School district to sell painting to raise money

At the height of the Depression, a well-known Bucks County impressionist took a collection of his paintings to schools, gave talks, and sometimes sold them his works.

In the early '30s, a school group used money raised at a "gala" bridge party in the Lansdowne High School gym to buy a snow-covered landscape scene and present it to the school.

The oil painting, by Walter Emerson Baum, was hung in the building's front hallway, joining a collection of sports trophies and the portrait of a district dignitary.

The name of the artist and the work's origins were eventually forgotten.

Recently, it was rediscovered at the school, now named Penn Wood High, and last month the cash-strapped William Penn School District decided to sell the 40-by-50-inch painting, hoping to bring in at least $20,000.

Superintendent Joseph Bruni said the district was unable to properly care for the painting. "We felt that it would be better to put it in the hands of someone who values and understands it," he said.

For those who dream of finding a valuable artwork hiding in plain sight at a yard sale or flea market, the rediscovery of the painting could give hope.

The tale of how the landscape was acquired also provides a glimpse into how the artist, who devoted a large portion of his life to educating children, brought his work to students during hard times while making money for himself.

In the late 1940s, the lifelong Sellersville resident, who died in 1956, helped create the Bucks County Traveling Art Gallery. It started out with 17 paintings donated by him and 53 from others; today it has more than 350 pieces. The program, now called Art on the Move and run by the county Intermediate Unit, takes paintings to area schools.

Baum "was very passionate about developing art appreciation in students," said Adrienne Romano, director of education for the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, which worked with the Intermediate Unit to revive the art program. "He wanted to make art accessible to all."

A revival of interest in Baum and his art is under way in some area schools.

Bucks County's Quakertown Community School District put its collection of eight Baum paintings into a permanent exhibit at its high school last year.

Souderton put its dozen paintings on display as the centerpiece of a fund-raiser that brought in thousands of dollars and is planning a display space at its high school.

In the Pennridge School District, where Baum lived and was a local school board member for decades, the education foundation is exploring how it might best display its collection of more than a dozen paintings.

There are also 18 Baum oil paintings and six watercolors in a collection of more than 1,200 artworks owned by the Philadelphia School District. The district debated whether to sell some or all of the collection - which it valued at between $5 million and $30 million - but decided in 2007 not to dispose of it.

Rudy Ackerman, director of exhibitions and collections at Allentown's Baum School of Art, which the artist founded in 1926, said that other Baum paintings might also have slipped into obscurity. "There are some places that probably don't even know what they have; they might be sitting on top of a $50,000 painting," he said.

The Baum painting at Penn Wood, titled Late Afternoon, experienced that fate for many years, a seldom-noticed fixture in a hallway. At some point, after several students added their signatures to Baum's at the bottom, it was hoisted above the office doorway to remove it from easy reach.

About 10 years ago, local historian Matt Schultz identified it as Baum's work, but it attracted little notice.

Four years ago, Penn Wood art teacher Alyce Grunt saw a Baum painting at a Haverford College exhibition. "I thought: This painting looks a lot like the one hanging up over the door to the main office," she said recently. "The way it was painted - the trees, the snow, the water - it's similar."

Though Baum's signature on the painting was too high up to see, Grunt concluded it was his work.

But it remained there until last year, when Grunt happened to mention her hunch to Rich Ulmer, at that time an Aramark maintenance and operations director in the district.

Ulmer pulled up a ladder, found Baum's signature on the painting, did an Internet search, and told district Superintendent Bruni that he had a valuable work of art. Bruni promptly removed the painting and took it across the street to the administration building and had it appraised.

Schultz, the historian, unearthed two articles about the painting in the high school newspaper. One said that in May 1933, Baum displayed 28 paintings at the school. He came back several times to explain his paintings, the story said. The exhibit had also traveled to Lower Merion and Haverford High Schools. The following October, the paper announced the bridge fund-raising party. "The trail stops there," Schultz said.

Schultz said he hoped the sale proceeds would be used to promote arts education in the district, rather than going into the budget's general fund. "It was an art class that raised the money," he said.

Bruni, himself an amateur artist and a self-described arts-education booster, said: "We haven't had the conversation about how we should designate the money. It would be fitting to use it for our art program."