People's Choice

Before the public was admitted to Pittsburgh's Carnegie International, generally considered the most important annual art show in the U. S., the jury went through the galleries and awarded the $1,500 first prize to Peter Blume's colorful surrealist design entitled South of Scranton. The award moved the U. S. Press to great bursts of sarcasm, but the Carnegie Institute directors bided their time (TIME, Oct. 29). Last week the show closed. All who visited it were given ballots and asked to vote for their favorite among the 356 paintings exhibited. With a total of 1,920 votes, more than twice as many as its nearest competitor, the people's choice was Tropic Seas, by Frederick J. Waugh. Depicted in a solid, workmanlike way was a thoroughly banal study of green seas, white foam and brown rocks--a scene such as embellished the parlors of the country's leading hotels in the days when their elevators had ropes to start them. It won $200.

Artist Frederick Judd Waugh, Pittsburgh's favorite, is neither unknown, unrecognized nor impoverished. At 73 he is lean and fox-bearded and his dealers, Manhattan's Grand Central Galleries, are proud of him as one of their best sellers. He paints about 75 canvases a year--mostly marines--sells them for from $400 to $2,500 apiece.

Born shortly after the first Battle of Bull Run, Frederick Waugh ran away from a number of schools until allowed to study painting, first in Philadelphia, later at the old Julian Academy in Paris. The sea has always been his passion. Living in Great Britain for 13 years, he began in the early 1900's painting the same sort of marinescapes that he still turns out. His sales began almost at once and medals and prizes followed soon after.

For many years the talented Waugh family has lived in Provincetown, Mass. Son Coulton is a ship painter & illustrator and nautical expert. Daughter Gwenyth, a costume designer, is married to Artist James Floyd Clymer. The combined Waughs own 13 houses in Provincetown, operate on a section of Main Street known as Waughville, the Ship Model Shop, the Hooked Rug Shop & Hookery. As a hobby Artist Waugh likes carpentry, gardening and making souvenir boxes of sea shells. His prides are a papiermache castle he once built for his children and a chandelier made of old whale bones dug up on the beach.

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