Charles E. Pont
Encyclopedia
Charles Ernest Pont was a Swiss-American artist and Baptist minister. Although his ministerial career was not particularly noteworthy, he was a prolific artist in many media including watercolor
, printmaking
, oil
, pen and ink, and pencil
. His framed art not only hangs in hundreds of private and public collections, but can also be found in many realms of graphic design, including book and magazine illustration
, greeting card
s, sign painting
and calligraphy
, mural
s, typographic design
, and decorative paper
s. While his style evolved with the times in which he lived, and was particularly influenced by modernism
in the 1930s, he is best known for the fine precision
of his prints and the realism
of his watercolors.
, France, on 6 January 1898 to a Swiss mother and an unknown father. His mother abandoned him in New York City
when he was three months old, and he was raised there by a German immigrant couple who had no other children. Informed of his adoption at age seventeen, Charles reverted to the name on his birth certificate, which included his natural mother’s unmarried family name of Pont. Entering the work force at age fifteen in 1913, Pont quickly transitioned through twenty clerical and manual labor jobs by 1925. He registered for the draft
in 1917, but a serious illness incapacitated him until the end of the First World War
.
, Connecticut. He died at home on 28 July 1971 aged seventy-three. His wife died in the same house in 1988, as did his daughter in 2006. Pont is survived by one grandchild and two great-grandchildren.
in Brooklyn and The Cooper Union in Manhattan. In 1933 he received a scholarship to continue his training with the American Artists League. His professional career began in 1925 as a carpenter and cabinet-maker in New York. Although he gave up this business in 1932, he never forgot these skills, and twenty years later designed and built his own home in Wilton, Connecticut.
In the midst of the Great Depression
, Charles Pont turned to the fine arts as a full-time career, working chiefly as a book and magazine illustrator. Pursuing a nautical interest inherited from his adoptive father who had served in the German Imperial Navy
, Pont became renowned as a maritime artist, painting covers for magazines such as Motor Boating, Yachting and Power Boating, as well as illustrating numerous marine books by authors such as Alan Villiers
. He also illustrated numerous children’s books by Joseph Leeming, Irving Simon, John Hooper and others, and Christian literature by such authors as Harry A. Ironside
. In 1938-41, he was paid by the federal Works Progress Administration
to produce public art, and completed twenty-eight murals among other projects. During the 1930s he also turned to printmaking, receiving honors in wood engraving, lithography and etching.
While pursuing a second career as an itinerant preacher in the 1940s, Pont painted not only Biblical themes, but also landscapes in thirty states, as well as Canada and several European countries. Working with equal skill in oil, watercolor, ink, and printmaking, most of Pont’s work remained nautical. In retired life he devoted himself to capturing the charm of the New England coast before all the 19th century sail lofts, docks and buildings were demolished. Giving up the ministry as a full-time occupation in the late 1940s, Pont turned again to commercial art for a living, and served as assistant art director for the New York publisher Grosset & Dunlap
from 1954 until his retirement in 1963. Later, Pont taught art for Darien High School evening classes, and the Famous Artists School
in Westport, both in Connecticut.
Pont’s art was exhibited in his lifetime in practically every state as well as the 1939 New York World's Fair
. His work in permanent public collections includes the Library of Congress
, Smithsonian Institution
, and Navy Department in Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and New York Public Library
in New York City, the Syracuse Museum, the Rochester Institute of Technology
, and the Wilton, Connecticut
, Town Hall, among many others.
Pont's professional associations included the American Artists Professional League, Southern Printmakers Society, American Water Color Society, New York Water Color Society, American Institute of Graphic Arts
, and The Typophiles.
, Connecticut. During this period he was also director (1940-1942) of the Old Fashioned New England Bible Hour, a radio program broadcast from Norwalk
, Connecticut. Receiving his pastoral training at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now Palmer Theological Seminary
) in Pennsylvania, and Shelton College in New York City, he was ordained by the South Brooklyn Baptist Church in 1943, and moved later that year to become pastor of First Baptist Church of New Durham in North Bergen
, New Jersey. Resigning that position in late 1944, he became for several years an itinerant preacher in the Eastern and Midwestern States. Unable to adequately support his family in that ministry, he returned to secular work about 1950, but remained available for the rest of his life as a guest and substitute speaker in numerous churches in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. In the course of his ministry, Pont published two books, The Tabernacle Alphabet (Loizeaux Brothers, 1946), which he also illustrated, and The World’s Collision (W.A. Wilde Co., 1956).
