Through the Great Depression, artist John Fleming Gould kept his wife and growing family fed, clothed and housed because he was willing to branch out into other mediums where he could still create, but also sell.Â
Gould, a natural talent with oils and watercolor, was a regular illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post for several years; he also turned his talent to pen and ink drawings. Â
“In the ”™30s and ”™40s, pulp magazines cost a nickel and were all most people could afford to buy during those lean years,” said the late artist”™s son Robert Gould, director of the Bethlehem Art Gallery, founded by his parents in 1957. “Dad continued painting, but our bread and butter came from the hundreds of illustrations he created for those pocket-sized novels. From ”˜The Shadow”™ to ”˜World War II Aces,”™ he made sure that money was always coming in to take care of us.
“When the Depression struck, it came down with a blow in every industry. But he kept an open mind, went with the flow and took work that he might not have ordinarily considered and become proficient at it. The result is a wealth of wonderful illustrations he created for hundreds of novellas. One thing we learned from our father was to stay creative and to do your very best, even if it was only for a 10-cent pocket novel.
“Mom?” he said. “She did everything else. He kept the money coming in and she managed it and raised the family and helped Dad, too.”
These days, Gould”™s sons Robert, Paul and Bill are doing the same thing: learning what sells and giving it their best while keeping prices reasonable so they won”™t scare customers away. Five years ago, the brothers sold their parents”™ former farm and moved Bethlehem Art Gallery to its new location in Salisbury Mills.
These days, they focus their attention on reasonably priced prints and tile work, art lessons, framing and frame restoration work.
Robert Gould runs the daily business operations. “I have no artistic talent, but I do know how to manage the books and am basically minding the store,” he said while measuring a print for a matte that brother Bill was getting ready to frame. Â
Bill Gould is the gallery”™s master framer and does the frame restoration work. Youngest brother Paul is the family”™s multifaceted artist who gives art lessons at his own Hudson Valley Gallery in Cornwall-on-Hudson, in addition to working at Bethlehem Art Gallery with his siblings. Together, the brothers are keeping the doors open of their “founding father”™s” gallery and focusing on staying alive during hard times, just as their parents did when the stock market crashed in 1929.
“When we noticed the drop in people buying artwork, we knew we had to become more versatile,” said Robert. “We recreated my father”™s paintings on ceramic tiles that are beautiful but reasonably priced.
“These days,” he said, “more people are interested in framing work, one of our areas of expertise, so we have been keeping busy with that. Interestingly, many parents are having their children”™s work framed. So, like Dad, we are using creativity and adjusting constantly to what customers want and can afford so we can continue our family”™s business.”Â
John Fleming Gould”™s move to the Hudson Valley was a plus for the region. He captured much of the area”™s history in paint and watercolor, as well as pen and ink. From Newburgh”™s waterfront to the mighty river itself, “Dad also liked trains, so we have many he painted in Danbury, which is a big rail hub. One of its former railroad cars has been turned into a museum, where his work is on display right now.
“The Hudson Valley landscape and its quaint villages offered endless potential,” said Bob Gould. “Dad also liked still life, and we have many of his floral paintings. Our mother would put arrangements together for him and bring them to his studio.
“He also traveled to the Southwest and captured the early West in the paintings and drawings he did when visiting that part of the country,” Bob said.Â
Several pieces of John Fleming Gould”™s creations can be viewed at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Newburgh. Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie is highlighting his paintings of the Hudson River, and the Danbury Railroad Museum (Danbury.org) is showing Gould”™s collection of train art. All three shows run through Feb. 28.
“In this economy, which is more like a depression than a recession, the goal is to stay flexible,” said Robert Gould. “This is a tough time for every industry and the art world is the first to be hurt when the economy starts tanking.”Â
With their father as role model  of how to keep working and adjusting not only to continue to be creative but also to be financially successful, his sons inherited their parents”™ tenacity when it comes to making sure the next generation of Gould”™s is housed, clothed and fed.
“We”™re not only a creative family, but we are also being creative when it comes to business,” continued Robert. “That”™s the only way to survive in today”™s marketplace. If you remain inflexible in your business plan, you aren”™t going to be able to bend when the wind shifts.”
Bethlehem Art Gallery, now celebrating more than five decades as a Hudson Valley-based business, has a message posted in the gallery”™s window: “We are a local company ”“ please shop local and buy local.” For more information, visit bethlehemartgallery.com.
