Illustrious Ancestry
Some time in the late 70s my great-Aunt Zilpha, now deceased but then living in the tiny upstate New York community of Oxford, gave me a softcover book entitled Franck Taylor Bowers 1875-1932. The cover of the book, a photographic self-portrait of the artist, is the main photo source for my image. Thank Goodness his first name had its peculiar spelling. It makes him a perfect triple acrostic.
Franck was no N.C. Wyeth, but he was good enough for Binghamton, New York, where a retrospective of his work was displayed in 1977, becoming the basis for the book Aunt Zilpha gave me. An Internet search reveals that his father, LaMont Bowers, a financial advisor for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., may have had something to do with the Ludlow Massacre, a shameful episode in the history of American labor relations. Tsk tsk on him if so, and tsk tsk on him for saddling Franck with family business obligations (anchors and other ancillaries) when Franck could have been painting his way to greatness. Instead, eight years of his life was misspent on anchors and invoices.
Franck died of aplastic anemia four days after his 57th birthday, so I have outlived him by two years and counting. He did some nice drawings and paintings, some of which are findable via Internet search. It would make my day if someone reading this honored his memory by checking out some of his images.
The words:
FLAWLESS execution with a pen or pencil nub
Raw sienna add cerulean to brush or rub–go
Anywhichway & pursue your muse w/ebb & flow
Nobody sincere is selling you a line to toe
Continental voyages took dilettante to doer
Kept an artist-voyager alive and new toujours
One with Clay, Image and Text 
Can’t resist a good internet hunt. I found his photographs, including your source document. Is Clement Bowers a direct ancestor? The art work is rather small but he seemed quite professional.
Can’t claim any famous ancestors, but grandpa Oswald Sitwell was in the immediate family of Dame Edith Sitwell, famed poetess, and of Sachaverel Sitwell, a noted excentric that owned his fortune to a stupendously rich ancestor who had a nail factory. The famous Sitwells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sitwells
Hey, this has let me to a biography of my great uncle Frank!! http://www.plantata.org.uk/papers/obits/barry/sitwell_g.htm
I met him once in England when I was 16. He was a very gentle man, and seemed immensely old to me at the time.
And here is a little pamphlet grandpa wrote about his beloved Framlingham: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Framlingham.html?id=BaXkSAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y.
And isn’t this an intriguing title: ‘The Story of the Cathedral Kneelers and the Cushions in the Canons’ Stalls’. By Oswald and Grace Sitwell.
We also have a copy of ‘Letters from far away places’ at home, the aptly named collection of letters he and Grace exchanged when he was in the colonial service. This led to my mother being born in Uganda, and her lifelong hatred of tight shoes, since she spend her first years barefoot in the savanna…
Here is a nice little bio of Grandpa and grandma, on page 18: http://bit.ly/1dnkKHR
Grandma was a fine arts graduate from McGill university in Montreal, early last century, a true pioneer, and we are quite proud of her.
I can also claim some more poetry fame by association, since Grace’s sister, Jenny McDonald, was married for a few years to Conrad Aiken, a well known american poet. Both their daughters, Joan and Jane, were writers, and we had some short story collections from them when we where young, with lovely titles:
‘A necklace of raindrops’
‘All you ever wanted’
‘More than you bargained for’
Are the ones I remember the best.
Now on dad’s side of the family…… 😉
Michel Lamontagne
Wow, Michel! What a long strange trip your family has had! Love it!
Grandpa was a true British eccentric. He had a huge O gauge train set up in his cellar, and he would putter about, running his trains, setting up train crossings, putting in switchyards. Not pretty, that wasn’t his aim, it had to work. He had the most perfect green lawn, that he mowed with a hand mower, and a houseful of books.
He and Grace were cheerful and witty, a class act. In more ways than one, I guess.
Mum told me that in his later years grandpa was bitter about the colonies, as he came to feel that the colonial service, that he had believed was for the good of the natives, was in fact much more for the good of the rich and landed….
He lived in a old house with large oak beams that where quite low at one point, and had set up a mat that lit up a sign saying: ‘low beam!’ when you got close to it, so no one would forget to duck.
I really liked him.
You might enjoy doing a portrait of him, Michel. I got quite a bit of fulfillment out of doing this page; I felt as if I were keeping Franck’s memory alive…