{"object":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"2562"},"copyright":{"label":"Copyright","value":"Copyright for this work is under review."},"creditline":{"label":"Credit Line","value":"Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard, Jr."},"endDate":{"label":"End Date","value":"1959"},"sortNumber":{"label":"Sort Number","value":"1998    10   63"},"invno":{"label":"Accession number","value":"1998.10.63"},"medium":{"label":"Medium","value":"Crayon and pencil on paper"},"geographyPlaceregion":{"label":"Place/Region","value":""},"media":{"label":"Media","value":{"mediaURL":"https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/3171/full","mediaDepartment":"Object Photographs","mediaType":"Image","mediaId":"3171"}},"title":{"label":"Title","value":"By the Old Mill Temple in Bethsaida by the Sea of  Galilee"},"geographyCity":{"value":""},"textEntriesWebsitedisplaytext":{"value":["Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.　To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org","Almost nothing is known of the life of Perley M. Wentworth, who was active in California in the 1950s. He is listed in the telephone directory for Oakland between 1955 and 1959 and is believed to have died about 1960. His surreal and ambiguous paintings have aroused much speculation. Early scholars, in fact, believed that the initials \"P.M.\" referred to Wentworth's occupation as a night watchman. This interpretation was revived upon the discovery of a work signed with the first name \"Perley.\" Elaborate titles and explanatory phrases contained within the works imply that Wentworth himself sensed the ambiguity of his works. Some paintings appear to be truly hallucinatory, as he noted the exact time of day when the vision came to him. He labeled other works with the word \"imagination.\"Responding to the Cold War, with its space race and threats of nuclear holocaust, Wentworth embraced the role of seer and often merged Christian themes with thoughts of planetary realms. The subject of By the Old Mill Temple in Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee is the promise of true vision. Wentworth refers us to Mark 8:22-25, the account of Jesus' miraculous cure of a blind man who comes to \"see clearly.\" The crisp detail and emphatic patterning of the castle in the foreground contrast with the shadowy, haloed figures across the Sea of Galilee. We are not yet permitted to see the true nature of these figures or to decipher the mysterious \"objects from sun planet\" that surround them, but rays of light streaming from an ethereal and distant sun suggest eventual revelation.Cheryl Rivers, \"By the Old Mill Temple in Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee,\" in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 391.Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.　To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org","The ambiguity surrounding Perley Meyer Wentworth\u2019s life adds to the mystique that surrounds his work. Wentworth lived in California for the majority of his life, working as a night watchman. He spent time as a patient at Dewitt State Hospital in Auburn, California, where Martín Ramírez lived from 1948 until his death. Both artists were discovered and collected by Dr. Tarmo Pasto, a visiting professor of psychology and art at Sacramento State College in the early 1950s. We know of approximately forty works created by Wentworth. He used crayon, pencil, gouache, pastel, and charcoal on paper, which he would rub and blur to enhance the forms\u2019 celestial nature. Otherworldly and ethereal, his works allude to Christianity without featuring overt traditional iconography. It is believed that Wentworth thought of himself as a medium between Earth and alien worlds, with his images being a response to \u201cvisions of the cosmos and of a quasi-Christian heaven.\u201d He would inscribe many of his works with the word \u201cimagination,\u201d letting us presume that he was conscious of what was and was not reality.Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020."]},"collections":{"label":"Collections","value":"Works on Paper"},"geography":{"label":"Geography","value":""},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"153966"},"geographyState":{"value":"California"},"geographyCountry":{"value":"United States"},"onview":{"label":"On View","value":"0"},"people":{"label":"Artist / Maker","value":{"displayOrder":"1","personRole":"Artist","personID":"914","content":"Perley Meyer Wentworth"}},"classifications":{"label":"Classification(s)","value":"Drawings"},"textEntries":{"label":"Text Entries","value":["Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.　To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org","Almost nothing is known of the life of Perley M. Wentworth, who was active in California in the 1950s. He is listed in the telephone directory for Oakland between 1955 and 1959 and is believed to have died about 1960. His surreal and ambiguous paintings have aroused much speculation. Early scholars, in fact, believed that the initials \"P.M.\" referred to Wentworth's occupation as a night watchman. This interpretation was revived upon the discovery of a work signed with the first name \"Perley.\" Elaborate titles and explanatory phrases contained within the works imply that Wentworth himself sensed the ambiguity of his works. Some paintings appear to be truly hallucinatory, as he noted the exact time of day when the vision came to him. He labeled other works with the word \"imagination.\"Responding to the Cold War, with its space race and threats of nuclear holocaust, Wentworth embraced the role of seer and often merged Christian themes with thoughts of planetary realms. The subject of By the Old Mill Temple in Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee is the promise of true vision. Wentworth refers us to Mark 8:22-25, the account of Jesus' miraculous cure of a blind man who comes to \"see clearly.\" The crisp detail and emphatic patterning of the castle in the foreground contrast with the shadowy, haloed figures across the Sea of Galilee. We are not yet permitted to see the true nature of these figures or to decipher the mysterious \"objects from sun planet\" that surround them, but rays of light streaming from an ethereal and distant sun suggest eventual revelation.Cheryl Rivers, \"By the Old Mill Temple in Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee,\" in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 391.Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.　To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org","The ambiguity surrounding Perley Meyer Wentworth\u2019s life adds to the mystique that surrounds his work. Wentworth lived in California for the majority of his life, working as a night watchman. He spent time as a patient at Dewitt State Hospital in Auburn, California, where Martín Ramírez lived from 1948 until his death. Both artists were discovered and collected by Dr. Tarmo Pasto, a visiting professor of psychology and art at Sacramento State College in the early 1950s. We know of approximately forty works created by Wentworth. He used crayon, pencil, gouache, pastel, and charcoal on paper, which he would rub and blur to enhance the forms\u2019 celestial nature. Otherworldly and ethereal, his works allude to Christianity without featuring overt traditional iconography. It is believed that Wentworth thought of himself as a medium between Earth and alien worlds, with his images being a response to \u201cvisions of the cosmos and of a quasi-Christian heaven.\u201d He would inscribe many of his works with the word \u201cimagination,\u201d letting us presume that he was conscious of what was and was not reality.Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020."]},"beginDate":{"label":"Begin Date","value":"1950"},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"1950s"},"exhibitions":{"label":"Exhibitions","value":{"exhibitionDisplayDate":"Thursday, July 11, 2002 - Sunday, January 5, 2003","exhibitionEndISODate":"2003-01-26","exhibitionID":"73","exhibitionISOBeginDate":"2002-07-11","exhibitionBeginDate":"2002","exhibitionTitle":"American Anthem","exhibitionEndDate":"2003"}},"dimensions":{"label":"Dimensions","value":"Sheet: 30 x 25 1/2 \"Frame: 38 x 33 1/2 x 1 \""}}]}