Paul Grondahl
One of Albany’s most accomplished historical painters is preparing a retrospective.
WEast Nassau hen Leonard Francis Tantillo was born in Poughkeepsie on July 26, 1946, his Sicilian grandmother noticed what she considered his elongated fingers and proclaimed: Questo bambino sara un artista!
“The child will be an artist.”
His destiny was sealed, according to family lore.
Now, as he approaches his 75th birthday, Tantillo, the most accomplished painter of historical scenes in Albany’s modern era, is preparing a 40year retrospective that will be released in January both as an illustrated book and a major exhibit at the Albany Institute of History & Art.
“A Sense of Time: Forty Years of History Painting ” and its 70 paintings depict people and places in Albany, across New York and beyond from the 17th to the 21st century. Tantillo’s work
is remarkable in the rigor of its research, attention to historical accuracy and masterly control of brush strokes with oil on canvas.
Tantillo’s artistry captures the motion of wind filling sails, the texture of white caps on roiling seas and everywhere the mystical play of light — on longhouses of Native people, on Hudson River wharves of the Colonial era and on New Amsterdam’s Dutch colonists bent low over farm toil.
Tantillo is the latest in a through line of notable Albany artists that runs from James Eights in the mid-1800s and David Lithgow in the early 1900s.
“I think of myself as a documentarian and painting is my language,” he told me during a wide-ranging, three-hour conversation in his studio Sunday afternoon. “I like to focus on ordinary lives and hope it deepens our understanding of where we come from.”
Tantillo’s artistic influences run the gamut from Rembrandt to E.W. Cooke. His book is punctuated with essays by scholars who have assisted his research over the years and helped him interpret historical scenes. Contributors include Russell Shorto, Charles Gehring, Stefan Bielinski, Paul Huey and William Starna.
In the book’s introduction, Tantillo thanks the historians, while acknowledging that many of the details in his paintings from centuries past “are just guesses” and that he is more interested in rendering “that all important texture and tone.” Most importantly, he wants his art to serve as a bridge to the past.
“History is what we all share, like water and air,” Tantillo writes. “It joins us together whether we like it or not, admit or not.”
The Albany Institute exhibit, scheduled to run Jan. 27 through July 25, 2021 will cover about 5,000 square feet of gallery space. Coronavirus protocols including limiting density, social distancing and mandatory face coverings will be in place. Reserved tickets for a particular day and time will be encouraged.
“It’s a very big show with a lot of moving parts and we think there will be a lot of interest in it,” said Tammis Groft, executive director of the Albany Institute. A major challenge is shipping the paintings from 52 lenders, including private collectors, museums and historical societies in San Francisco, Minnesota, the Northeast and across New York state.
“This will be an exhibit that offers hope and shows our resilience through many dark periods in history,” Groft said. “Len’s work depicts the past with the sensibility of a historian and a painter. He reminds us that we survived wars and catastrophes
before and we will survive this pandemic, too.”
Maritime painter Nicolas Fox writes in an essay: “It is Len’s humanizing and democratizing of the narratives that unfold on his canvases that set him apart from any other History Painter I know of.”
From a young age, Tantillo soaked up the stories of old-timers who hung out at this father’s small market in New Paltz. His grandparents emigrated from Sicily in the late 1800s as teenagers, settling in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Leonardo Tantillo was in his early 50s when he died in the 1918 influenza pandemic, leaving a widow with nine children. His grandson Len was a daydreamer who liked to draw and build models. He studied architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and built a solid career an architectural illustrator. But he grew bored with the repetitive, formulaic nature of the assignments.
He struck out on his own in the late-1970s. One of his first commissions was a painting of the mid-19th century Griswold Rensselaer Iron Works in Troy.
“I pieced together artifacts and shards of information to create a painting based on the past,” Tantillo said. “I found it thrilling.”
He also focused on painting ships and airplanes, influenced by a grandfather who was a merchant ship captain and an uncle who was a pilot.
As Tantillo’s reputation grew, he was hired to create large-scale oil paintings of historical scenes by wealthy private collectors, regional banks, historical societies and museums. He never had a business plan other than to earn enough to support his wife and two daughters. “As long as I could make $250 a week, we could survive,” Tantillo said. “It got a little dicey if a client did not pay promptly.”
Tantillo has progressed to major commissions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and Steinway & Sons for a one-of-a-kind, custom art case grand piano that Tantillo adorned with 10 original paintings of Dutch history.
“I’m getting over the notion that this exhibit is my swan song,” said Tantillo, a grandfather of four. He still awakens each day
at 5 a.m., walks to his adjoining studio and goes to the palette and easel before dawn with white nylon brushes and tubes of Winsor & Newton oil paint.
“I get more courage as a painter as I get older,” he said. “I approach each new project with great enthusiasm and some fear. I think that’s healthy for an artist.”