Jane Scott, Augustus Dunbier: United by color
Augustus Dunbier (1888–1977), international artist of Omaha, Neb., was a prolific landscape painter. At age 16, Dunbier moved to Germany from Nebraska to study art at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Dusseldorf with Adolf Munzer. Then he studied for one year at the Chicago Art Institute, where he became good friends with many prominent artists, including Robert Henri; Robert Spencer; Taos artists Walter Ufer and Eanger I. Couse; and Robert Guilder. Although he traveled and painted throughout the United States, he was the most educated full-time artist working in the state of Nebraska. From 1930–1977, between seasonal travels, Dunbier influenced many budding artists in workshops taught from his Omaha studio.
Dunbier was both a great painter and teacher. The teacher-student relationship in art is often unconventional. There are many great artists who struggle with teaching and others who have a gift for teaching and whose students often surpass them. Dunbier was neither solely a great artist nor primarily a great teacher but had the richest of both traits. One student, when asked why she had taken workshops with Dunbier for over 50 years, replied, “He never graduates anyone!” Dunbier was constantly learning and passed those lessons onto his students. A few of these promising students went onto make names of their own in the art world. One such woman was the talented oil and pastel painter Jane Scott (1918–).
Jane Scott studied with and was a dear friend of Dunbier from the time she was a young girl to his death in 1977. She still recalls many of the adventurous times they shared together painting in the “great out-of-doors,” as Dunbier called it.
“When we arrived at the landscape we had chosen, we would each set up, and Gus would stop at each easel to see that everyone got started right,” Scott reflected. “I still remember many of the comments Gus would make as we painted.” He said, “You want to paint the mood of the day. Painting is like music, you need to orchestrate it. If it’s a rainy day, paint the silvery effect of the day. If it’s a sunny day, paint the warm effect of the light. Don’t paint what you see, …It’s a matter of attitude, you manipulate the colors in order to create the mood.”1
While influenced by Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, Dunbier was the single greatest influence on Scott as a painter. Scott was Dunbier’s prized student and protégé. In combination with her education, Scott’s own desire and passion to paint what is beautiful has left a legacy beyond her master’s shadow.
Jane Scott, the oldest of four children, was born Feb. 16, 1918, to father Claude and mother Erma in Omaha, Neb. At a very young age, she loved to express beauty as seen through her own eyes. She studied art in Rockford College. At the age of 21, she married William H. Scott. The young family lived in New Jersey for about six years while he worked inventing stronger airplane wire during World War I. She experimented with her first oil painting on her honeymoon. In those days, she took her three children along to play in the grass, while she painted the Jersey shore.
Scott’s painting was set aside to meet the needs of a growing family. When her children were grown, she was back to the easel for a long and productive career. Now in her 90s, Scott is an accomplished and distinguished artist, who still has a majestic story to tell. There is a lightness in her voice when she remarks, “Life goes by so quickly, and I would like to paint them all again,” referring to her paintings. For Jane Scott, the joy of painting will never diminish. Despite aging hands and weakening health, painting provides a deep sense of fulfillment for Scott.
Jane Scott treasures the friendship and teachings of Dunbier. They both spoke often of light and finding the right landscape. They remark on the joys of painting and working in nature. Scott expanded on the themes learned from Dunbier. With the encouragement of galleries, she pursued and perfected the art of painting with pastel. She earned the coveted signature title of Master Pastelist, Pastel Society of America (MP/PSA). She found pastels to be brighter than her oils. Pastels are the purest form of pigment, and she uses this to her advantage. Dunbier would have envied the brilliance and intensity of light in Scott’s pastels.
Dunbier taught Scott how to see, as light reflects various colors. Observant artists are able to use color to portray natural light. The sky is not really blue. The grass is not completely green. If one looks closely, he or she will find a rainbow of colors. In both oil and pastel, Scott employs Degas’ pastel technique of layering glazes to achieve a transparent quality. She also lays a ground of sand and gesso to her canvas to give additional texture to her impressionistic style. Artists work with color, not light, so they have to employ the capabilities of color to depict the nature of light. The ability to express light through color makes paintings come alive.
Scott, like her teacher, does not paint from a photograph or picture, but only from real life. This may be one of the keys to her great success. Painting directly from nature allows her to experience and capture the mood of the landscape: how the light plays off of the leaves and reflects on the water. “I have no interest in painting from a picture. There is no change of light, no life,” Scott recently commented. Her teacher, Augustus Dunbier, stressed the importance of capturing the mood of the atmosphere. When painting outdoors, Jane Scott feels the liveliness of nature and infuses that into her painting. Dunbier once commented on plein air painting, defending, “If you can’t paint it with all of this hanging out there at the end of your nose, how do you expect to do it any better in your basement.”2
Dunbier was fascinated by the colors of nature and how they work together. Not a minimalist or tonalist, Dunbier’s vibrant color palette reflects the natural beauty he saw in the landscape. Color is Scott’s primary tool to achieve her goal of presenting beautiful truth in her work. Remarking about color, she said, “You have to make compromises. We work with pigment not light. If you don’t make everything brighter than it is, it won’t sing.”
“I was lucky,” she goes on. “I had a teacher. Augustus Dunbier knew color thoroughly and could explain how to see and use it. I loved his paintings from the moment I saw them; they were rough up close, but come together beautifully when you stepped back from them. He saw more clearly than most people.”3
Speaking of the teacher/student relationship between Scott and Dunbier, Scott remarks, “It takes nerve to break away from a teacher, but you must remember that without the teacher you wouldn’t have been able to be independent. The teacher gives you a place to jump from and you’re always grateful for that.” She and Dunbier became colleagues. For many years they taught each other as they learned and experimented on plein air trips to paint the landscape.4 “Studying the masters doesn’t limit an artist’s creativity, the things one sees there that are really good, should be studied and used in solving one’s problems. Studying that to which one responds is one way for us to know for what we are searching—for art is after all a continual search.”5 This search for Scott has changed and developed over the years but still continues as long as she seeks to represent the beauty around her.
Scott has a love of color, as well as a rich sense of the life and light of the landscape. The beauty of her surroundings inspires her to paint. Through her art, she is able to intimately enjoy what is beautiful.
“I like beautiful things, I always have,” Scott said recently. This has been the motto of her life. The story of Jane Scott and her outstanding achievements is not complete without Augustus Dunbier. They painted together en plein air. They shared a common love of the outdoors, art and the beautiful things of nature. They had a great friendship and inspired one another. They were united by color.
Notes
1. Exhibition Catalog, “August Dunbier,” Museum of Nebraska Art, April–June 1994.
2. Lonnie Pierson Dunbier and Marcia Kmack, “Augustus W. Dunbier: Paint for the Love of Color,” (New Mexico: Western Edge Press, 2000)
3. Charles Movalli, “A Conversation with Jane Scott,” “American Artist,” January 1985.
5. Judith Coons, “Jane Scott,” “Artists of the Rockies and the Golden West,” Fall 1978, 82–85.
“Mid America Impressions: Jane Scott Retrospective” is on exhibit at Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art through Nov. 29, 2009. Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art, the only museum in North America devoted excusively to agrarian art, is located at 575 E Street, David City, Neb. (I-80 exit 379, north 33 miles on Hwy. 15 to E Street, right 1.5 blocks). The museum is open 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 1 p.m.–4 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, call (402) 367-4488 or visit http://www.bonecreek.org.
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