Hugh McKean, Where the Mockingbird Sings, oil on canvas 25 by 30 inches. The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Winter Park, FL. The Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation, Inc.
If one word were to define Hugh and Jeannette McKean’s work in Winter Park, Florida, the word I would choose is, “Tiffany.” The Fates, with all their mystery, and the McKean’s love of art, would bring the largest collection of Tiffany art in the world to Winter Park, Florida, just blocks away from the Spanish moss, yellow jasmine, snowy egrets, and alligators of Lake Osceola. How else can you explain it? Was it just coincidence? I prefer to think it was the Fates and Muses, working through two extraordinary people, that brought Lewis Comfort Tiffany’s work to Florida.
Hugh McKean was eleven years old and a member of a pioneering Western Pennsylvania family, when his father, Judge Arthur McKean, moved to Orlando in 1919. McKean graduated from Orlando High School and then, in 1930, from Rollins College in Winter Park. That summer McKean won a Tiffany Foundation scholarship to study with Louis Comfort Tiffany at Laurelton Hall, Tiffany’s home on Long Island, New York.
Jeannette Genius was the granddaughter of Charles Hosmer Morse a wealthy Chicago manufacturer. Raised in a cultured family, her mother had a degree in art from Wellesley College, Jeannette studied at private schools in Chicago, Dana Hall in Wellesley, Massachusetts and later in New York City at Columbia University, the Grand Central Art School and the Art Students’ League. Jeannette’s wealth, her love of art, her love of beauty, would bring Tiffany to Florida.
In 1903 Charles Hosmer Morse purchased the Winter Park Land Company in Winter Park and began developing the area. Morse donated land for Winter Park’s Central Park, became a Rollins College trustee, and purchased a home in Winter Park he renamed Osceola Lodge.
Jeannette began spending winters at Osceola Lodge as a child. In the summer of 1926, now 18, she spent ten weeks of study at Rollins College. It was now that the Fates first brought Hugh and Jeannette together. Jeannette would continue a long association with the college. McKean entered Rollins as a freshman and after several years of study with Ruby Warren Newby, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1930.
The Florida land boom ended when the great hurricane of 1926 hit Miami and real estate prices collapsed. McKean’s father, financially stressed, had quietly submitted two of Hugh’s paintings to the jury of the Tiffany Foundation in New York and Hugh McKean was surprised to learn he had been selected to spend the fall of 1930 studying with Louis Comfort Tiffany at his home, Laurelton Hall, on Long Island.
Of that summer McKean said he was, “living in a cheap rooming house on New York’s West Side and drawing naked people in crowed hot studios, not glamourous, but I needed the training. I had no money for entertainment except for an occasional ride on one of the summer street cars…. The electric signs in Times Square and the soap-box orators denouncing the rich, …were a new and fascinating experience…when September finally arrived, I was more aware of the world’s problems, better at drawing the human figure, tired of New York and ready for a change.”
Hugh McKean, The Minister, oil on canvas, 21 5/8 by 27 5/8 inches. The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Winter Park, FL. The Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation, Inc.
Arriving at Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall, McKean noted, “The evening air was spiced with the fragrance of petunias. The pools, fountains, terraces, and gardens were unlike anything I had ever seen, and I was dazzled.” Fate continued to weave her magic. McKean later took his Master of Arts degree at Williams College and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
In 1932 McKean returned to Rollins College as instructor in the art department. The Orlando Sentinel (March 19, 1933) noted McKean’s work at an Art Mart in the downtown Arcade, “Hugh McKean had two new paintings on display and although the young Orlandoan has never signed any of his work, his paintings are easily spotted. Their finished spontaneity marks him as an excellent craftsman.” He was promoted to assistant professor in 1936.
Fate continued to weave her long thread when, at the annual spring Alumni-Senior Dinner on Friday evening April 23, 1938, Hugh F. McKean, ’30, and Miss Jeannette Genius, announced their engagement.
