Francis Wayland Speight

Image source: Dr. Francis Speight

The painter Francis Wayland Speight was a leading figure in an outstanding cadre of professors and artists-in-residence who helped realize new levels of creativity and artistic expression on campus, in the state, and throughout the region. President Leo W. Jenkins, acting on the recommendation of arts patron Robert L. Humber recruited Speight, a native of Bertie County, to come to East Carolina as a professor of art and artist-in-residence. At the time, Speight had already achieved national recognition as an artist and faculty member at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. From his arrival at ECC in 1961 until his passing in 1989, Speight provided East Carolina with an artistic oeuvre and professional stature that was unprecedented. While art had been part of the curriculum since East Carolina’s founding, the school had never been home to a renowned artist-teacher. With Speight on campus, East Carolina emerged as a respected and engaged leader in the arts and art education.

Speight’s impressionistic paintings, typically of landscapes, featured scenes from Bertie County as well as rural spots in Halifax, Pitt, and Forsyth counties. His realistic style differed profoundly with the abstract art that flourished during his day. Despite his distance from the then avant-garde, Speight’s genius in capturing the beauties of eastern North Carolina attracted a substantial following, adding a new dimension to the national fame he had already achieved as a painter. It also brought East Carolina the distinction of serving as the home to one of the most respected and independent artists of the times.

Speight’s work earned him many honors including the Gold Medal of Honor from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1926), the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design in New York (1930), the Owens Award from the state of Pennsylvania (1961), the North Carolina Medal for achievement in the fine arts (1964), the Morrison Award from the Roanoke Island Historical Association (1973), and the O. Max Gardner Award from the University of North Carolina (1976).

Speight also received honorary doctorates from Wake Forest University (1962) and Holy Cross College (1964). He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1940 and to life membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1960. In 1961, he was the first North Carolina artist to be honored with an exhibition of his works in the newly opened North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. His paintings are owned by North Carolina art museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and museums in other cities in the United States and in Canada.

Sources

• Ebbs, John D. The Nomination of Francis Speight for the Oliver Max Gardner Award: January 15, 1974. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University, 1975.
• "Famed Artist Speight Dies." Wilmington Morning Star. November 15, 1989. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=E0pOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XxQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2547%2C6160973.
• Francis Speight and Sarah Blakeslee Speight Papers #4196, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Francis Speight: A Retrospective Exhibition, February 16-March 26, 1961. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1961.
• “Impressions of an Artist: An Interview with Francis Speight, ECC Artist in Residence.” Rocky Mount Telegram, May 19, 1963.
• Sparrow, W. Keats. “Francis Wayland Speight.” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. William Powell, ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Republished in NCpedia. https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/speight-francis-wayland.
• York, Maurice C. The Privilege to Paint: The Lives of Francis Speight and Sarah Blakeslee. Greenville, N.C.: Greenville Art Museum, 2002.

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