Arthur K.D. Healy
“Cecropia”
Watercolor on paper, 1951
“Arthur Healy & His Students,” the title of the exhibit at the Henry Sheldon Museum in downtown Middlebury, is an apt one—not only because it’s a literal description of the artists who have contributed work for the display, but also because this exhibit is intensely personal.
Arthur K.D. Healy was a beloved member of the Middlebury community for more than 40 years. He was a Princeton graduate, though he had attended Middlebury as a freshman in 1921 and would come to make Vermont his home in the early 1930s. In 1943, he became the College’s first artist in residence, an appointment that preceded postings on the teaching faculty and as chair of the fine arts department.
As the Sheldon exhibit attests, Healy mentored an impressive array of students who would make their mark in the arts world; their paintings share wall space with Healy’s watercolors in the museum’s second-floor galleries. It’s a beautiful display, yet it is the collective reflections of the alumni, presented with their work, which make the biggest impression.
“He made the career of an artist seem so seductive and so admirable that it never occurred to me that I should not try to be one,” wrote Sabra Field ’57.
“Your job is not to render everything in its entirety, but to suggest it,” Ken Delmar ’63 remembers Healy telling him. “Try to capture your subject with the least amount of drawing, least amount of brushwork, least amount of color, least amount of work.”
Nancy Taylor Stonington ’66 recalls the three colors—alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow deep, and Payne’s gray—that Healy insisted they use and relates that 50 years later she relies on these palette choices in her own teaching.
Much of Healy’s work was lost in a studio fire, so the paintings on display are largely loaned from family and friends, many of whom have their own stories of Arthur Healy, stories of his generosity, his fierce intellect, his presence. This bit of detail—the provenance of the artwork—is perfect, really. It’s in keeping with the very nature of the exhibit itself.