Magnum Opus by Ruth Ann Petree in Kennedy Classroom BuildingFor the staging of an opera in St. Louis in the 1980’s, the renowned American set designer, John Conklin, now 87, specified in his plans a simple folding screen to be used in an Italian domestic interior scene. It served a practical purpose in the director’s vision, perhaps to hide an eavesdropping servant. But Mr. Conklin chose to have an oil painting of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. reproduced on one side of the screen, thereby setting the time in the 18th-century era of the Enlightenment. One of my prop carpenters handily constructed the screen and we turned it over to the scenic artists for their paint treatment. Mr. Conklin explained that he’d had the option of reproducing any one of a number of the ubiquitous paintings of the eruption because it had captured the imagination of the public at that time and the images were prized souvenirs for those wealthy enough to make a stop in Italy while on Le Grand Tour. The English artist, Joseph Wright of Derby, alone produced thirty canvases of Vesuvius in Eruption. Throughout art history we have examples of many artists seeing or envisioning the exact same subject or landscape through their own subjective and peculiar/particular lens, be it impressionist, expressionist, realist, cubist, and so on.

Panel I of “Magnum Opus”
Panel II of “Magnum Opus”We are able to observe such a case study up close on our own Portsmouth campus. It involves one subject, The Seven Days of Creation, as put forth in the Book of Genesis. Here we have three different artists, working in two different media, but all inspired by the same source material. All three are women, two of whom are deceased, whose artworks we are able to explore visually, supported by existing documentation. First, Katharina Breydert (1893-1979), along with her husband, Frederick, were both Oblates of Portsmouth Abbey. They were Jewish immigrants to America fleeing from the Nazis. We highlighted them in the April 2022 issue of The Current focusing on their designs in mosaic. Displayed in the enclosure of the monastery and not available for public viewing is their interpretation in nine panels titled The Divine Creation from 1968-69.
Panel III of “Magnum Opus”A second woman also inspired by Genesis was Mrs. Diane Haehl Silfen, a Portsmouth Abbey School parent whose son, Seth Van Beever ’94, is an alumnus, and both now live in Key West, Florida. Like Mr. Conklin’s practical yet artistic folding screen, her own creation consists of three double-sided round needlepoint-kit cushions originally made for her home in Westport, Connecticut. Gifted to the monks, they are currently used by guests in the Abbot’s Reception Room in the monastery. Categorized as ‘textile art,’ she embroidered simple titles on the bands of fabric connecting the front and the back panels: from Day one light through Daysix beasts of the earth.
Panel IV of “Magnum Opus”This brings us to our featured Artist of the Abbey, Ruth Ann Petree (1939-2015), whose work is easily accessible for public viewing inside the main doors of the Kennedy Classroom Building (the former science building), directly across the Holy Lawn from the Abbey Church. It is sited prominently on the wall between the two lower entrance doors to the Reagan Lecture Hall. Possibly self-titled Magnum Opus, it can be taken literally to mean “a great work,” which it indeed is, or it can refer to an artist’s most important work of art. Her contribution to the beauty of our campus consists of seven large square mosaic panels, much in the vein of the Breydert images. By comparison, we should note, the Breydert interpretation of the Divine Creation involved nine mosaic panels, the needlepoint artist required six panels, and the Petree piece seven mosaic panels.

Panel V of “Magnum Opus”
Panel VI of “Magnum Opus”The biographical note posted near her artwork in the Kennedy Building informs the viewer that, “Ruth Ann was a devout Roman Catholic who worshipped regularly at Portsmouth Abbey.” Besides telling us that she was “a very talented artist who worked in many mediums,” we learn that she studied the art of mosaics in Ravenna, Italy. She also studied with the Spilimbergo School of Mosaics, leading her to a career of creating and teaching. Returning to the United States in 2000 from her studies, she opened Quasivecchio, a decorative arts studio in Newport, Rhode Island. Our posted biographical information continues: “The Seven Days of Creation was her last great work of art. It was her enduring hope that it would hang, live and inspire the community of students, faculty and believers at the Portsmouth Abbey School. Ruth Ann lived an extraordinary and blessed life. She was a friend of Ade Bethune, who is buried here at the Abbey.” She had also been encouraged to pursue her art by John Benson of the John Stevens Shop in Newport. Petree is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, having been married for 24 years to Vincent P. Mocini, a Captain in the United States Navy.

Panel VII of “Magnum Opus”
To put the three scripture-based artworks by these extraordinarily talented women into another context, we should mention that each one is an example of “sequential art,” a term not coined until 1985, although the idea dates back centuries. Today it encompasses a wide range of usage from graphic novels, to the comics or ‘funnies’ in daily and Sunday newspapers, to the storyboards needed to plot out the action of films or television commercials. The early motion-caption images by the 19th-century English photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, come to mind (think of his well-known The Horse in Motion), as do large tapestries which were often woven in a series which visually told a tale in sequence. Interestingly, the full-scale preparatory drawings for those tapestries were the original meaning of the word “cartoons” which most people today would associate with the newspaper comics. Only because we have a young man in Form III by the name of Trajan will I close with the fact that the monumental Trajan’s Column in Rome, north of the Forum, has carved into its Carrara marble drums a sequential-art frieze of 155 scenes measuring 620 feet in length. Spiraling around the shaft twenty-three times, National Geographic once called it “An Ancient Comic Strip” showing Trajan’s first and second wars in Dacia. A statue of Trajan was placed on top but disappeared in the Middle Ages. In 1587, a bronze figure of St. Peter the Apostle was placed there by Pope Sixtus V.
Studio work on “Day Six”
Preliminary sketch for Day Six

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