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
, printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
, oil
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
, pen and ink, and pencil
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
. His framed art not only hangs in hundreds of private and public collections, but can also be found in many realms of graphic design, including book and magazine illustration
Illustration
An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...
, greeting card
Greeting card
A greeting card is an illustrated, folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or other holidays, they are also sent to convey thanks or express other feeling. Greeting cards,...
s, sign painting
Sign painting
Sign painting is the act of taking a specific kind of brush, and with various kinds of paint, and applying it to a 2 or 3 dimensional surfaces creating letters, forms and/or symbols....
and calligraphy
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
, mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
s, typographic design
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
, and decorative paper
Paper
Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
s. While his style evolved with the times in which he lived, and was particularly influenced by modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
in the 1930s, he is best known for the fine precision
Precisionism
Precisionism, also known as Cubist Realism, was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period...
of his prints and the realism
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
of his watercolors.
Early life
Charles Pont was born in Saint-Julien-en-GenevoisSaint-Julien-en-Genevois
Saint-Julien-en-Genevois is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.-Geography:...
, France, on 6 January 1898 to a Swiss mother and an unknown father. His mother abandoned him in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
when he was three months old, and he was raised there by a German immigrant couple who had no other children. Informed of his adoption at age seventeen, Charles reverted to the name on his birth certificate, which included his natural mother’s unmarried family name of Pont. Entering the work force at age fifteen in 1913, Pont quickly transitioned through twenty clerical and manual labor jobs by 1925. He registered for the draft
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
in 1917, but a serious illness incapacitated him until the end of the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Family
Charles Pont was married in New York on 2 January 1925 to Dorothea Ford, one of five daughters of Irish immigrants. His only child, Joan Dorothea, was born 14 October 1927. At age fifty-two in 1950, Pont was reunited for the first time with his natural mother, Françoise Fournier-Pont (1872-1963). Charles Pont lived most of his life in New York City, moving in 1958 to the house he had built in WiltonWilton, Connecticut
Wilton is a town nestled in the Norwalk River Valley in southwestern Connecticut in the United States. It is located in Fairfield County. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 18,062. In 2007, it was voted as one of CNN Money's "Best Places to Live" in the United States.Located along...
, Connecticut. He died at home on 28 July 1971 aged seventy-three. His wife died in the same house in 1988, as did his daughter in 2006. Pont is survived by one grandchild and two great-grandchildren.
Art career
Pont’s artistic talent was already evident during secondary school, and he pursued a professional formation at Pratt InstitutePratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
in Brooklyn and The Cooper Union in Manhattan. In 1933 he received a scholarship to continue his training with the American Artists League. His professional career began in 1925 as a carpenter and cabinet-maker in New York. Although he gave up this business in 1932, he never forgot these skills, and twenty years later designed and built his own home in Wilton, Connecticut.
In the midst of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Charles Pont turned to the fine arts as a full-time career, working chiefly as a book and magazine illustrator. Pursuing a nautical interest inherited from his adoptive father who had served in the German Imperial Navy
Kaiserliche Marine
The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...
, Pont became renowned as a maritime artist, painting covers for magazines such as Motor Boating, Yachting and Power Boating, as well as illustrating numerous marine books by authors such as Alan Villiers
Alan Villiers
Captain Alan John Villiers was an author, adventurer, photographer and Master Mariner.Born in Melbourne, Australia, he first went to sea at age 15 and sailed all the world's oceans on board traditionally rigged vessels, including the full rigged ship Joseph Conrad...
. He also illustrated numerous children’s books by Joseph Leeming, Irving Simon, John Hooper and others, and Christian literature by such authors as Harry A. Ironside
Harry A. Ironside
Henry Allen "Harry" Ironside was a Canadian-American Bible teacher, preacher, theologian, pastor, and author.-Biography:...
. In 1938-41, he was paid by the federal Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
to produce public art, and completed twenty-eight murals among other projects. During the 1930s he also turned to printmaking, receiving honors in wood engraving, lithography and etching.
