![\"Stacy-Tolman-Providence\"](\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/stacy-tolman-providence.jpg\")
<\/a>Portrait of Tolman.<\/p>\nFrom 1889 Tolman was a teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, head of the dept. of drawing and painting there until 1905, thereafter teaching the anatomy class. He had his studio in the Fleur de Lys building in Providence from 1895.<\/p>\n
The Etcher (c.1887-90), Stacy Tolman of Providence. The man depicted is the printmaker William Henry Warren Bicknell, friend and fellow student:<\/p>\n
The Musicale (c.1887), Stacy Tolman of Providence:<\/p>\n Yard View, Providence (undated), Stacy Tolman of Providence:<\/p>\n The Interlude (1890), Stacy Tolman of Providence:<\/p>\n This evokes several Lovecraft stories such as \u201cThe Terrible Old Man\u201d, \u201cThe Music of Erich Zann\u201d, and \u201cHypnos\u201d.<\/p>\n His late work, presumably in the 1920s, apparently showed the evidence of impressionism. One presumes that toward the end of his life Providence gave Tolman a major retrospective exhibition, which Lovecraft would have likely seen (unless he was away in New York at that point). I can’t find one, but there was a 1935 list catalogue for a Memorial Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Etchings by Stacy Tolman<\/em>.<\/p>\n It is quite probable he was a teacher of Lovecraft’s Providence correspondent (and probable local friend) Frederick Allen Wesley, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design as evidenced by the 1903 yearbook (and probably also studied there in later years)…<\/p>\n There is an ink drawing of Wesley by Tolman, not yet available online…<\/p>\n Rhode Island Historical Society\u2013Graphics Dept.: Given this, one wonders if Lovecraft’s friend Wesley was the model for the artist in \u201cThe Call of Cthulhu\u201d…<\/p>\n \u201cwho had latterly been studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and living alone at the Fleur-de-Lys Building near that institution. Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius but great eccentricity\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note that the last \u201cA.W.\u201d initials of Henry Anthony Wilcox are the same as those of Frederick A. Wesley, and that Lovecraft has a tendency to slip his friends into his stories.<\/p>\n One wonders if the Tolman portrait of Wesley will show something of Lovecraft\u2019s description of Wilcox in \u201cThe Call of Cthulhu\u201d as a… <\/p>\n \u201cthin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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\n 1. Ink drawing, \u201cFrederick Allen Wesley\u201d (call# Graphics XXB Painting T652 1) <\/p>\n