Artists of W 18th St: Ralph Scharff

 Artists of W 18th Street

Ralph Scharff

 

When Mary and I were newly married, living in a trailer while I was in graduate school, she told me about an inspiring art teacher she had at Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, Ralph Scharff.  Scharff was a rara avis at Ursuline at that time, not a nun, not female, and very outspoken.  Mary described him as an active instructor who fully expressed his opinions. [Ralph had served in World War II in Burma and had suffered from leg injuries later exasperated by diabetes.  He later lost his leg.]    Mary has more stories to share over a drink.

A few years later after we had moved back to Wilmington our next door 18th St neighbor died and his wife moved out, renting out the house.  The new residents were Ralph, his wife, Carole, son Sean, and daughter Kevin.  They soon became good friends.  Kevin was near our daughters in age and became second generation friends in our family. 

The Scharffs had family connections in the immediate neighborhood.  Their oldest daughter, Michael, lived across the intersection of our 18th St block at 18th and Brinkle* [pronounced Brink-lee] in a third floor apartment accessible by an exterior fire escape stairway.   Carole's mother worked for the family of Harry Haskell, the wealthy heir of a DuPont executive. and who had served in Congress and as mayor of Wilmington.  She lived in the Haskell's home  on Brinkle Ave  in the next block over from Michael Scharff's apartment.  Carole was a skilled seamstress, mostly for the local carriage trade.  She occupied their tiny 18th St living room with sewing machine and clothing racks, while Ralph painted in the adjoining room. The house was full of smoke and nicotine stains.  Both worked far through the night with Ralph painting under the light of a floor lamp with tilted shade.

Since their house was small and cluttered the Scharffs had inadequate space to entertain, but Ralph was very social.  He proposed to us that we through a joint party at our house melding our friends with his.  We did this on several occasions and we forged connections with several of Ralph's Wilmington arts community friends.

Ralph was proud of his Irish heritage and once made an extensive sketching trip to Ireland.  On his return he gave us an assortment of pen on paper Irish sketches.  This is my favorite, O'Meara's Pub, then a Dublin landmark, now gone:

 

Ralph painted in egg tempera and mixed the paints as need.  One night late, Kevin came to our door.  Ralph had run out of eggs.  Did we have any?  We didn't, but we had powdered eggs that my grandmother gave us from a federal program distributing to the elderly; we used them on camping trips. We passed them along and Ralph was thrilled.  He declared them the best for his tempera.  From then forward we supplied the dried eggs.  The USDA never knew.

The tempera later prove an issue.  Ralph was noted for his landscapes and clowns, but his bread-and-butter income was from horses and dogs, especially commissioned animal portraits.  The Scharffs didn't have a car, so Mary frequently provided transportation.  Once Ralph, on completion of a commissioned portrait of a dog with her newborn pups, need to transport the finished painting to his chateau country patron.  On delivery she leaned the painting against the wall, and Mary and Ralph departed. The next day Ralph came back to Mary and announced he need a ride back.  "Was she dissatisfied with the painting?"  No,  the pups had licked the egg tempera.  The painting needed to be redone.

Ralph's animal paintings extended to a fish when he participated in a competition to provide an image for Delaware's 1982 trout stamp.

 We have a print of that painting hanging over a passageway in our cottage kitchen.

 

 

The Scharffs moved away later to Lincoln St in the middle of what was then a small Mennonite community in Wilmington next to their school.  We gradually lost touch.  They eventually moved to an apartment in the Devon, then not yet a condominium,  We gradually lost touch.  

* The Brinkle family owned this end of what is now the Highlands neighborhood of Wilmington.  The remains of their estate became Gibraltar, the home of H. Rodney Sharp, now awaiting restoration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar_(Wilmington,_Delaware)  Gertrude Brinkle was Howard Pyle's secretary and occasional model.  She was a moving force in forming the Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, now the Delaware Art Museum.