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A Painting Comes Home to Springs

Thu, 01/23/2025 - 11:50

Late Ralph Carpentier work now hangs at library

The late Ralph Carpentier’s 1973 painting “Artists in the Landscape” has returned to Springs and is now on display at the hamlet’s library. It depicts the artist, four times, painting en plein air.

Ralph Carpentier, a well-known landscape painter who died in 2016, moved to East Hampton in 1955 for a teaching job at East Hampton High School and never left. A longtime Springs resident, he was among the founders of the Town Marine Museum, an executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, and an East Hampton Town trustee, as well as a teacher, commercial fisherman, carpenter, and house painter.

But it was his paintings on canvas that are perhaps his most enduring legacy. In a 1990 New York Times review of an exhibition at East Hampton’s Bologna/Landi Gallery, Phyllis Braff wrote, “Expressive skies are among the most striking qualities here. Several examples call to mind the luminosity in 19th-century landscape traditions.”

One painting that exemplifies those qualities, “Artists in the Landscape” from 1973, has recently found a home at the Springs Historical Society, but only after traveling from East Hampton to Florida to Chevy Chase, Md. And therein lies a story. 

Irving and Charlotte Markowitz moved to East Hampton a year after Mr. Carpentier. They bought a house on Meadow Way, where they raised their three children. Mr. Markowitz established several accounting firms here before his retirement in 1990. He was also a co-founder, with his wife, of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, and both were active in the community’s cultural and political spheres. They lived in East Hampton until 1999.

Asked if her parents knew Mr. Carpentier, their daughter Judith, who now lives in San Ramon, Calif., said, “They knew him very well. And my sister and I went to East Hampton High School with Ralph’s daughter, Martha. My mom was co-chair for several years of Guild Hall’s Clothesline Art Sale, and I’m sure Ralph’s art was hung in that show.”

It’s not surprising, then, that the Markowitzes bought “Artists in the Landscape,” probably not long after it was painted. In fact, they had lot of art from local artists, in part because Mr. Markowitz was an accountant for many of them “and really supported them when they were not well known,” said his daughter.

When Charlotte Markowitz died on Dec. 20 at the age of 94 in Chevy Chase, Judith, her sister, Miriam, and her brother, Philip, were with her in her apartment. Among the works of art there was “Artists in the Landscape.”

“We decided it would really be a gift in our parents’ honor to bring the painting back home.” Judith contacted an old friend, Lucia Miller, an 11th-generation Bonacker with whom she went to high school, and Ms. Miller in turn got in touch with the Springs Historical Society.

Judith and her husband, Glen Schabacker, drove from Maryland to East Hampton with the painting, and connected with Marybeth LaPenna Lee, a landscape designer and president of the Springs Historical Society. Ms. Lee conveyed the painting to the Springs Library, where it is now installed.

Ms. Miller said she thinks the painting is of a field off Springs-Fireplace Road, perhaps the property of George Sid Miller, from which the ill-fated balloon Free Life took off in 1970. Four tiny figures can be seen painting in the landscape; each is a self-portrait of Mr. Carpentier.

Charlotte Markowitz was buried on Dec. 23 at Shaarey Pardes Accabonac Grove Cemetery in Springs. “It was really good to be home and eat at Sam’s restaurant and see local people,” said Judith. “I come often for my high school reunions, and I’m still very close to my high school friends. I’m so glad that my siblings and I decided to do this for our town. The painting is back where it originated and now belongs.”

 

 

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