Lucie Bayard woodstock article - Woodstock News VOL.71 N0.40
Woodstock, New York

Miss Lucie Bayard has been coming to Woodstock since 1944 when she came to visit an old friend, Mrs. George Bellows. It was the fall season when the coloring in the landscape of the surrounding country intrigued her, and she went about in her old Ford and painted handsome canvases of such places as the Lamont Marvin Home in Bearsville, the studio of the late George Bellows, Rondout Creek in Kingston, and other places. One of her favorite places is along the Wittenburg road where the stretches of meadows and delightful old houses and barns. She has been coming to Woodstock every simmer for part of the early spring and late fall season ever since. One year she rented a small house near Rondout Creek, in Kingston, in order to paint some of the tugs, abandoned boats and fisherman as well as bridges - subjects that made great appeal to her for both pastel and oil painting.

Miss Bayard has always been a lover of animals, especially domesticated ones that have strayed from home, or, perhaps never had one. One year she arrived with a poor stray kitten which she picked up on her way to Woodstock from NY in her car. The late Marion Bullard, Editor of the Woodstock section of this same paper, under a former owner, and another animal lover, met Miss Bayard and put an ad with a story in her paper in an endeavor to find it a home. However before anyone was found to give it a home, they became so attached to each other that she kept it and has taken it along since then on all of her travels in search of painting motives - Gloucester, Rockport, Pennsylvania, and they even went through the hurricane two years ago in Providence, R.I. where they were marooned for several days.

 
Famous Flower Painter

Lucie Bayard's painting, Maelmas Daisies, in the Guild Gallery, was reproduced in this paper last week. This is one of the colorful flower paintings for which she is well known both in pastel and oil medium. The writer saw her work first some years ago at the Allison Galleries on 57th St. in N.Y. City, and so admired it that she later invited her to have a one man show here in Woodstock in her own galleries, which was a great success and drew people to see it from N.Y., N.J., Albany and even from much longer distances. She was a pupil of Robert Henri who was the art teacher who had such influence on American Art. Leon Kroll, Eugene Speicher, the late George Bellows and so many of our greatest artists were pupils of Henri. Lucie was younger than these men, starting with him about the time they were finishing study and becoming famous. Henri felt she had a very remarkable talent and he and Mrs. Henri took her with them on two of their summer trips to Ireland. Having a French father, she inherits some of the feeling of the French impressionist, yet her work is entirely individual.

Praised by Critics

Margaret Breuning of the Art Digest wrote of her work at the time of a New York one man exhibition: " It is indeed a quality of passionate interest in her work that first impresses one in Miss Bayard's painting - the flowers are not still life's for they possess a vitality that contributes animation to each canvas - while their soundness of tactile substance does not prevent the impression of their fragile, ephemeral character.". The Art News at one time commented as follows: She has a rich sense of color. Her work is modern and spirited - a vitality which flows, perhaps from the rapidity of execution and reveals a sure and personal touch."