Stanley Louis Rosenthal, Iowa Winter Gothic (Kathlyn)
January 14, 2019
Stanley Louis Rosenthal, Iowa Winter Gothic (Kathlyn). 2009. Watercolor on paper.
Familiarity: a sense of comfortable recognition. When viewing Stanley Rosenthal’s Iowa Winter Gothic (Kathlyn), one might feel that aura of familiarity almost immediately. Perhaps it's the way that he utilizes a soft gradient of blues and greys to draw the viewer into a relatable and frigid winter scene. Maybe it’s the way his composition hearkens back to Grant Wood and his classic American Gothic. The central figure in this painting presents herself with an effortless calm, her right hand clasping a pale withering flower and the other a five-pronged rake. Iowa’s recent chill might have characterized her environment with jagged glacial fragments, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t come prepared. Kathlyn is ready with a long, tight hat sporting knit maple leaves, reminding her of the latter-day autumn that has come and gone. A subtle gray corduroy jacket envelops her, its soft collar and cuffs protecting her neck and wrists from the winter breeze. Elegant buttons present themselves in threes down the jacket’s center, their form comparable to miniature compasses that show her the way around Iowa’s vast landscape. She is visited by a small yellow finch who is unbothered by her posing and is only concerned with what the withering flower has to offer. Kathlyn stares out at the viewer, her icy blue eyes inviting them into the winter in which she remains timelessly frozen. A token of matrimony on her left hand is enhanced by the sun’s glare and renders itself as an important symbol. The familiarity sinks back in- and that is because she is Stanley Rosenthal’s wife.
Despite all of this, it is still important to note the aesthetics of this portrait, as Rosenthal meant for symbolic meaning to be up to the viewer's interpretation. The watercolor technique that Rosenthal exhibits in this piece falls back on familiarity from his childhood. Rosenthal, a Cleveland native, started his high art education at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh where he earned his BFA. After that, he traveled to Detroit to obtain his MFA at Wayne State University and to make art. Rosenthal started teaching at WSU in 1969 and was employed there for forty-six years. He viewed the relationship between art and teaching almost symbiotically, stressing how learning about art does not require concrete facts, but trial, error, success, and failure. For fifteen years of his life, Rosenthal specialized in Intaglio print media. He then realized that he wanted to reflect back on his childhood medium and began producing art using watercolor for the later years of his life.
He has received numerous awards as a printmaker and painter, including two top awards in Watercolor USA, two in State of the Art National Watercolor Invitational, and more in the Michigan Watercolor Society exhibitions. Aside from teaching at Wayne State, he also served as the chair of the Michigan Watercolor Society, President of Michigan Association of Printmakers, and advisor to the Graphic Arts council of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
This piece, among others from his “Portrait Series” and “Memory Series”, was donated to Wayne State University’s art collection by his wife, Kathlyn Rosenthal.
-Written by Marissa N. Gannascoli-