My interest in the artistic work of Nicholas Bervinchak is intensely personal. In the mid-1980s, I was flipping through some prints at The Ukrainian Museum gift shop in New York City, when I came across a piece entitled "Buck Run Colliery" (1933). The scene really caught my eye because my Dad grew up in the coal patch in Primrose, P.A., and this looked like a great Christmas gift for him. I didn’t buy the print that day, but the scene was permanently etched into my mind.
The Primrose Coal Patch
The Primrose patch, Bervinchak's home for many years and frequent subject, captured my imagination from when I was a child. Many of my cousins continue to live near there, and long after my father left in 1939, tales of Coal Country life were often told in my family and continuously stoked my curiosity about the place. To see Bervinchak's “Summer Morning” (1934), I'm reminded that one of the two ladies chatting behind the merchant’s wagon parked in the middle of Willow Lane in the patch (aka “Red Patch”) could easily have been my Baba Julia, who lived at the far end of the street. Gazing at Bervinchak’s etching “Miners Driving a Gangway” (1935), I think of my Granddad Mike who toiled deep underground digging coal at the Lytle Colliery in Forestville (Forrestville). He lost his life around Christmas 1924 after coal falling from the ceiling in a mine tunnel broke his back. Life then was undoubtedly hard, but the community was strong and resilient, and that landscape nourished the talent of Nicholas Bervinchak.
Early Days
Nick, a native son of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, honed his many artistic talents in the period slightly before and during the Great Depression in the black hills of Coal Country in northeastern Pennsylvania. According to a 1907 Ellis Island immigration record, Nicholas was born in 1903 in Shenandoah near Mahanoy City, PA, about 23 miles northeast of Minersville. His parents were Iwan Bervinchak and Euphemia (Fenna) Polinsky, both Ukrainian Lemkos. He had a younger brother, Michael, who was also born in Shenandoah in 1905 and another brother Paul born later in 1908. Apparently, the family lived for a while with Iwan’s brother Wasyl in Mahanoy City. They made one trip back to their home villages of Rzepedz and nearby Jawornik in Galicia (now in southeastern Poland) between 1905 and 1907 and their return to the U.S. (under the name Barvinczak) was noted in an Ellis Island immigration record dated September 9, 1907. Eventually they settled first in Black Heath, not far from Minersville, and later moved to nearby Primrose.
Shortly after their return to the U.S., Iwan was killed in a coalmine accident. Nick’s mother eventually remarried a man named Matthew Cherkis. After his stepfather sustained injuries in the mines on several occasions and with their brood continuing to grow to nine children, Nick as the oldest child ended his formal education in the fifth grade to help support his family. He worked in the Hazleton Silk Mill during World War I. After the war, at age fifteen, he went back to Primrose and began picking slate as a breaker boy in the Lytle Colliery for $2.10 per day. Later, between ages seventeen and eighteen, he went to work inside the mine itself. His many tasks included timbering, track laying, boring holes for dynamite to blast for coal, and driving the mules that powered the buggies, which hauled the black diamonds out of the mine.
Nick knew he could never work in the mines forever because of the loss of his father there. As a child in the 1st grade, he took an interest in drawing pictures and this fascination stayed with him. He began to draw on the walls of the Lytle mine with a piece of chalk, which was not appreciated by the breaker boss. He asked Nick to quit. But his working buddies wouldn’t allow that to happen, and they picked up his share of the load. This gave him time to sketch and draw as he sat on a dynamite box deep underground. After a year of hard labor, Nick began to think about how he could escape the mine and make a living elsewhere.
Nick’s Big Break
The 1920’s were a pivotal period for the development of Bervinchak’s many talents. During this time, he made the acquaintance of two major figures that would help to carefully shape his artistic career. In 1924, Nick spent his days watching the church painter Paul Daubner of Budapest, Hungary, decorate the interior of Ss. Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church in Minersville. He was still working the night shift in the mine at the time. Daubner asked for a sample of his work. Nick brought back a large canvas, which was an unfinished painting of the Arrest and Trial of Jesus Christ. He had used only house paint thinned by his mother’s cooking oil to paint the scene. The European fresco painter was so impressed that he offered him an apprenticeship at $5.62 per day --- the same rate that Nick earned in the mines.
A September 1925 short article in the Pottsville Daily Republican newspaper took note of what was probably twenty-two-year-old Nick’s first art exhibit. He displayed oil paintings with local scenes from Forestville, York Tunnel and Phoenix Park in the window of the Modern Photo Studio in Minersville. The article said the paintings were “skillfully done” and mentioned that Bervinchak had just returned from Wilkes-Barre where he was working with Daubner on decorating a Greek Catholic church.
