Julien Binford

Infobox Person
name = Julien Binford


image_size = 150px
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1908|12|25|mf=y
birth_place = Fine Creek Mills, Powhatan County, Virginia
death_date = death date and age|1997|0|0|1908|25|12|mf=y
death_place = Fredericksburg, Virginia
spouse = Élisabeth Bollée (1908-1984)
children =
parents = (mother)
occupation = Painter

Julien Binford (1909-1997) was an American painter. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then in France. Settling in Powhatan County, Virginia and was known for his paintings of the rural population of his neighborhood as well as for his murals. During World War II he lived in New York and painted views of the port during the war. In 1946 he was appointed professor of painting at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he worked until his retirement, in 1971.

Youth

Julien Binford was born of an old southern family, on December 25, 1908in Fine Creek Mills, Powhatan County, Virginia, where he spent his childhood. After highschool, he entered premedical school at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia. The director of the new Atlanta High Museum noticed his proficiency in rendering dissections and encouraged him to concentrate on developing his painting talent. [ Julien Binford (1908 - 1997) [http://www.askart.com/askart/b/julien_binford/julien_binford.aspx] ] Following this advice, Binford studied at the Art Institute of Chicago where he excelled. In 1932, he was awarded the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling Fellowship ($2,500) and spent three years studying in Paris.

In France he married Élisabeth Bollée (b. August 9, 1908), daughter of Léon Bollée, a French automobile manufacturer before World War I. Élisabeth had married Count Jean Maurice Gilbert de Vautibault in 1927 and had published several volumes of poems (under the name Elisabeth de Vautibault), which were praised by well-known poets such as Jean Paulhan and Léon-Paul Fargue. She divorced after meeting Julien Binford and continued writing poems both in French and in English. She converted to the Baptist faith after moving to America with her husband. Mot de l'éditeur sur "Les évènements visibles et autres poèmes" de Elisabeth de Vautibault [http://livre.fnac.com/a2070927/Elisabeth-de-Vautibault-Les-evenements-visibles-et-autres-poemes] ]

The early years

In 1935, Julien Binford returned with his wife to Virginia and bought a small farm called “The Foundry”. The property had been the home of General Lee's brother, Charles Carter Lee. After having formally surrendered at Appomattox, general Robert E. Lee, while on his way to Richmond, spent his last night as a Confederate General on April 14, 1965, camping on the lawn. The property was however in ruins and the Binford family lived in a windy shack with no water, no lights, and no heat. In the first years they lived mainly by farming. After 1945, when their finances had improved, they undertook a massive reconstruction of the buildings The Foundry [http://www.foundrygolfclub.com/public_history.cfm] ] The simple life-style influenced Binford’s painting. His work, which in his one-man showings in Paris had been abstract, became more realistic. He relied on his neighbors and their environment for inspiration. Binford established a close relationship with his African American neighbors, using them as the subject of his work on numerous occasions. Several of his paintings, presented in Manhattan's Midtown Galleries, look like a black-belt village on Saturday afternoon.

One of his most famous works is the mural titled "The Lord Over Jordan" in Shiloh Baptist Church in Powhatan, Virginia. This is one of the rare occasions that a black congregation commissioned a white artist to decorate its church. The mural, a 12 foot x 12 foot painting, was unveiled with impressive ceremonies and forms the background to the church's baptismal pool. As the congregation was poor, he agreed to be paid in produce, two pick-up truck loads of chickens, corn, potatoes, and beets. which helped the Binfords tide over the winter. Sooty Palette, Time Nov. 30, 1942 [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,766695,00.html] ]

The war years

In the 1940s he developed a relationship with a gallery in New York City. The success of his work allowed Julian and Elizabeth Binford to move to Manhattan.

One of the New Deal programs for the economic recovery during Great Depression was designed to provide jobs, not only for manual laborers but for artists as well. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts commissioned the painting of murals on walls of post offices and other public buildings, which lead to a school known as "New Deal Art". One of these was the mural for the Post Office of Forest, Mississippi. The mural intended to illustrate both the name of the city and the lumber industry of the surrounding county. His oil on canvas mural, completed in April 1941, presents four loggers skidding logs out of the woods. The painting, displayed temporarily in Charlotte, North Carolina, was praised by the Charlotte Observer. An editor of the Progressive Farmer called it the best painting he had ever seen in a public building. [Sylvia Krebs – Murals of the Post Office. – "Forest Loggers" in Forest [http://www.wpamurals.com/forestMS.pdf] ] .

The mural was the only one Binford did for the Fine Arts Section. In 1941 Binford was commissioned to paint a mural of the burning of Richmond (1865) for the Post Office of Saunders, Virginia. Intending to illustrate the suffering of the southerners during the last days of the Confederacy, Binford submitted a preliminary sketch showing a street scene with looters, a mother trying to escape with her baby over bodies of dead soldiers lying on the ground, a half-naked woman who had torn off her blouse to prevent herself from being scorched, a horseman riding roughshod over all. The sketch raised controversy. A former president-general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy stated: "It is one of the most horrible things I've ever seen.". Bishop James Cannon Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who was very influential in Virginia politics, published a critic in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the primary daily newspaper of Richmond indicating: "The woman's back and hips are poorly portrayed.". Though Julien Binford angrily retorted: "When and how did this bishop become an authority on the 'backs and hips' of nude women?", he never got the commission.

However, during 1942 his work received the attention of Time, Newsweek and Life, which presented reproductions of some of his paintings. During World War II, he worked on a series of paintings titled "New York Harbor at War" which were published in a special section of Life Magazine. University of Mary Washington – [http://www.umw.edu/centennial/history/people/default.php] ]

Teaching activity

In 1946 he was appointed professor of painting at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He was the organizer of regular meetings with a small group of friends among which Emil Schnellock, Matila Ghyka and Milton Stansbury. [Matila Ghyka - The World Mine Oyster - Heinemann, 1961 ] He was a faculty member for 25 years, till 1971 when he retired to devote more time toward his painting. Many of his works are in the Mary Washington University Galleries’ permanent collection.

Edward Alvey, Jr., dean of the University of Mary Washington University wrote about Binford

: "He was a warm, friendly, natural person. He painted with a sensitivity and devotion, establishing a feeling of rapport between the artist and the viewer. His work has a freshness and originality that well exemplifies Binford's own zest for life and his desire to share its beauty with others."

His wife died on July 11, 1984. Julien lived alone for the rest of his life. He died, in Fredericksburgh in 1997, at the age of 88.

References