Sidney Elias Bickford of Newport: Genuine Yankee and fine artist

By DAVID KITTREDGE
Special to the Eagle Times
NEWPORT — Sid Bickford (1862-1947) was a Newport resident for most of his life. His paintings were shown at the first World’s Fair, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in1893, as part of the State of New Hampshire exhibit and later at the Smithsonian Institute. He was also the nephew of the first fish and game commissioner of the State of New Hampshire.

Bickford spent his early years in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he painted houses and signs with his father Stephen. At some point he and his father also decorated Concord Coaches, where he learned the art of stenciling and oval scroll work. That was the only formal training he had as a painter. 

He then moved to New Hampshire in 1888, living for a while in Grantham. While there, he painted a mural on the back wall of the Methodist church, behind the altar. The painting is still there to this day. The 8-foot-by-12-foot mural is a depiction of Christ holding a lamb reaching for a branch that is growing out a cleft of a rock in a cliff. The three images that Bickford used in the painting are alternative names for Christ who is also called the Branch, the Lamb, and the Rock in the Bible

Bickford then moved to Georges Mills where there was a state fish hatchery. Here he studied the fish and started painting portraits of trout, especially the Sunapee golden trout (Salvelinus aureolus) for which he is most famous. This deep-water species of trout had just been identified as a separate species of trout at that time, and is now extinct in Lake Sunapee, having interbred with introduced lake trout. One of Bickford’s golden trout paintings sold for $12,000 a few years ago.

While he was living in Georges Mills he sold his first painting, a fish portrait, to then governor of New Hampshire, Charles Sawyer.

Bickford and his wife, Ida May then moved to Newport and purchased the Lafayette House on South Main Street (named after the Revolutionary War general who stayed there in 1825, the house has since been moved to Vermont). He and his wife resided in Newport for the rest of their lives.

Bickford’s paintings of trout oftentimes portray the fish jumping out of the water with the water dripping or sheeting off the subject. He achieved this technique regardless of the fact that the photography at the time was not able to capture this event. Today, we take the grandeur of action shots of wildlife somewhat for granted because of the capabilities of our modern cameras with their high speed settings and their high pixel ratings. The only reference he had for this event was his memory.

His color palette was rich and intense. For instance, he used vibrant colors to highlight the markings on the fish in his brook trout portraits. Bickford actually created some of the color hues he employed and paint companies asked him for the recipes of the hues he mixed.

Bickford also painted portraits of hunting dogs, people, landscapes, and waterscapes. Once he painted a little brook trout on the bottom of a copper frying pan surrounded by cooking herbs, as if ready to go onto the stove, as requested by one of his clients.

Clinton Bartlett, one-time owner of the Newton-Bartlett Funeral Home in Newport, told of a portrait of a fox that Bickford had painted directly on a wall of a bank building in town. The fur on the fox was painted so realistically that people would actually stroke the painting trying to feel it’s fur. The bank building has since been torn down.

One of his students, Frances Pratt wrote of an incident about a red fox that Bickford had painted on his barn door as an eye catcher for people passing by. One day a fellow from down country was driving by and slammed on his brakes, squealing the tires. He knocked on Bickford’s door and when the artist met him at the door, the fellow asked Bickford if the painting of the fox on the barn door was for sale, stating that he would be willing to give $500 for it. Bickford said yes, retrieved a saw and proceeded to cut out the section of the barn door that had the fox depicted on it and they closed the deal. 

The Newport Historical Society has an extensive collection of Bickford’s work. The Newport Historical Museum has some of Bickford’s work on display at the time of this writing, The museum is open on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Special thanks to Larry and Jackie Cote, Ray Reid, and Becky Rylander.