JOE KNOWLES

It's funny how things happen sometimes. I had just laid my hand on a couple of frames tucked between two boxes when Mike called to me: "Do we have more of those etchings?" We had two more, and I had my hand on them.

We had hung a collection of etchings during the holidays, all of them by artist Joseph Knowles from copper plates. Our interest piqued, we read an old newspaper article about the artist and discovered a forgotten "survivor man." The following is comprised of excerpts from that article, "He Won Fame in a Bearskin – The Life of Joe Knowles," from The Sunday Oregonian, Portland, January 3, 1943.

"Mourned as an Artist on Coast, His Death Recalled Woods Feats to the Old-Timers of Back Bay," by Peggy Lucas, Astoria Free-Lance Writer.

On October 23 one of Boston's largest newspapers, the Post, carried a big front-page illustrated story on the death in Seaview, Wash., of a man named Joe Knowles. The picture was that of a burly fellow, wearing nothing but a bear skin and a scowl. Bostonians still remembered Joe Knowles, "the nature man," who in 1913 entered the wild Maine woods barehanded and bare-bodied to stay for 61 days in proving that the brains of modern man could cope with the brawn of Mother Nature.

Knowles was wined and dined, ridiculed and defamed. His exploits touched off a whirlwind of debate in the home of the baked bean. One hundred thousand people gathered to welcome the "nature man's" return to the bosom of civilization.

On the Pacific coast, Joe Knowles' death also received front page attention, but the obituaries were written in different tone. The bulbous-nosed man with a head like a St. Bernard's and hands as light as down, was mourned as a great artist. For when death ended the saga that was Joe Knowles' life it closed the book on many vivid chapters: a sailor, newspaper illustrator, lecturer, author, motion picture producer and actor, showman, nature tamer, Boy Scout councilor and creator of fine etchings, water colors and oils.

Joe Knowles' works are in homes all over the United States and have been sent to art lovers in China, Russia, the Philippines, Germany and South America. He had been commissioned to do governors' portraits, federal art project etchings, paintings for the navy. He made hundreds of different etchings and paintings during his 15 years in Seaview. . . .

He began his artistic career as a night shift illustrator on the Boston Post and as an occasional cover designer for such magazines as Field and Stream. . . . In the slack intervals of the night shift the artist used to tell "the boys" . . . of a dream he'd had of spending a couple of months in the woods alone, depending on his two hands for food, shelter and clothing. They said it was impossible but the more they poo-poohed the idea, the more insistent he was that it could be done. . . . And he decided to prove it. . . . Arrangements were made with the Post to sponsor the trip in return for exclusive rights to the story and Joe entered the Maine woods in August, 1913, to prove the resourcefulness of his mind and body. His entrance was made about 60 miles from Canada, but to escape game wardens, he crossed the border and traveled about 150 miles into the Canadian wilds.

Shortly after the "nature man's" stories, deposited in a cache for a reporter, started in the Post, the rival Hearst paper appeared with stories and affidavits to discredit most of the statements Joe was making. Knowles' explanation was that the Hearst paper, piqued because the exclusive story had upped the Post's circulation some 30,000, bought off the Post reporter who was handling the story and bribed game wardens in the area to deny many of Joe's most important allegations.

A bearded, leaner Joe, clad in the skin of a bear he had slain with his two bare hands, came out of the woods two months later, to be greeted by cheering crowds and a host of public officials.

Infuriated with the adverse publicity given him by the Hearst organ, Joe planned to bring suit. Friends convinced him that a better way to bring all-around credence to his story was to repeat the adventure, this time under Hearst ponsorship. So he offered his plan and the Hearst San Francisco Examiner agreed heartily, if Joe would agree to make his second venture into a forest completely unfamiliar to him.

About this time Joe went for a visit with his friend, Jack London. London urged him not to accept the Rockies or the Redwoods, either of them the Examiner's choice, because there was not enough food in them. He suggested the Siskiyous.

So the experiment was undertaken in the summer of 1914 and Joe stayed in the Siskiyous 31 days. This time his activities were carefully checked by authorities hired by the Examiner and Joe was the fair-haired boy when his experiment was ended. . . .

Joe wrote a book, "One Alone in the Wilderness" [I found the title to be Alone in the Wilderness], the story of his Maine woods adventure, which sold over 30,000 copies. He produced and starred in a motion picture of the same name and in another entitled "The Nature Man."

After appearing on the Orpheum circuit on the Pacific coast, Joe took his motion pictures to Portland but people were beginning to get too jittery over the war – that was 1917 – to take much interest in a great adventure that was past. So Joe accepted an opportunity to act as a councilor for 200 Portland Boy Scouts who were to spend the summer months near Seaview. . . .