While pursuing a second career as an itinerant preacher in the 1940s, Pont painted not only Biblical themes, but also landscapes in thirty states, as well as Canada and several European countries. Working with equal skill in oil, watercolor, ink, and printmaking, most of Pont’s work remained nautical. In retired life he devoted himself to capturing the charm of the New England coast before all the 19th century sail lofts, docks and buildings were demolished. Giving up the ministry as a full-time occupation in the late 1940s, Pont turned again to commercial art for a living, and served as assistant art director for the New York publisher Grosset & Dunlap
Grosset & Dunlap
Grosset & Dunlap is a United States book publisher founded in 1898.The company was purchased by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1982 and today is part of the British publishing conglomerate, Pearson PLC through its American subsidiary Penguin Group....
from 1954 until his retirement in 1963. Later, Pont taught art for Darien High School evening classes, and the Famous Artists School
Famous Artists School
Famous Artists School has offered correspondence courses in art since it was founded in 1948 in Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A. The idea was conceived by Albert Dorne as a result of a conversation with Norman Rockwell...
in Westport, both in Connecticut.
Pont’s art was exhibited in his lifetime in practically every state as well as the 1939 New York World's Fair
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...
. His work in permanent public collections includes the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, and Navy Department in Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
and New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
in New York City, the Syracuse Museum, the Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester Institute of Technology
The Rochester Institute of Technology is a private university, located within the town of Henrietta in metropolitan Rochester, New York, United States...
, and the Wilton, Connecticut
Wilton, Connecticut
Wilton is a town nestled in the Norwalk River Valley in southwestern Connecticut in the United States. It is located in Fairfield County. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 18,062. In 2007, it was voted as one of CNN Money's "Best Places to Live" in the United States.Located along...
, Town Hall, among many others.
Pont's professional associations included the American Artists Professional League, Southern Printmakers Society, American Water Color Society, New York Water Color Society, American Institute of Graphic Arts
American Institute of Graphic Arts
AIGA is an American professional organization for design. Organized in 1914, AIGA currently has more than 22,000 members throughout 66 chapters and more than 200 student groups nationwide...
, and The Typophiles.
Christian ministry
Given six months to live in 1918, Pont became a born-again Christian and eventually considered the ministry his life-calling. He frequently combined his artistic training with his ministry, giving many illustrated talks. The American Artists Group referred to him as “America’s only artist-cleric”. While still studying for ordination, Pont was appointed in 1939 to his first pastorate at Gilbert Memorial Church (now Georgetown Bible Church) in GeorgetownGeorgetown, Connecticut
Georgetown is a village and census-designated place in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is located at the point where the towns of Wilton, Redding, Ridgefield, and Weston meet....
, Connecticut. During this period he was also director (1940-1942) of the Old Fashioned New England Bible Hour, a radio program broadcast from Norwalk
Norwalk, Connecticut
Norwalk is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of the city is 85,603, making Norwalk sixth in population in Connecticut, and third in Fairfield County...
, Connecticut. Receiving his pastoral training at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now Palmer Theological Seminary
Palmer Theological Seminary
Palmer Theological Seminary was founded in 1925 as Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Originally located on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, it moved in 1940 to its present location in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, just across the street from the city boundary...
) in Pennsylvania, and Shelton College in New York City, he was ordained by the South Brooklyn Baptist Church in 1943, and moved later that year to become pastor of First Baptist Church of New Durham in North Bergen
North Bergen, New Jersey
North Bergen is a township in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2010 Census, the township had a total population of 60,773. Originally founded in 1843, the town was much diminished in territory by a series of secessions. Situated on the Hudson Palisades, it is one...
, New Jersey. Resigning that position in late 1944, he became for several years an itinerant preacher in the Eastern and Midwestern States. Unable to adequately support his family in that ministry, he returned to secular work about 1950, but remained available for the rest of his life as a guest and substitute speaker in numerous churches in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. In the course of his ministry, Pont published two books, The Tabernacle Alphabet (Loizeaux Brothers, 1946), which he also illustrated, and The World’s Collision (W.A. Wilde Co., 1956).
External links
- Charles Ernest Pont in: Art Cyclopedia
- Charles Ernest Pont in: Ask ART
- Pont, Charles Ernest in: artprice
- Charles Ernest Pont in: World Wide Art Resources
- Charles Ernest Pont in: absolutearts.com
- Charles Ernest Pont in: Antiques&FineArt
- Charles Ernest Pont in: ARTINFO
- Pont, Charles E. in: Childs Gallery
- Charles Ernest Pont in: Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Charles Ernest Pont in: The University of Michigan SILS Art Image Browser
- Charles E. Pont in: University of Montana Museum of Fine Arts
- History of Georgetown Bible Church (formerly Gilbert Memorial Church)