Ms Chef in Seattle

As I’m winding down a tenancy while being down physically and still packing, I take pleasure in the paintings I’ve hung or placed in the house that aren’t in crates. This painting caught my attention originally because I love pink mountains, another story of which I told previously.* (I know it doesn’t photograph well, but the photo is going in here, anyway. I’ve taken lots. The painting has been dulled by what appears to be years of smoke and muck. )

The painting was treated badly by its previous owners and the thrift store, and deserves better. (I know it deserves cleaning, restoring and framing, but that’s another matter entirely.) In me, it got a great appreciator as I’ve had it placed in my sight somewhere ever since I bought it. I think it’s exquisite, beautiful. I ignore the damage to sink into the place Henry Hewitt created for people like himself and me.

I’ve hunted the web to find actual mountains like Hewitt painted, to know more, but have not found them, although I found another waterfall painting he’d done with no pink mountains.

I also found out a bit of Pacific Northwest history. While researching the artist, I found his son’s signature on a lumber company document.

Henry Hewitt was a Senior, i.e., Henry Hewitt Sr. and was from England, born in 1818, died in 1875.  He brought his wife and one year-old son, Henry Hewitt Jr., to the U.S.A. in 1841, to Wisconsin, where he became a timber dealer. In 1890, Henry Hewitt Jr. (then living in Tacoma) with Colgate Hoyt and Charles L. Colby, founded the Everett Land Company to build the city, named after Charles’ son, Everett Colby.

*https://mschefinseattle.com/2016/01/15/art-as-food-guerrilla-girls-pink-mt-rainier/

Update: To my surprise, I’ve further discovered that Hewitt blood runs in the veins of members of the family for whom I was nanny as one of my first jobs. I haven’t seen any of them in a long, long time, but Wow! Right? Still, it’s my painting.