Review
...adventurous fictionalized biography about a dynamic twentieth-century artist ... fresh ... vibrantly told ... very highly recommended ... deftly written. --
Midwest Book Review, 01/01/03...insightful glimpse into one of Cape Cod's most colorful characters ... fittingly couching reality as fiction ... superb historical fiction. --
Tim Wood, Editor, Cape Cod ChronicleAn unusual work...a detective story and a ghost story, a novel masquerading as biography. I found it quite brilliant. --
Mike Connell, The Times Herald, Port Huron, MIDespite its fictional trappings, (this) is meticulously researched and steeped in the actual people and events that shaped Hunt's life. --
A-Plus Art / Antiques / DesignEqual parts mystery novel, ghost story, romance, and cultural history of...mid-20th century, (it's) unlike any book I’ve ever read. --
Tim Clark, Contributing Editor, Yankee MagazinePeter Hunt was a terrible-and wonderful-liar. In one sentence (the author) sums up the life of an extraordinary artist. --
Eric Linder, Poet & Proprietor, Yellow Umbrella Books
From the Publisher
Lynn Van Dine explores the life of 20th century America's most entertaining, prolific, and all but forgotten, folk artist.
Hunt did what many young, impoverished yet ambitious men of his generation did to improve their lot in life--he re-invented himself. Born Frederick Lowe Schnitzer in Jersey City in 1896 to poor, immigrant parents, he leapt into the Bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village and Boston as a young adult, emerging as the artist Peter Hunt. After service in World War I, he added "Lord Templeton" to his name, initially for the benefit of Helena Rubenstein whom he successfully wooed as a client and friend.
From the start, Peter Hunt charmed his mostly female clientele as he moved among a fascinating group of individuals from the worlds of high society and the arts. Whether he painted on fabric or furniture, as a nouveau Erte or faux European peasant, his art delighted clients if not critics and gallery owners. His design of the Cape Cod Room at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, done in 1935, remains to this day, as do many examples of his painted furniture, decorative pieces and fabrics, many of them now fetching prices Hunt could not have imagined.
Settling in Provincetown in the 1920s, Peter Hunt's Peasant Village became a fixture on the local arts scene, attracting artists, socialites and locals. Hunt moved his parents to the Cape, where his father became a famous primitive artist in his own right with shows there and in New York. In the 1950s, Hunt moved to Orleans on the Cape, establishing Peacock Alley as his new base of operations, where he remained until his death in 1967.
A resurgence of interest has begun, in no small part due to Van Dine's search for the "real" Peter Hunt. The author tackled her elusive subject through a combination of extensive research, interviews with people who knew Hunt, and educated guesses resulting from careful tracking of his movements and those of people thought to be in his circle. Because Hunt mixed truth and lies so freely, the author uses the device of fictional conversations in turn poignant and hilarious between herself and Hunt's ghost to elucidate the facts, contradictions, and fabrications in his life. In the end, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, "To tell the truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity."
Van Dine is, indeed, true to the spirit of Peter Hunt.
