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From the Files of the Lassen Historical Society: Alfred Montgomery – Corn Artist

By Susan Couso

It’s always amazing to find another very interesting individual who called Lassen County ‘home’ for a time. One of these people is well-known folk-artist, Alfred E. Montgomery, the ‘Corn Artist’. Yep, Corn Artist.

Alfred E. Montgomery was born in Lawndale, Illinois on April 19th, 1857, and had a tough life growing up. He was orphaned at an early age and sequestered in a Kansas orphanage until he was old enough to leave.

At the orphanage, he was ‘bound out’ to do farm work. He never went to school but got some education from a local minister. Then, at age 21, he was given $100, and sent on his way. Montgomery always considered Kansas as his home.

A life of farm work inspired Montgomery to paint what he knew; farm life. But most particularly, he painted corn. After leaving the orphanage, he worked on the road and due to the itinerant nature of his lifestyle, painted often for as little as room or board or a train ticket to the next town.

Much of his work was created on surfaces such as patched canvas, tin, lumber and cigar boxes, with the frames pieced together from fence rails and barn doors. His work was not taken seriously by most.

In 1879, Montgomery married Esther ‘Essie’ Waddington in Illinois. Together, Alfred and Essie had four children. Montgomery had obtained a teaching certificate at age 16, and soon began to teach. He became a school principal in Vermillion, Kansas, and the first art teacher in Topeka’s public schools. Throughout this time he also gave art lectures.

Perhaps it was this somewhat sedentary lifestyle that caused a rift in the family, for Alfred left the comforts of family often, and as the new century began, he was traveling farther into the West.

Alfred Montgomery called himself “the farmer who paints and the painter who farms”, but as he began his travels around the country to promote his art, farm life disappeared into the background.

And Alfred’s corn was everywhere. He had a particular way of painting the kernels by layering the paint to produce a raised effect, and he claimed that he never took any art lessons, but it took him 9 years to learn how to paint a kernel of corn.

He boasted that if he was carrying one of his paintings across the street in front of a horse, the horse would reach out to eat it! At one lecture, Montgomery told of how he considered himself to be an artist until he saw a sign, hanging in a barbershop window advertising a “tonsorial artist”. He then became a painter.

In 1906, Montgomery’s marriage to Essie was over, and in April of that year he married Adora Flint in Illinois. In 1907, their daughter, Gloria was born, and the new little family moved west, settling in Los Angeles. Alfred continued to lecture and listed his occupation as a ‘traveling artist’.

Around 1911, he purchased land in eastern Lassen County and built an isolated home which he named ‘Nowhere’. Many people wonder why he would name his place such an odd name, but they, apparently, have not visited the site.

During this period, he also gave an art lecture to local citizens and donated the proceeds to establish Lassen High School’s Art Department.

Montgomery’s lectures, although sometimes irritating to art critics, were well-attended and entertaining affairs. He was humorous and engaging and his Los Angeles lectures routinely drew 1,500 spectators.

He was well-liked by most who met him. His art, though considered ‘folksy’ by most critics, was well received, especially in the mid-western part of the country. In 1900, Montgomery’s work was exhibited at the Paris Expo, and his paintings have recently been purchased for $20,000, so people must really like corn.

So, Alfred Montgomery was a painter, orator, and a generally likable guy. His career ended when in 1922, after a month-long illness, he passed away in Los Angeles.

Jeremy Couso
Jeremy Couso
SusanvilleStuff.com Publisher/Editor
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