting for a banjo-themed statue. The long search ended this autumn at a Rocky Mountain wedding. Near the entrance of the Planet Bluegrass music park and (wedding) events center in Lyons, Colorado, quietly stands the magnificent bronze statue “Passing It Along” by American sculptor Dee Clements (click to enlarge).
This brilliant award winning artist has also done bronze performance works entitled “The Cellist” and “The Violinist”.
Banjo education has been studied in art for more than a century. Born in Pittsburg, PA, limner Henry Ossawa Turner (1859-1937) was the first Afro-American painter to gain international acclaim. The son of a mother who escaped from slavery to the North, he lived most of his life in Paris.
During a brief visit to Philadelphia in 1893, he painted the iconic image “The Banjo Lesson” (Hampton University Museum, Virginia). So often depicted, banjo skills are handed-down as a family tradition.
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Like Turner, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was born in Pittsburg and emigrated to join the Impressionists in Paris where she hoped a female artist would find greater acceptance. Her full length painting “The Banjo Lesson” (Brooklyn Museum of Art) was completed in 1893.
A more intimate portrait version of “The Banjo Lesson” (Virginia Musem of Fine Arts, Richmond) was completed 1893-4 and bears her signature on the canvas. Cassatt also painted the “Girl With a Banjo” in 1893-94 which resides in a private collection.
Music instruction is an artful endeavor, and the BRC salutes all banjo teachers everywhere!
