Talk about a Wallingford boy who made good.
When John Franklin Koenig died in Seattle in January 2008 at age 83, he left behind an artistic legacy better known in France than in the Pacific Northwest.
Most American artists aspire to the big time by working their way from their hometown toward the holy grail of New York or Paris. Not Koenig.
The bravado that once propelled the youth on his roller skates from Wallingford to the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park enabled him to launch his career in Paris in the late 1940s.
Those who knew Koenig say he never lacked confidence. You can see it in the photographs - the boyish assurance of someone who knows he is good.
"He was exceptionally intelligent and well-traveled," said his niece by marriage, Claire Koenig. "He dressed with flair. He enjoyed good food and good wine. You knew when he came into a room."
Claire Koenig, who is also executor of the late artist's estate, lives in a 1907 demi-mansion on east Capitol Hill with her husband, John, the artist's nephew. This was John Franklin Koenig's house, where he lived and painted when he wasn't doing the same in France. Works by numerous Northwest masters, including Guy Anderson and Kenneth Callahan, hang from the old wood walls.
Every room and passageway in the house reflects the life and soul of the well-traveled artist. Claire figures Koenig created some 5,000 works - paintings, photography, carvings, glasswork, collage, jewelry.
These days she is busy sorting through his art, his papers and possessions, the necessary nuts-and-bolts follow-up an artist leaves behind, as she works to establish a comprehensive framework for the artist's legacy in the Northwest.
"I want to get some of his work to museums that will represent his work," she said. France is less of an issue. Over there, Koenig's awards include the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letter, given by the French Ministry of Culture in 1986, and the Gold Medal for the City of Paris - both awards that, on French soil, matter.
Wounded in action
Koenig's father and mother met in Forks, the rainy logging town on the Olympic Peninsula. He was a doctor in the camps, and she, a schoolteacher.
Born in 1924, Koenig attended Lincoln High School and was drafted into the Army during World War II. Attached to the 11th Armored Division, he took shrapnel in his head and back at the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he returned to Seattle and the University of Washington, where he earned a degree in Romance languages.
Then it was back to Paris to study at the Sorbonne on the G.I. Bill. Like so many GIs, Koenig was enamored of the City of Light. Unlike so many, Koenig stayed. It was in Paris that Koenig began a personal and professional relationship with Jean Robert Arnaud, which included opening their Gallerie Arnaud.
"He lived frugally but invested well," Claire said. Well enough, in fact, to eventually maintain an apartment in Paris, a domicile outside of Paris and a Seattle home.
Over the decades, however, Koenig was anything but forgotten in Northwest art circles, where his paintings fetched as much as works by Morris Graves. In 1970 the Seattle Art Museum staged a Koenig retrospective.
"A prime reality of his childhood," Deloris Tarzan Ament wrote in "Iridescent Light," her book on Northwest artists, "was the ever-changing texture of water. Its luminescence lent beauty to an area that was in other respects rugged."
An unconventional life
European visitors to his Seattle home were known to remark that they could now see where his work came from.
Since the 19th century France and Japan have trafficked in aesthetic affinities - "Japonisme" was all the rage in French Impressionist circles. The aesthetic sense in French and Japanese societies is highly refined. Koenig's Northwest grounding eventually absorbed both influences.
As John Braseth of the Woodside/Braseth Gallery noted, "He was very handsome and sure of himself. He would walk around Capitol Hill in Buddhist robes. He spoke English with a French accent. He was incredibly passionate."
Braseth, who knew Koenig well, added, "He was a completely unique guy. He was the real deal."
Observing how Koenig's orientation to life reflected more of what we think of as a European, rather than American approach, Braseth remarked: "America is not as seduced by beauty as technical ability."
Claire Koenig echoed Braseth's perception. She said the artist would get up in the morning, work on his art, putter in the garden, repair a sweater, cook and eat in tune with the four seasons: "Everything he did was about art. He did not live a conventional American life."
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