Exhibit to revisit West Middletown artist’s life
Sandy Youngblood, at her home in West Middletown, reads the writing on one of her husband Nat’s paintings that he did while serving in World War II.
A charcoal sketch Nat Youngblood made while overseas serving in World War II.
A charcoal sketch Nat Youngblood made and sent home to his mother while overseas serving in World War II.
Sandy Youngblood stands March 28 with some of her husband Nat’s paintings at her home in West Middletown on March 28.
A watercolor painting Nat Youngblood rendered while overseas serving in World War II.
Sandy Youngblood holds one of her husband Nat’s paintings that he made while serving in World War II. This painting will be part of an art exhibit at Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh.
George Moore still remembers something artist Nat Youngblood, who died in 2009, said during a visit to Moore’s frame store in Washington.
“One time, on his way out, he looked at me and he had a twinkle in his eye, and he said, ‘I always liked coming here,'” Moore said. “It still gives me chills.”
Those in the area who are old enough to remember when local newspapers produced behemoth Sunday editions are familiar with Youngblood’s work from the lively, often humorous illustrations he produced for the Pittsburgh Press’s magazines during the decades he spent there. But an exhibit opening later this month at Fort Pitt Museum will present the breadth of the West Middletown’s artist’s long life and varied career.
“It was definitely local,” said Jaclyn Sternick, visitor services and events coordinator at the museum. “In the context of history, looking at his work has helped me understand a lot about Pittsburgh 50 years ago that I would not have known.”
While the museum has work by Youngblood in its permanent collection, the exhibit, which opens April 28, will supplement these paintings – which portray Pittsburgh’s early history – with some of Youngblood’s other pieces.
Sternick said the exhibit will run for about five or six months.
Youngblood was born in rural Indiana in 1916. He studied at universities in Indiana and New Mexico – where he returned years later after he retired from the newspaper – and later the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Youngbood attended the Harwood Foundation in Taos, N.M., according to an obituary.
Youngblood was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II and assigned to the 17th Airborne Division. In sketches and paintings, Youngblood documented the Allied push into Germany from his view as a paratrooper on the front lines, sending them home with letters to his mother that carried frank accounts of the war and civilians’ lives in occupied Germany.
“These letters are a blow by blow of the four years he was in the war,” said Sandy Youngblood, 77, as she looked through the war illustrations in her husband’s old studio, above her house’s garage.
Those paintings helped persuade publisher Scripps Howard to hire Youngblood for the Pittsburgh Press, where he worked from 1946 to 1980 producing illustrations for the Sunday Family and Roto magazines.
“He had to work on a deadline,” said Moore, who owns the Coutryside Frame Shop on East Wheeling Street. “The writer would come in and say, I’m doing an article on a certain subject, and within a day or two Nat would come up with a finished illustration.”
Youngblood continued to paint after he left the paper, producing large oil paintings on commission as he and Sandy divided their time between their homes in West Middletown and New Mexico, where he also kept a studio.
His work from that era reflected his lifelong interest in American Indians and the outdoors, Sandy Youngblood said.
“Driving over here from Pittsburgh, over every hill, it looks like a Nat Youngblood painting,” said Fort Pitt exhibit specialist Michael Burke during a recent visit at the artist’s old home.
At his shop, Moore has a number of paintings and a collection of magazine illustrations – a mix of humorous sketches and other work that run the gamut from goofy street scenes to ascerbic political satire.
Moore said representatives from the Fort Pitt Museum took several pieces of Youngblood’s work as part of their preparations for the exhibit, including a Roto cover that featured a raccoon cowering in a tree above a group of boys wearing coonskin caps – a piece Moore described as a lighthearted take on the popularity of that style of hat at the time.
Moore said Youngblood’s work still resonates with visitors to the shop: “We’ve sold a lot of them. Even people who don’t remember him look at these things and immediately appreciate the creativity and the artistic value.”