Autumn in the Hollow, c. 1975 (Dorset)

The Orton Collection includes several landscape paintings by the French-born artist Claude Dern. By all accounts his personality was so genuinely larger than life that no brief remarks can do the man or his artistic career justice. It is a mystery that he found time to paint and exhibit his work as much as he did while being involved in so many other pursuits, including opening a restaurant, becoming famous as the “Dorset Strawberry King” for his berry farming, and his colorful career in politics in the Vermont state legislature, followed by a lively but unsuccessful run for the U.S. Congress.

Born and raised in France, he came to the United States at the suggestion of a local couple who had met him while they were traveling abroad. He studied art in New York City, lived elsewhere at times, but the nucleus of his life was ultimately Dorset. His name first appears as an exhibiting artist in the catalog for a Southern Vermont Artists show in 1940.

The distinctly exuberant style in which Dern painted the scenery of Vermont in every season makes his work fascinating. Exhibiting alongside his contemporaries among the Dorset Painters in the SVA’s annual shows, it is clear that none of them influenced his style.

“The Hollow” referred to in the title is Dorset Hollow. It is a geological feature shaped like a gigantic three-sided bowl, and the near and far views of the mountains that hug the deep valley are usually recognizable in paintings and in old photographs. The two roads in the Hollow are called Upper Hollow and Lower Hollow Road: they hairpin together deep in the back of the bowl. One writer said this about Dorset Hollow: “It feels like a land apart, a fairytale place untouched by the outside world.”