Fourth Life Period:  Impressions of life  (ages 48-52;  5 years, 1913-1917)

In October 1913, Paul Sawyier left everything he had known since childhood, and moved to New York. He would never again live in Kentucky.  He set about raising as much cash as possible for the move. He borrowed $415 from Brower, $500 from a bank, and sold the family home on Broadway.  The buyer, LB.Marshall, gave Paul $500 and took over paying off second mortgages Paul had taken against the house. Marshall described it as “a good deal.”

To pay off his art supply bill, Paul gave Joe Lecompte his copperplate covered bridge etchings. Finally, he sold off his four boats including all houseboat contents except his clothes, art supplies and paintings.

He moved to his widowed sister Lillian’s New York city apartment.  With his usual high productivity, he painted scenes in city parks and ships in New York harbors.  He soon had exhibits at several galleries and consignments with several art dealers.  At Jackson Galleries, his paintings were now retailing at prices from $20 to $100. Paul quickly learned that New Yorkers favored oils over watercolors, so he was soon painting again in the oils with which his career began.

On October 7, 1914, Paul was at Jackson’s Gallery when he received a telegram notifying of Mayme Bull’s death. Within hours he was on a train to Frankfort.  The funeral was held at First Presbyterian Church, burial in Frankfort Cemetery.

After the funeral Paul lingered two days in Frankfort, visiting friends.  He then caught a train to New York.      Along the way he stopped in Cincinnati, spent the afternoon and supper with Rose, then caught the night train on to New York. Meanwhile, his sister Mary Campbell and her husband had been expecting his arrival at their home in Pittsburgh.   When Paul arrived in New York he immediately wrote Mary Campbell that “he had missed meeting her because a pullman porter forgot to wake him.   We may guess this deception was to avoid his sister’s judgment on visiting one love so soon after burying another.

Mayme Bull died at age 49—unmarried, unhappy, childless and alone. She is remembered in a letter written by Frankfort resident Ada May [quote]:  “She was one of the sweetest souls that ever graced this town. Why if a saint ever walked these streets it was M.B. What with taking care of her old mother and other members of her family, she had a lifetime of sacrifice, and faithfully did she live it. I tell you, she was the salt of the earth.” “And did you know—that M.B. was P.S.’s sweetheart?   It was a beautiful love story, both lovers being too busy, too poor, and too occupied to marry and live their own lives.”    I would just add:   this concludes the details on “Oh yeah, Paul Sawyier had a girlfriend, what was her name…?”

In New York earlier that year Paul had met Marie Myer—a wealthy art-loving widow described as “a very pretty older woman.”  Their friendship was said to be instant, and they were soon painting together many hours daily in New York city parks. Marie told Paul about her even wealthier sister’s estate in the Catskill mountains, and invited him to move to the estate where—she said—he could live rent free, indefinitely.

The very next spring he took her up on it.    He had three strong motivations to move:   1) the New York City market was limited, because so many other good artists had preceded him, and all the best subjects were already thoroughly painted.    2) Second, the Catskills had unlimited scenic landscapes, mostly unpaintd.  3) And third, was his sister Lillian’s incessant carping.  Lillian was straitlaced and unrelenting in her surveillance, nagging constantly about alcohol in his room—which Paul had enjoyed freely through his adult life.

With no attachments to New York City and multiple incentives to leave, in June 1915, Paul Sawyier was accompanied by Marie Myer to her sister’s palatial 15-room “summer cottage,”  near the village of Highmount, to live as a guest, indefinitely. He spent a summer in splendid luxury.   But then Marie’s sister prepared for her usual move to the city for the winter.   She always closed the “summer cottage” over the winter, which meant Paul had to move.    Marie fixed that by arranging for him to live in a studio on the back grounds of the estate.

The ”studio” was an old Dutch-Reformed chapel that had been moved in and modified to be a studio.  Its only heat was a fireplace. Its high-peaked roof and ceiling were one, meaning there was no way to hold the heat down near the floor.  Paul was joined in this frigid building by Edward Buyck, a displaced Belgian artist also brought in by Marie Myer. Both artists were essentially broke. The winter of 1915-1916 was very long and very cold, and the two men spent the winter in abject misery.

Philip Schaeffer, who would soon become Paul’s landlord, said:   “Those two lived in the chapel … subsisting on canned victuals.  The place was good enough during warm weather, but when winter arrived they nearly froze to death.  There was a fireplace in the building, but it was only by wearing their overcoats, on top of whatever bed clothes they had, that they managed to live through the winter.”