He learned from Daubner about painting religious murals, ecclesiastical design, woodcarving and other church decorative arts and later went into business for himself. His early work appeared in St. George Orthodox Church in Minersville, but unfortunately it was lost when the church burned down in 1933. He decorated the church again when it was rebuilt, and his murals could be seen on the main and side altars as well as in the Iconostasis (a wall of icons and religious paintings). Unfortunately, the church was closed in 2016 and much of its religious art was transferred to the Ukrainian History and Education Center in Somerset, N.J.
Nick decorated many Eastern Christian and other churches in the Northeast. In 1958 his designs were accepted by St. Demetrius Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Carteret, NJ, to decorate their new Iconostasis and the interior as well as carve the doors. This was probably his largest single undertaking in ecclesiastical art.
The relationship with Daubner would continue even after Nick went off on his own, decorating churches around 1939 after his lengthy apprenticeship with the fresco painter. The two teamed up again in the 1960’s as Daubner and Bervinchak Church Decorators and continued their tradition of ecclesiastical art.
Bervinchak and Artist George Luks
A second key influence of Bervinchak’s artistic career was the eccentric George Luks (1866-1933), who grew up in Pottsville, the son of Eastern European immigrants. Luks was known as one of "The Eight", a group of artists sometimes called the Ash Can School, who sought to create realistic, often gritty portrayals of everyday living. He spent time in the early 1900s on the Lower East Side of New York where he painted detailed scenes of immigrant life and crafted quite a reputation for himself as a boisterous, carousing figure who gained incredible commercial success and standing as an artist. In 1925, Luks returned to Pottsville to complete a mural for the Necho Allen Hotel. The subject was the discovery of anthracite by a local farmer Necho Allen in the late 18th century, and the subsequent growth of the coal industry.
It was at this time that Bervinchak made his acquaintance of Luks, probably with help of a local connection, Edith Patterson. Edith had come to Pottsville in 1918 and become the director of the Pottsville library. In her role there, she actively supported local artists, writers and poets. In the summer of 1925, Luks gave an exhibit of his work to date, which was hosted by the Pottsville Library. Bervinchak had done an oil painting utilizing his usual supplies, house paints, and visited the library to show it to Luks. He was greatly encouraged by the artist to continue his work and to visit Luks in New York City. Nick, however, preferred to stay in Schuylkill County. In a brochure for his Bloomsburg State College exhibit many years later (1971), he said: “How could I draw what I want to draw when I’m away in New York?”
Learning to Etch
While working for Daubner, Nick began doing pen and ink drawings. His employer was so impressed with the detail and quality of his work that he suggested he should try etching. Daubner explained the process and soon Bervinchak produced his first etching of his mother Fenna milking her cow.
Since he couldn’t afford $100 to buy a press, he fashioned his tools from whatever materials were near at hand. Bervinchak had a natural ability for this artistic technique, and he used a victrola needle as his etching tool and a piece of copper as the plate, which he found at the mine.
Through trial and error, he perfected the intricate process and began to produce prints that were displayed in various exhibitions and shows. In September 1932, Daubner took Nick’s etchings to The Washington Square Outdoor Exhibition in New York City. His pieces sold well, with 25 purchased, and one of them went on to win first prize. In that same year his work “Toiling Miners” won first place at the Minnesota State Fair. In 1933 three of his etchings were displayed at the Social Science Building at the New York World’s Fair. Nick’s reputation as a social realist etcher and a regional artist was fast becoming established in the northeast and beyond.
Bervinchak’s Fame Sprouts and Grows
The 1930s and early 1940s were a prolific period for Bervinchak’s etchings. However, it was an extremely difficult time economically in Schuylkill County. The production of anthracite coal had been declining since the 1920s and ongoing labor strikes made for uncertain times in the coal patch. Even as the Great Depression forced the shutdown of many Schuylkill County mines and led to major unemployment in the area, the artist continued to chronicle local life with his detailed and visually engaging prints. Among his better-known etchings are those that depict life in and around those mines --- especially in the area near Red Patch (Willow and Blue Lanes) in Primrose. From his window overlooking the patch on Forest Lane, Nick could see the social and economic drama unfolding.
