Modernism has come and gone and come back again, but there have always been artists who stubbornly stuck to the old ways and the Old Masters.
Joseph Sheppard is a Renaissance man of the old school, a master of human anatomy who can draw, paint and sculpt the figure with traditional finesse. Sheppard, whose roots here as teacher and artist go back some 50 years, is best known as the creator of Baltimore's Holocaust Memorial on Lombard Street.
Sheppard's immensely varied output over the last 50 years -- which includes everything from paintings, sculpture and interior design to magazine illustrations and books on drawing and anatomy -- is the subject of a fascinating retrospective at the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Gallery in the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills.
A major theme of the show is Sheppard's "behind the scenes" studies for interior designs, monuments, fountains and murals -- including all of the studies for the Holocaust Memorial -- juxtaposed with photographs of the completed works of art.
The show also features several unusual Sheppard projects that have never before been publicly exhibited, including a cover for Sports Illustrated magazine, medallions for the Brookgreen Gardens sculpture garden in South Carolina, and designer plates for the Franklin Mint.
Sheppard's work is reminiscent of that of Frederick Hart, the Washington sculptor who died last year. Hart spent his entire career creating monumental figurative works inspired by the masterpieces of Michelangelo and Rodin. His nod to modernism was minimal, and he paid the price for his heresy by being mostly ignored by the trendy art press. But while the avant garde considered him an anachronism, he, like Sheppard, had plenty of patrons and commissions for his works in the antique style.
Many of Sheppard's commissions were portraits; his subjects have included former president George Bush, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, former Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Cardinal William H. Keeler and Archbishop William D. Borders, whose portraits were commissioned by the Friends of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Sheppard, who now lives half the year in a 30-year-old farmhouse in Pietrasanta, Italy, is still much sought after for his works in the grand tradition. The exhibition at the Gordon Center, which runs through Feb. 27, is a delightful capsule history of a local artist who has won international renown and a secure place in the cultural legacy of this city by stubbornly sticking to his guns.