Jeanette Genius founded the Morse Gallery of Art in Winter Park in 1942, appointing McKean a director. His directorship did not last long. As World War II mobilization intensified, McKean left Winter Park to join the navy. At the end of the war Lieutenant Commander Hugh McKean returned to Rollins as professor of art and director of the Morse Gallery. Jeannette Genius was there too, having opened a small gallery just off Park Avenue. The Center Street Gallery, offering, “works of art for everyone,” would become a fixture in the life of central Florida and an important support for Florida artists.
On June 28, 1945, Hugh McKean and Jeannette Genius were married. Together they would share a life in art at Rollins College and build the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of Art.
In 1950 Hugh McKean was elected president of the Florida Federation of Art; helped organize the Florida Artist Group, the state’s second organization of professional artists, after Miami’s Blue Dome Fellowship, and 1951, appointed president of Rollins College.
Students celebrate Hugh McKean’s election as president of Rollins College
A prolific artist, McKean apparently never signed any of his work. Jeannette painted under the name Jeannette Genius, exhibiting her work with other Florida artists at her Center Street Gallery. Jeannette’s work was selected for inclusion in the 50th Annual Exhibition of the National Arts Club in New York City. Her paintings Blue Quietness and Blue Wagon were hung along with works of Leon Kroll, Wayman Adams, Gordon Grant, and Guy Wiggins.
A fire on Long Island in 1957 had major implications for Winter Park and the state of Florida. Hugh McKean was twenty-two years old when he was invited to study with Tiffany. Laurelton Hall was Tiffany’s masterpiece, combining all the man’s genius–his stained-glass windows, his art, his architecture–into what was possibly the most beautiful home ever built in the United States. But by 1957 Tiffany had been forgotten. His home, empty and deserted, a refuge for derelicts, burned to the ground. Dr. Egon Neustadt, famed for his book, The Lamps of Tiffany, recalled people throwing Tiffany lamps out with the trash.
Fate continued her magic. McKean had kept in touch with the Tiffany family. When they called for help, hoping to rescue some of what remained, Jeannette and Hugh traveled to Oyster Bay to salvage what they could. With Jeannette’s inherited wealth, the couple bought the remaining stained-glass windows, the architectural elements still standing, and other rare Tiffany items from the wreckers. The McKean’s brought a huge collection of Tiffany’s work back to Winter Park, presenting Tiffany’s finest window to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it can be seen today at the entrance to the American Wing. The rest they kept in Winter Park, their goal to expand the Morse Gallery into a museum with the finest collection of Tiffany in the world.
In the years that followed, the McKean’s continued to be driven by their love of art. From Tallahassee to Miami, Hugh McKean traveled the state as an advisor on matters of art and as a judge in important competitions. Jeannette exhibited her work, redecorated the Student Union at Rollins, and in 1963 was made a Rollins College honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.
When Jeannette McKean died in 1989, she was mourned by the Rollins College community and Winter Park as the First Lady of Rollins College, teacher, artist, and dreamer of lovely dreams. Flags were flown at half-staff on the Rollins campus. Hugh McKean, at age eighty-five, persevered with their shared dream, and the following year witnessed the beginning of construction of a new museum. He did not live to see it open. McKean, the man who spent seventy years teaching art and celebrating Florida in paint, passed away just weeks before the new Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art opened on July 4, 1995.
Today a visit to Winter Park brings back memories of art and the artists that loved the area. A stroll down Park Avenue from the Morse Museum to the McKean Gate brings one to the entrance to Rollins College. The museum and gate stand as silent tributes to an elegant Florida couple and their contribution to art, to Rollins, to Winter Park and Orlando.
