Margaret Leveson, painter, has been using the studio of J. Francis Murphy since 1977. The Catskill center's Erpf Galley is proud to exhibit more than 25 oils of the Pakatakan Art Colony's cottages and interiors.
The Pakatakan Artists Colony was a turn-of-the-century gathering of artists who spent time in the small hamlet of Arkville, NY, home of the Catskill Center. The colony began prior to 1886 when a prominent landscape painter from New York City, J. Francis Murphy, found accommodation in Arkville and urged Peter Hoffman, a local businessman and proprietor of the house where he boarded, to build a hotel, today called the Pakatakan Hotel. Murphy brought his painter friends to visit the area. In 1887 Alexander H. Wyant arrived here from the Adirondacks. Others who came on a regular basis were Parker Mann, E. Loyal Field, Frank Russell Green, H.D. Kruseman Van Elten, George Smillie, Walter Clark, Arthur Parton, Ernest C. Rost, and J. Woodhull Adams.
Many artists stayed in the hotel, but some purchased property and built their own studios. They did not want their houses to dominate nature, but attempted to blend them with the rounded tree-covered mountains of the Catskills. What were built on a grand scale were the artists’ studios, with windows often rising two stories in height and facing north to bring in the light. The artists of the Pakatakan colony were different from their predecessors, the Hudson River School. Their brush strokes emphasized delicacy, coloring and light.
Margaret Leveson graduated in fine arts from the University of Toronto and obtained her masters from Brooklyn College. She has participated in more than sixty exhibitions around the country and her work is collected extensively. Some of the paintings she will be showing are of sections of houses; others are full frontal views incorporating the land and flora of the area. Architectural details and interiors are abundant. One piece shows a large and rare tulip tree in front of the studio of Mrs. Adah Murphy, while others emphasize large studio windows. Ms. Leveson’s style is precise, detailing the essence of the structures and evoking the landscape. The pieces dissolve the boundaries between the land and man-made structures.
In 1988, after five years of research and documentation, the Catskill center for Conservation and Development was able to obtain the nomination for the Pakitakan Artists Colony to be recognized by the National Register as a historic district.
