William Foster Painting

[bob lyons]

I thought I would share a photo of a original William Harnden Foster painting showing a Parker shotgun. He accomplished a lot in this life, the book New England Grouse Shooting was one of them and a good read.

[Dean Romig]

Thanks Bob. Foster lived about three miles from me at 71 Chestnut Street here in Andover, until his death in 1941.

That same pose with a different make of shotgun also appears in NEGS on page 111. We have also seen it in other publications with different guns and different shooters. I guess it must have been one of Foster’s favorite themes.

Thanks for sharing it.





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[bob lyons]

Thanks
Yes very similar I have been collecting Foster stuff for years. I have not found what that painting was an illustration for.

[Dean Romig]

Do you have a copy of “New England Grouse Shooting”?

Foster was a Parker man but I believe he did the one I posted as one of the dozens of illustrations for his book.





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[bob lyons]

Yes I do and have read many times. I used it for learning to hunt partridge around here in New England.
Also I had the opportunity to meet and spend a day with his son, he had a great collection of high grade Parker’s.
Foster did a huge number of illustrations for a lot of publications.

[Garth Gustafson]

I’ll always associate Foster with the poet Robert Frost. Those guys were of the same generation and they both loved the rural New England countryside.

The Frost farm in Derry, NH isn’t too far from your neck of the woods is it Dean?

[Dean Romig]

Yes Garth, and so many others as well - Burt Spiller, Gorham "Grampa Grouse" Cross, and "Tap" Tapply to name a few.

Both of my daughters are married and live in Derry and my four grandkids attend school there. I wish they were in the part of town that would have allowed them to attend the West Running Brook School. Frost published a book of poems entitled "West Running Brook." The brook, just a short distance away, flows to the West rather than toward the sea in the East.

Truth be told, I have a small lichen-covered stone on my desk I use as a paperweight that came from that wall. That stone wall, or "fence" to use the vernacular of the day, was the catalyst to Frost to pen the words "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors."
The reason they make good neighbors is because the farmers on either side of these "fences" would make a couple of days work of "mending fences" in the springtime after the winter's frost heaves would have toppled some of the rocks. They would talk of the weather, town politics, families, iron out differences of opinion and so on while doing the mindless work.

I can recite his poem "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening" word for word. It is one of my favorites - I read it as part of my mother's eulogy as it was one of her favorites too.



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[Dean Romig]

That picture Garth, appears to have been taken in the mid to late 1940's as he appears there to be considerably younger than he was at JFK's inauguration in '61 when he, as Poet Laureate of the United States, recited a modified version of his poem "The Gift Outright."





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[Phil Yearout]

Originally Posted by Dean Romig

I can recite his poem "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening" word for word. It is one of my favorites...

Me too Dean; and also "The Road Not Taken" which has a lot of personal importance for me.

[J. Scott Hanes]

WHF's grandson, Jon, was the first person I met in the Remington offices in 1979. He was then and still is a good friend. Very much the gentleman. Jon had 'ownership' of the "Little Gun" for some time and brought it to one of the "Old Pat's Society" hunts in Maine. It was like a religious experience getting to handle and shoulder that one!!

Also in the Remington, NC offices was a dog painting by WHF that I passed almost every day. Every bit as alive as the painting photo above. A wonderful artist.

JSH