Cady, Harrison “Barren Creek Mill” [Carolinas?]

Harrison Cady (1877-1970).  “Barren Creek Mill.”  [Johnson Mill, south of New Tazewell, Tennessee] 

ca. 1930.  16 x 21 (paper).  Pencil sketch.  Top right and left hand corners chipped.  Repaired tear at bottom.  Faint water stain bottom right hand side. Not signed.  

Born in Massachusetts, Walter Harrison Cady (1877-1970) was the son of a general store proprietor.  Relocating to New York after his father’s death in 1897, Cady had a difficult time marketing his drawings until he joined the staff of the Brooklyn Eagle.  His career was really launched when he begin freelancing for the satirical Life magazine, wherein his talent for caricature and absurd exaggeration found a welcoming audience.  After 1920, Cady began working in the field of children’s literature, illustrating an American edition of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, as well as creating characters such as “Danny Meadowmouse,” “Blacky the Crow” and “Hooty the Owl” for St. Nicholas magazine.

Travelling to Rockport, Maine, and the Carolina Mountains, Cady became interested in depicting the life that he saw passing away through the influence of such modern devices as the automobile.  In paintings, drawings and in drypoint etchings Cady in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s blended raw experience with considerable conceptual sorting to create a visual record of this vanishing life.  

Other works by Harrison Cady:

Mountain Mill, Smokey Mountains

North Fork, Yellow Mountains

Sketch of Man & Plow

Near Little Pigeon River

A Mountain Farm, Yellow Mountains

In the Chester Valley, Pennsylvania