Among his 180 etchings from this intense period of 1933-1941 are: “Buck Run Colliery” (1933), “Miners Driving a Gangway” (1935), and “Bootleg Coal Miner” (1937). His intimate connection with the patch in Primrose is reflected in several of his etchings including four depicting the seasons there. Nick had a special interest in the bootleg miners. With unemployment among the local miners more than 50% as the mines greatly curtailed their production because of the Depression, or shut down completely, many began to dig their “coal holes” initially to fuel their own stoves. As the Depression wore on, these “bootleggers” began to sell this coal in the northeast through a network of trucks that hauled it beyond Schuylkill County. The mine owners used every means at their disposal including the police to try to stop this activity but were unsuccessful.
Eventually this informal business grew to annual revenue of almost $35 million! Several of Bervinchak’s etchings capture the work of the bootleg miners, their families and the dangers they faced. Among these are: “Bootleg Tragedy” (1936), “Bootleg Coal Miner” (1937), and “Bootlegger’s Wife and Son” (1939).
In 1938, one of Bervinchak’s etchings appeared for the first time in a book. Ukraine-born George Korson, who had become a journalist for the local Pottsville newspaper the Pottsville Republican in 1924, published a collection of miners’ ballads, poetry and stories gleaned from his coverage of them as a reporter in Schuylkill County. He was actively encouraged to do this by Edith Patterson, the Pottsville librarian who introduced him to George Luks. His first attempt was in 1927 with the publication “Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner.” However, in 1938 a greatly expanded and more detailed edition came out as “Minstrels of the Mine Patch” published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. A Bervinchak etching “Home to the Mine Patch” (1935) appeared as an illustration in the frontispiece of this book. Also, on the dust jacket and the title page Nick did an illustration of a fiddling miner with his own brother Michael as the model for the fiddler.
In 1936, Bervinchak participated in a biennial exhibition of sculpture, watercolors, pastels, drawings and prints at the Whitney Museum in New York City. It was announced in an April 21, 1939 Washington Post article that two of his etchings “Miners Driving a Gangway” (1935) and “Toiling Miners” (1939) were purchased by the Joseph Pennell Fund of the Library of Congress for its permanent collection of American etchings.
The pace of his exhibitions would quicken in the 1940’s and 1950’s and extend to places outside the U.S. as well.
The Later Years
Bervinchak went on to become an internationally recognized artist. Some U.S. presidents such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Dwight D. Eisenhowser enjoyed his etchings and hung them in the White House. The National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution now own many of his works. His etchings were also exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art and the National Academy in New York City, the world’s fairs in Chicago and New York and in cities around the globe such as Milan, Italy, and Stockholm, Sweden. Eleanor Roosevelt purchased his etchings of her husband and hung them in the library of their home in Hyde Park, N.Y. The Ukrainian Museum in New York City has a collection of 40 of Bervinchak pieces that were donated by his widow Anna after his death. They were shown there in the fall of 1984 in conjunction with the exhibit: “To Preserve a Heritage: The Story of the Ukrainian Immigration in the United States.”
Bervinchak made a major contribution not only to Ukrainian immigrant culture, but also to American regional art. He was active in numerous Ukrainian communities, Minersville civic and artistic organizations. His awards were many and among them was a citation given to him by the Pennsylvania Folklife Society in 1959 at the Kutztown Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival for his “distinguished service” to the folk culture of the state.
During the 1970’s, he produced more etchings. He and his wife Anna also visited their beloved Ukraine to find out more about their ancestral roots. They returned from this trip with several of his paintings and etchings of scenes from daily Ukrainian life.
Nicholas Bervinchak died in Pottsville, PA, on June 28, 1978. Although many people may not remember his name today, his images evoke an understanding of life in the coal patch that is timeless, and his success as an artist over the course of his five-decade career is undeniable. The beauty of his ecclesiastical art in the many churches of Schuylkill County and the fierce veracity of his etchings will always be with us and deserve wider recognition in his home state and beyond.
Authors: Michael Buryk with Alexis Buryk
A longer version of this article originally appeared in The Ukrainian Weekly (http://www.ukrweekly.com) on 10/2/11. Special thanks to the Pottsville Library, The Ukrainian Museum, St. George Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Minersville, PA), St. Demetrius Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Carteret, NJ), Bervinchak family members Donna and Marion, my daughter Alexis Buryk and all the current and former residents of Primrose and Minersville, PA, who shared their memories and artwork of Nick Bervinchak. Please feel free to contact the authors at: michael.buryk@verizon.net
Please visit Red Patch Gallery online for a collection of Bervinchak artwork. http://www.redpatchgallery.com/.