David O(rville) Reasoner
was born in 1882 in Upland IN. He attended Indiana University in
Bloomington, where he graduated in 1909. In subsequent years, he studied
painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
During World War I, Reasoner was employed by the US Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation, as
a civilian navy camouflage artist, in the course of which he applied camouflage designs to US merchant ships. Records in the Archives of American Art indicate that his assignment officially
ended on December 15, 1918.
Around 1920, Reasoner and
two other Boston artists (Henry O’Connor (1891-1975) and Frederick Rhodes
Sisson (1893-1962)) became apprentices and assistants to Abbott Handerson Thayer at the well-known painter’s home and studio in Dublin NH.
Thayer’s publications about the “concealing coloration of animals” had influenced
the development of Allied wartime camouflage during WWI. In various sources, Reasoner,
O’Connor and Sisson have been described (along with other apprentices) as Thayer’s “copyists” (they made precise
duplicates of his unfinished paintings, from which he then went on to make
different finished versions). Also cited as an assistant in his later years was
a painter named Grace Dredge (1895-?), originally from Des Moines IA.
Thayer’s health (both
physical and psychological) was declining rapidly in the winter of 1920-1921, and according
to Gladys Thayer (called Galla), the artist’s daughter, it was primarily David Reasoner
who attended to Thayer’s needs and “toward the end did little besides take care
of him.”
As described in Ross Anderson’s biography of the artist—
In the spring of 1921, while resting in bed Thayer asked
an assistant [Reasoner] to bring him one of his unfinished canvases and his
palette and brushes. As he began to work, his hand suddenly stiffened, evidence
of a slight stroke. He suffered two more within the next three weeks, and died
from a third on May 29, 1921.
Years later, Reasoner
provided his own account of Thayer’s last weeks in a 1948 news article in The Kingston [New York] Daily Freeman, in which the following
text appears:
Even on his [Abbott Thayer’s] deathbed, painting was uppermost
on his mind. The family physician had told [David] Reasoner ‘It won’t be long.
He might last the day out.’ Thayer had been working on a picture promised for
shipment to a New York gallery. The elderly man asked Dave to bring up the
picture from the studio. It was set up where he could see it from his bed. He
then required Dave to darken a small area near the bottom. ‘No, a little
higher—now a little to the left. No, no, come and help me over to it.’ Any
movement would likely be his last, but Reasoner knew he would try to do it
alone if he didn’t help so he practically carried Thayer to the spot that
needed darkening. It is said that half the time, Thayer worked paint with his
thumb instead of a brush, and the thumb had a beat as regular as a metronome
after fifty years of use.
Curiously, there
is a public record that Grace Dredge and Lyman Reasoner (David Reasoner’s
brother) were married on May 28, 1921, in Keene, New Hampshire (a dozen miles from Dublin), one day before Thayer’s death. She took on the married name of
Grace Dredge Reasoner (and later, Grace Reasoner Clark). Ten days later, on
June 6, 1921 (according to an Indiana University alumni note), David Reasoner
and Gladys Thayer were also married.
Following Thayer’s death
(based on correspondence in the Thayer Family Papers in the AAA), it appears that Thayer’s son, Gerald Handerson
Thayer (called Gra) was initially the executor of Thayer’s estate. Somewhat later, due to an unclear set of circumstances, the role of executor was shifted to David
Reasoner.
Around 1925, the Reasoners
moved to Woodstock, New York. They became the parents of four children, Allen
(who died during World War II), Jean (portrait painter Jean Reasoner Plunket),
Peggy and Richard. According to online information, plans for that facility—
began
in 1928 with the formation of Woodstock Property, Inc. (WPI), founded by David
O. Reasoner, an Indiana-born artist with a superb golf game. After selling
stock in WPI Reasoner negotiated the purchase of 250 acres of farmland…WPI then
leased the land to Woodstock Country Club, Inc. at a nominal fee. Reasoner
presided over both WPI and the Country Club…
At about the same time, the
Woodstock Playhouse was founded, under David Reasoner’s management, a position
that he continued to hold for at least the next few years. A solo exhibition of
his wife’s paintings was held at the Woodstock Country Club Tavern in August
1932.
Beginning in the spring of
1937, for about three years, the Reasoner family was all but nomadic, traveling
across the country by station wagon, often camping out, and living
intermittently at various locations in California (San Diego, Point Loma, Santa
Barbara, Montecito, and Santa Monica). In June of 1940, when David Reasoner’s
mother became ill, they moved back to his hometown, Upland IN, about 75
miles northeast of Indianapolis.
The US entered WWII at
the end of 1941. In early January, David Reasoner (leaving his wife to care for
his ailing mother in Indiana) moved to Washington DC, accompanied by his
daughter Jean, in the hope that, given his experience in the previous war, he might
once again find work as a ship camoufleur. In late January 1942, he met with artists
Charles Bittinger (1879-1970), head of the U.S. Navy Research Department, and
Everett Warner (1877-1963), both of whom had been involved in WWI camouflage.
According to a Reasoner letter (in February 1942), he had been told by
Bittinger that it was “just a question of time until there will be all-out
marine camouflage,” and that “when this happens, I seem to be in line for the top job.” But,
according to a later letter (June 1942), he was eventually assigned not to
camouflage but to “managerial duties”: “Instead of camouflaging ships I find
myself an impresario, secretary, and telephone operator.”
 |
| News article from Kingston Daily Freeman, New York (1948) |
In the same 1948 news article (cited earlier) in The Kingston [New York] Daily Freeman, there is a story that contends that, when David Reasoner moved to Washington DC, he gave to Walter Seaton, a Woodstock friend and artist, "what he thought were a lot of old canvases," including some from Thayer's studio. One of those canvases, as Seaton discovered while cleaning them for future reuse, was a previously unknown Thayer self-portrait, one of only four he made. Included in the news article is a low quality newsprint photograph (reproduced here) of Seaton (standing on the left) and other local artists with the newly discovered painting.
A few years earlier, Gladys Thayer Reasoner had rejoined her husband in Washington, DC, where she died
in August 1945. David Reasoner’s mother, Louanna, remained in Indiana and died
in 1948.
In a letter dated October
4, 1949, David Reasoner (on behalf of the Thayer Estate) donated to the
Smithsonian Institution 96 sketches, photographs, watercolor studies,
demonstration models, and paintings “made by my father-in-law [Abbott Thayer]
is his study of protective coloration in the animal kingdom.”
Sources
Abbott Handerson Thayer andThayer Family Papers at the website of the Archives of American Art
(Smithsonian Institution), Research Collections (includes 10,074 online image and
document scans, with numerous letters and other materials pertaining to David
Reasoner).
“Alumni Notes” (David
Reasoner entry), in Indiana University
Alumni Quarterly. Vol 8 No 4, October 1921, p. 528.
Ross Anderson, Abbott Handerson Thayer. Exhibition
catalog. Syracuse, New York: Everson Museum, 1982.
“Artist Discovers Rare
Self-Portrait by Thayer,” in The Kingston
Daily Freeman (Kingston, New York). December 14, 1948, pp. 1 and 17.
Roy R. Behrens, Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art,Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2009.
“Gladys Reasoner to Hold
Exhibition,” in The Kingston Daily
Freeman, July 25, 1932, p. 6.
Nelson C. White, Abbott H. Thayer: Painter and Naturalist.
Hartford: Connecticut Printers, 1951.
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