He described that winter as “a seemingly endless period of no customers, no sales, helpless exposure, interminable suffering, and stark privation—some very considerable part of which was alleviated time and again by Mrs. Myer from her private purse.” Marie gave Paul warm long underwear, a sheepskin coat, art supplies, and gifts of cash.  The estate’s groundskeeper,  B.C.Todd, said:   “Mrs. Myer always acted like she was a little bit in love with Paul.”  Todd also says Paul and Buyck got away from the miserably cold studio as often as they could [quote]:  “They took dinner at our house frequently. They would have starved to death if it wasn’t for us.”  The artists thanked the Todds with paintings.

That winter was the most dire of Paul’s life.  His poverty was extreme, and there were no winter customers in rural upstate New York, where warm summer brought hordes of tourists.   Paul missed Kentucky and became depressed. He told Todd his entire life had been a disappointment, and reminisced often about his happy life on the houseboat.

Still, no matter how dire things became, Paul never sought income other than his paintings. He finished paintings in the studio wearing gloves and his new sheepskin coat. And he began bingeing on alcohol. He traded many exellent paintings for cash to buy whiskey and food.  He told his sister Lillian:  “Living at Highmount was as near hell as anything on this earth cold be.” However —  letters he sent to his cousin Jeannie that winter told her he was “fascinated with this place,” and letters to his friend Townsend were entirely upbeat. Such inconsistencies — of which there are many — display Paul Sawyier as a much more complex fellow than has been previously described.

When spring came, Paul and Buyck moved to the nearby village of Fleischmans, and rented rooms from Philip Schaeffer, a part-time merchant…who sold art supplies. Paul remained with the Schaeffers for the last three years of his life.  They were soon treating him as a member of the family. He painted through the next summer’s tourist season, but when fall arrived he was broke again.  Broke or not, he managed to afford two trips to visit Rose in Cincinnati.  Soon after that he was diagnosed with heart disease.  Typically, he told no one.

His heavy drinking became frequent and excessive.  But he was very discreet.  He was never seen drunk in public, and always maintained his image as a gentleman.  His image and his artistic talent were about all he had left. The Schaeffers noticed that Paul’s health was declining.  In the summer of 1917 he fell ill after surgery to remove several badly infected teeth… then immediately went camping several weeks to [quote] “get some healthy fresh air.”  Shaeffer reported that Paul and a young neighborhood companion “lived in a tent, fished, drank strong coffee, ate too little food, and drank too much spiritus fermenti.   From this point on, Paul’s health began to go down.

On September 5, he wrote his sister Mary Campbell describing a lucrative new deal with Detroit Printing Co,   which involved exhibitions in several midwestern cities over coming months.   It seems unbearably ironic that, at this late hour, Paul’s name was becoming better known, and his art was finally selling at respectable prices.

Eight weeks later, after dinner with the Schaeffers, Paul asked to be helped up the stairs—and collapsed.  A doctor was called, but could do noting for his chest pains and labored breathing.  Paul suffered in bed several days, then quietly died.  Schaeffer would subsequently write: “Poor Paul—a good painter who deserved recognition, who did notable work, but died almost penniless.” Paul’s three sisters convened at the Schaeffer home, emptied his room, read his collected bundles of letters…and burned them every one.  Paintings in his room were auctioned to pay burial expense.

Six years later his cousin Russell McCreary had Paul’s body moved to Frankfort Cemetery,  just a hundred yards uphill from Daniel Boone, overlooking his beloved river. Paul’s old friend Edwin Morrow—now in 1923 Kentucky’s governor — gave an eloquent eulogy at the gravesite.

 

My telling of Paul Sawyier’s story ends with this recommendation—and I recommend it with the strongest emphasis I can deliver. Paul Sawyier called Frankfort “that sweet old town.’ And it is. Frankfort is a sweet community of neighborhoods. Our well-forested small city also contains probably the most beautiful stretch of urban river in the United States.  Our beautiful Kentucky River’s big “S” curve extends some two miles right through the heart of downtown Frankfort…from the East-West Connector to Lewis Ferry Road.  When we finally, finally construct a fully developed nature trail along that entire two miles…with several wide spots where artists may set up their easels and paint…I recommend it be named

“THE PAUL SAWYIER RIVER WALK”

in honor of our most famous native son, the artist who lived a normal but interesting life right here in Frankfort, and painted so many beloved scenes in and around “our sweet old town.”

Don Coffey, October 2025