[Joe] was a hard-working artist but a speedy one. It was not unusual for him to start in on an etching plate during the night and to work straight through until dawn. His copper plates were completed, depending on their size, from one to three weeks after he had completed the original sketches. He was an unusual artist, too, in a number of ways. He disliked to exhibit his works and he charged minimum prices.

[In the early 1990s, I showed one of the etchings to an antique appraiser who told me she knew nothing of Joe Knowles or the value of his work. Several years ago I attempted to research Joe Knowles online and found little information. But online research today yields thousands of references – not all this Joe Knowles, of course. Perhaps the current "survivor man" genre has served to bring up old exploits. Mike and I decided that we should buy, read, and leave in the farmhouse a copy of Joe's book, Alone in the Wilderness. Also of interest is a new book – Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery by Jim Montavalli, published in 2007, which comes highly recommended by reviewers as an entertaining account of Joe's "back to nature" experience. We have obtained both books and look forward to this reading. The photos I scanned from the old, badly yellowed newspaper article. I plan to have it copied as it is deteriorating badly.] KW

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MY ETCHINGS?”

I consider that I had a reasonably good relationship with my dad. We talked. We laughed. I learned much from him. But there were many things he preferred not to talk about. He left mysteries for me to unravel.

It was 1988. My mother and I made a trip to the attic of the family home after my dad's passing. She wanted me to take some of the things he had stored for me – things I had mostly never seen and knew nothing about.

"What are these?" I asked, coming to some frames wrapped in old newspaper.

"Oh! Those are your dad's etchings," she said, a certain disdain in her voice.

"Etchings? What are etchings?"

"Don't you know? – That's an old line that bachelors use on dates: 'Wouldn't you like to come in and see my etchings?'"

"No, I never heard that old line," I said. I was 38 and married with children. Just when was she planning to tell me about this line? (However, just last week I heard Melvyn Douglas say it to Irene Dunne in Theodora Goes Wild.) "Well," I continued, "may I have them?"

Mother actually seemed quite pleased to have the old etchings leave her premises. They didn't appear sinister in and of themselves. I took them to my house where Mike was suitably impressed and we hung them. When we moved they were stored again, and somehow it was easy just to leave them in storage while Hallie complained that a house with blank walls is not homey. So we recently brought all eight boxes of stored "wall art" and photos – the etchings included -- to the farmhouse for consideration of possible re-hanging. The process was just as confusing for me as I had feared and I asked Hallie and Nick to help us while they were there. We spent several hours on the project. We felt good about some decisions, standing back to gaze at how well this particular "whatever" seemed to fit that spot perfectly. Other framed items weren't so easily placed and had to be laid aside for another time. I think Mike would like to see it all hung and the mess cleared away, but it just doesn't work like that for me.

Anyway, back to these etchings. We have seven of them, all numbered prints, and my dad picked them up while he lived in Raymond, WA, in the 1930s. The artist was Joe Knowles. One of etchings, "The Warning," is of a Native American on a horse and is inscribed as follows: "To my good friend, Vance Dobson, with compliments of the artist," and signed by Joe Knowles. Three are of sailboats, two are of sailing ships, and one (Mike's favorite) is of two people walking along a road – quite indistinct and what I think of as an oriental influence. These are numbered etchings, each bearing a typed sticker identifying its title and number out of so many printed from the original copper plate.

Perhaps all this background information isn't very interesting, but what is interesting to me is how the mystery of the etchings has unfolded. Through Grandma Ina's letters, I discovered that at Christmas 1933 my dad had gifted her with several of them, and she had quite a bit to say about them: "Your presents are very nice indeed and you said you wouldn't spend much on us! The etchings are lovely and will make a fine group over the mantel. Thank you, and don't do it again. These look like money to me. You mustn't make false promises, you know, about not spending much on Xmas presents. Well, these things are the aristocrats among pictures. I feel I'll have to live up to them. Myrtle is crazy over them. There is one of his, a ship, that she particularly wants. Do you think you could get a copy for her? I'll help out on it but want you should have a finger in the pie, either for her birthday or next Xmas. What say you?" So, by this I infer that probably three ("a group") of those we have had been gifts to Ina that my dad later saved for me.

My next discovery – years later – was of a full-page newspaper article about Joe Knowles, carefully folded and tucked away in a box of Grandma Ina's trinkets and photos. I found that article several times before I realized that it was about Joe Knowles, the artist responsible for the etchings. I learned that Joe lived in Seaview, in the same general region of southwestern Washington State as Raymond. That article provided a starting point for online research. But that's the subject of another post.

Have you heard of Joe Knowles? KW