David Merrill’s Latest Commission—

A Birthday Present That Is Being Shared With The Community

By Kaaren Valenta

Eugene Stephenson watched intently as artist David Merrill carefully positioned his painting over the fireplace mantel and tapped it into the place.

It was the day before Mr Stephenson’s 96th birthday, the day the painting would be unveiled to residents of Pomperaug Woods, an assisted living facility in Southbury. Mr Stephenson commissioned the painting from the Newtown artist and donated it to the facility for its new community room.

“This room is only about a year old,” Mr Stephenson said. “Since it was built, I’ve often wandered in here and sat in front of the fireplace. I also enjoy the view at the other end of the room, looking out at the garden, and thought it would be nice to have something over the fireplace. Many old Connecticut houses had painted panels over the fireplace, sometimes painted right on the wall, sometimes using [the molding] as a frame.”

Mr Stephenson knew exactly whom he wanted to paint the landscape.

“David Merrill is very well known in Connecticut because of his work, painting the murals in the town halls in Southbury, Newtown and in Monroe,” he said. “He’s a native artist who knows the countryside and can very easily depict it in a manner in keeping with a fireplace setting.”

The original idea was to paint an autumn scene, but eventually everyone agreed the landscape should depict spring.

“I wanted it to be very peaceful, gentle, calm,” Mr Merrill said. “So I used soft yellows and greens. The view is looking across the river to an open meadow. There’s a small farm building that is weathered red, very faded, with a cedar-shingled roof.”

In the foreground is a large maple tree; white birch are clustered on both sides.

“There is an area lit by sun, an ideal place to put a blanket by the river for a picnic, everything is inviting,” Mr Merrill said. “There’s a robin in a tree, tiny chipmunk in the grass.”

The painting, at 57 inches long by 23 inches tall, is sized exactly to fit inside the molding that acts as a frame.

For many years Eugene Stephenson lived next door to David Merrill’s sister, although the two men did not know each other then. A resident of Southbury for 50 years, Mr Stephenson and his late wife, Olive, had their own consulting interior design business, C. Eugene Stephenson & Associates, in New York City, a business that served more than 50 of the Fortune 500 companies.  When they came to Southbury to do the Still Meadow kitchens of Gladys Taber, they fell in love with the area.

“My wife saw a little red house, an 1850 five-room farmhouse by a watercress brook and we bought [it],” Mr Stephenson said. “Until we retired, we commuted on weekends to the country for real living.”

One day about 30 years ago, Mrs Stephenson stopped at the former Van Tassel Tole House, an antiques shop on Route 34 adjacent to Curtiss Box Company in Sandy Hook. There she found a set of small plates and bought them.

“When she brought them home, they looked familiar to me. Then I realized I had designed them in 1928 as a premium – a giveaway – for the Quaker Oaks Company,” Mr Stephenson said.

Originally from Virginia, Mr Stephenson attended the College of William and Mary, studying architecture and design, then transferred to Parsons School of Design in New York. There he spent one year studying stage design and another studying interior design. He then transferred to the school’s branch in Paris.

“I graduated the year that [Charles] Lindberg flew over,” Mr Stephenson said.

He served as national president of the American Institute of Decorators, the parent company of American Society of Interior Designers, now a division of The New School. He was on the board of trustees of Parsons for 15 years. He retired in 1970, the year Parsons was taken over by The New School.

When David Merrill was painting the first mural in the Southbury Town Hall back in 1978, Mr Stephenson provided a photo for one of the buildings.

“I had a photo of the plow shop on Community House Road,” he explained. “There used to be a wonderful waterwheel there. It was published in Life magazine in the early 1950s.”

Mr Stephenson sold his Southbury property, Sugar Hill Farm, three years ago to move to Pomperaug Woods.

“I look at it as another chapter in my life,” he said.