Born: July 28, 1908, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Died: 1995, Winter Park, Florida. Education: Rollins College, B. A., 1930; Williams College, M. A., 1940; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Ecole d’Art Americana en France at Fontainebleau, Paris; Art Students League, N.Y.C.; Tiffany Foundation, Laurelton Hall, Long Island, N.Y., 1930. George B. Bridgman; Daniel Garber; Andre Strauss; Gutzon Borglum; Selected by Tiffany Foundation as Resident Artist under Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1930. Membership: Orlando Art Association, honorary member; Palm Beach Art League; Florida Federation of Art, president; Rollins College Studio Club; Florida Artist Group, director; Southern States Art League; Morse Gallery of Art, director; Studio Guild of New York. Exhibits: Fontainebleau, Ecole Des Arts, 1st prize, portraits; Orlando Art Association, Florida artist exhibit, May 1927; Central Florida Exposition, Orlando, February 1928, 1st prize, landscape; Orlando Art Association, at Chamber of Commerce, November 1928; Central Florida Exposition, Orlando, special exhibit, 1930; Florida Federation of Art, best work in show, Jacksonville, 1931; Orlando Art Association at Chamber of Commerce, February 1933, 1st prize for The Colored Preacher; Art Mart, Orlando Arcade at Washington St. and Orange Ave., Aubrey entrance, March 1933, two paintings; Florida Federation of Art, 6th Annual, honorable mention, December 1933; Orlando Art Association and Rollins Studio at Washington Street arcade, December 1933; Federal Art Project, WPA, 2nd Annual Exhibition of American Artists, June 1937, New York City, a national exhibit of American Art at American Fine Arts Society Galleries, one of eight Florida artists chosen, Landscape; Florida Federation of Art, 11th Annual, December 2-5, 1937, St. Augustine, member jury of selection; Florida Federation of Art 12th Annual, Society of Four Arts, Palm Beach, December 1938, two landscapes; Albany Institute of History and Art, Contemporary American Art Exhibit, February 1939; Sarasota Art Association, 9th Annual Exhibit, Ringling Museum, February 1939, jury of awards; Studio Guild of New York, April 1939; Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass. May 1939, Contemporary American Art Exhibit, The Tryst; Studio Guild, Fifth Avenue, New York City, March 1941, annual spring members’ exhibit; Rollins College, Decoration of Honor, 1942; Florida Federation of Art, Circuited Exhibit, 1941-42, Clearwater Art Museum, Waters Edge; Society of The Four Arts, 9th Annual Members Exhibit, December 1946-January 1947, member jury of awards; Society of Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, 1948; Norton Gallery and School of Art, member jury of selection, December 1948; Society of The Four Arts, 11th Annual Members Exhibit, December 1948-January 1949, Florida Church; Allied Artists American Annual, 1949; Southeastern 4th Annual, High Museum of Art, Atlanta 1949; Florida Federation of Art, best work in show and best Florida landscape, Daytona Beach, December 1949; Society of The Four Arts, 12th Annual Members Exhibit, December 1949-January 1950; Palm Beach Art League, 32nd Annual Members’ Exhibition, March 1950, an oil landscape; Society of The Four Arts, 13th Annual Members Exhibit, December 1950-January 1951; Society of The Four Arts, 14th Annual Members Exhibit, December 1951-January 1952; Florida Artist Group, 2nd Annual National Circuit, shown under auspices of the Art Department, University of Florida, May 1951 to April 1952, oil, Another Part of the Forrest; Florida Artist Group, Third Annual Exhibition on National Circuit, May 1952-April 1953, an oil, The Barrier; Florida Artist Group, 6th Annual Circuit, Palm Beach Art League, April 1955; Society of The Four Arts Annual Exhibition, December 1955; Society of The Four Arts, Contemporary American Paintings, December 1956, oil, Florida Morning; Florida Artist Group, 9th Annual Circuited Exhibition, 1958-1959, an oil, House of Memory; Clearwater Art Group at Clearwater Auditorium, April 1961, Paintings by Hugh and Jeanette McKean; John Young Award, Orlando Chamber of Commerce; Governor of Florida Award for Contributions to Cultural Life of the State; Florida Art Museum Director’s Award; Honorary Degrees, Doctor of Humanities, Stetson University, 1961; Doctor of Laws, University of Tampa, 1970; Doctor of Fine Arts, Rollins College, 1972; Cervantes Medal of the Spanish Institute; 2nd National Exhibition, American Paintings, N.Y.C.
