Lucille Chabot, 97; art graced 1965 stamp
Hyfler/Rosner
stamp
By Gloria Negri, Globe Staff | November 6, 2005
Lucille Gloria Chabot never thought her watercolor of the
Angel Gabriel weather vane on a Newburyport church steeple
in 1939 would become part of national history. But it did
when the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,
selected it for the country's Christmas stamp in 1965. At
the time, stamps cost five cents.
Ms. Chabot made the painting of the weather vane atop the
steeple of People's United Methodist Church in Newburyport
as part of the Index of American Design project, instituted
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide jobs during
the Depression.
Ms. Chabot took the honor with her usual grace, recalling
for the Globe at the time how those years in the 1930s,
following the Great Depression, had been ''hard and painful"
for many. Her artist's salary was $36 a week.
She was glad, she said, to see her painting, which was at
the National Gallery ''so well preserved after 26 years."
Mrs. Chabot, who was working as an illustrator in the
missile system division of Raytheon Corp. at the time the
stamp was issued, died Monday at Beaumont Rehabilitation &
Skilled Nursing Center in Westborough. She was 97.
The Index of American Design consists of thousands of art
works that record American industrial design and folk art
from 1700 to 1903. Mrs. Chabot created other Index works
that are at the National Gallery. They range from ship
figureheads and a pine bust of Washington to Shaker textiles
and a wooden model of an overland stagecoach.
She had also worked on other artistic projects for the Works
Progress Administration during the Depression.
''Lucille was one of a kind," said John O'Brien of Medford,
who worked with her in the art department at Raytheon.
''There weren't many women doing the work she was doing in
those years."
She had joined Raytheon as a technical artist in the
mid-1940s, during wartime. The engineers would design the
missiles and aircraft and Ms. Chabot and other artists would
turn the engineers' designs of missiles and aircraft into
three-dimensional drawings, O'Brien said. ''Then, we would
apply color and tone with an air brush."
She remained at Raytheon until her retirement at age 65.
When Ms. Chabot's Archangel Gabriel stamp was issued in
1965, there was some comment about the angel's ''feminine
anatomy," the National Gallery of Art said in a release.
''But theologians were able to reassure those concerned that
angels are genderless, and, as such, could be depicted as
masculine or feminine at the artist's discretion," the
release also said. The weather vane, mostly of gilded
copper, was put on the church steeple in the late 1890s.
In the 1970s, when a weather vane was stolen from another
Newburyport church, People's United Methodist loaned its
Angel Gabriel to a local bank for safekeeping and it was
displayed in the bank's lobby for 30 years.
The weather vane was sold to a collector in 2000, according
to Beverly Hill, a People's United historian. It was made in
Charlestown, Hill said.
Ms. Chabot did many other art works in her long career, and
favored watercolors, said her niece Louise Gagnon, of
Auburn.
Ms. Chabot was born in Lawrence to Louis and Minnie (Duford)
Chabot and grew up in the Worcester area. She always wanted
to be an artist, her niece said, though her parents thought
she should do something more practical. After graduating
from Worcester's North High School in 1928, she graduated
from the Worcester Art Museum School of Art in 1931.
After that, her niece said, Ms. Chabot went to New York City
and worked as a freelance artist. Back in Boston she
continued her freelance work and studied at the Fogg Museum
at Harvard University.
In the 1960s, Raytheon had an exibit of Ms. Chabot's work.
In 1965, Ms. Chabot moved to South Dennis, where she was
active in the Cape arts community, but she often visited
Boston -- still driving at 90 -- to see friends.
On the Cape, Ms. Chabot concentrated on painting portraits
but worked in many other mediums. ''Aunt Lucille could pick
up a stone and make it into a piece of art," Gagnon said.
Ms. Chabot ''always looked years younger" and was young in
spirit and mind, Gagnon said. ''She always chummed with
friends who were younger," her niece said.
O'Brien, one of Ms. Chabot's younger friends, recalled how
Ms. Chabot would often drive up from the Cape to visit him
and his wife and sit up talking until 4 in the morning.
''With Lucille," he said, ''you never ran out of subject
matters."
Ms. Chabot, who never married, lived alone on the Cape until
her niece brought her to Westborough in 2000.
Gagnon said she was ''more a mother to me than an aunt. She
taught me how to really look at things, how, for example,
when you look at a flower, you should notice not only its
color. But, you should look into it, around it and
underneath it. No matter what Aunt Lucille picked up, she
saw things you and I never saw."
Besides Gagnon, Ms. Chabot leaves three other nieces and a
nephew. Funeral services have been held.