Artiists of W 18th St: Richard Layton

 

Artists of W 18th St

Richard Layton

The Laytons house faced W 19th St but their deep yard, where Dick had created a fairy-tale castle playhouse for their kids, extended to 18th, giving me license to claim Dick as a W 18th St artist. The Laytons were already there when we moved in in 1966.  I had known Dick's wife Debbie in high school. and we quickly became reconnected.

Dick attended the Philadelphia College of Art, and studied with Frank Schoonover,  Carolyn Wyeth, and his friend Andrew Wyeth.  I remember Dick being involved with many art projects beyond easel paintings, often sponsored by Wilmington arts patron W. W. "Chick" Laird.  He designed interior panels for the theater that once occupied one floor of Breck's Mill in Henry Clay, and even painted faux windows to cover empty window openings in Walker's Mill across the Brandywine from Breck's.

A large project that Dick was commissioned was a set of murals painted for the Dover Room dinning hall in what is now the Perkins Student Center at the University of Delaware in Newark.  The large room was designed to be separated with a large folding partition into two parallel spaces, requiring individual murals for each of the spaces.  The theme, of course, was Dover.  Both murals are aerial views.  One is a view is of the John Dickinson mansion outside of Dover.

The second is an aerial view of the installation of the bell in the Old State House in Dover. 

The murals were big, requiring a large open space to complete.  Dick satisfied this need by undertaking a home renovation project.  He removed the wall between their living room and dining room, creating what in current parlance an "open concept" space.  He then constructed a temporary structure diagonally across the space to accommodate the full width of a mural canvas.

 

Our daughter Maura was friendly with the Layton's daughter Marcia at this time and hung out there frequently.  Dick freely interacted with them and other drop-in 18th St kids. There were many.  The 2600 block of W 18th St had over 40 children.  A big attraction was the crow.

 

In the foreground of the Richard Layton  Dickinson  mural are some crows in flight.  Dick, in the interest of realism, had a caged crow which he used for preliminary sketches.  Maura and the other neighborhood kids were captivated by the crow.   Maura came home with a Layton crow sketch and occasional other art ephemera.

 

In 2017 I wrote an article for the Wilmington NewsJournal about  local art that was accessible to the public, especially public murals.  Researching this, I chased down Richard Layton's Dover room murals.  When I arrived at the University of Delaware I found that the Dover room had been subdivided to multiple small spaces.  The Layton Dover murals were gone.  I learned that they had been taken down, rolled, and stored.  They were photographed and digitally preserved by the UD archives but in monochrome, which is why the original color is  missing in this posting.  I tried to find a new home for them where they could be on display, but with no success.

 

Dick's work in the arts went beyond his own paintings.  He was co-founder of the Brandywine Arts Festival and the Greenville Arts Festival, and first Curator of the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford.

 

In 2008 I successfully nominated Richard Layton for the City of Wilmington's Jefferson Award for Public Service to the Arts, aided no doubt by a supporting second that I obtained from Andy Wyeth.

 

The most readily accessible of Dick's work currently is the tempera painting "Old Centreville in the Days of Doc Chandler" which hangs over the fireplace in Buckley's Tavern in Centreville.