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Europe 1922-24. With the savings from his San Francisco work, Kearfott bought passage to Europe for him and his family, where they lived in Brittany, Venice, Germany, and Paris. Kearfott studied under Richard Miller and Claudio Castelucho in Paris. While in Paris his paintings were hung in the official Salon des Artistes Francaises as well as in the Salon d’Automne. Kearfott spent a year painting in Brittany in the village of Pont-Aven. While there, the family lived in a farmhouse in which Paul Gauguin had earlier lived. |
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One of his largest works, The Piper, is now in the collection of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. It is believed that this work was painted at a life class in Pont-Aven, and that at least three other versions of this subject were painted by other artists at this time, including the renowned Russian artist, Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev. |
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He painted in oil and watercolor, capturing landscapes and village scenes in the towns of Quimperlé, Concarneau, and Pont-Aven in Brittany. Several paintings feature Lily in Breton costume. Many of the works he painted during this period are treasured by family members. In 1984, William Conrad Stone and Rebecca Stone Bishop, the artist’s nephew and niece, together with Conrad Stone’s wife Lorna and daughter Marcia, made a trip to Brittany. There, they were able to photograph many of the same landscapes that Kearfott painted in his village scenes. In 2002, his niece Nancy Stone Watkins and friend Agnes Reed, made a similar trip |
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