Artist puts 'a face on Cape Girardeau' with portrait of city's namesake

"Cleda, you put a face on Cape. We really appreciate it," said Charlotte Slinkard, curator at Cape River Heritage Museum, 538 Independence St. in Cape Girardeau.

Slinkard was thanking Cleda Curtis, a local artist behind the new painting of Cape Girardeau's namesake figure: Jean Pierre Girardeau.

The series of events that led Slinkard's path to cross with Curtis, who now lives in Oran, Missouri, began with confusion about where Slinkard, a Cape Girardeau native, was from.

"People who knew I was from here would always say 'Girardeau' was an 'odd name,'" Slinkard recalled, adding she never knew enough to educate them about the name.

Tracking Jean Pierre

Then, about 10 years ago, Slinkard found herself at a Washington, D.C., meeting with her husband. While in town, the pair decided to check the U.S. Library of Congress.

"'I'll see if I can find something about this man,'" Slinkard recalled thinking of Jean Pierre Girardeau.

It wasn't that simple. Girardeau family history predates his namesake city and most Western American expansion. Still, Slinkard was surprised to confront a total lack of information. She remembered her despair that stormy January afternoon, sheltering in the Library of Congress.

"It was raining, it was snowing, it was sleeting, there were winds blowing. We were really getting discouraged," Slinkard recalled.

"Finally, a young woman, a young librarian who knew we were getting discouraged came over and tapped me on the shoulder. She said, 'I think I found something.'"

Cleda Curtis and her portrait of Jean Pierre Girardeau at Cape River Heritage Museum in Cape Girardeau.Michael Leifer

So the Slinkards waited.

And waited.

Just as the Slinkards were deciding to leave, the young librarian returned with records of a French officer, first collected in Paris, that had been translated into English.

"So I sat down and, lo and behold, 'Girardeau' appears. Not only him, but the father, two sons and all this information. That just started the ball rolling," Slinkard remembered.

Slinkard said "the father," Jean Baptiste Girardeau, is falsely considered Cape Girardeau's namesake. Slinkard contends it was his son, Jean Pierre Girardeau, whose legacy passed on his name. Slinkard described this myth-busting as one of her easier discoveries.

"Jean Baptiste died in 1730. The trading post first appears on maps in 1765. Several early writers have suggested that perhaps it was the son (Jean Pierre), but never go any further," Slinkard explained.

After preliminary success, Charlotte and her husband continued their journey, traveling to New Orleans to hunt for more records.

"We found out the father (Jean Baptiste) came up the [Mississippi] River in about 1720, and all those records were in New Orleans," Slinkard said.

The Slinkards would travel as far as Ottawa, Canada, and New Orleans, among other locations, collecting more and more information. Ironically, of all the documents discovered by the Slinkards, none ended up coming from Missouri.

Slinkard said she would like to make her hard-earned information more accessible.

"I've never had any intentions of writing a book, but now I've pretty well completed a manuscript. I'm ready to look for a publisher," Slinkard said, adding she never intended to get as deep as she did, or take things to the lengths she ultimately went to.

"Thank goodness we did the traveling before COVID," she added.

Subsequent lockdowns and social distancing afforded Slinkard a perfect opportunity to write and compile the information she had gathered.

Cleda Curtis and her portrait of Jean Pierre Girardeau at Cape River Heritage Museum in Cape Girardeau.Michael Leifer

Putting a face to the name

"Along the way, we thought it would be nice to have a portrait of this man (Jean Pierre Girardeau). Out here in the wilderness, people were not having their portrait painted," Slinkard said, referring to the region's undeveloped history.

Slinkard and her husband both heard the name "Cleda Curtis" come up as "the best around" for getting portraits in Southeast Missouri.

According to Slinkard, Curtis's depiction of Jean Pierre is the first ever created. Even Louis Lorimier — the French-Canadian credited with founding Cape Girardeau — was only portrayed relatively recently and, like Girardeau, his likeness was created mostly through guesswork.

Slinkard speculated the Girardeaus and Lorimier were, perhaps, not especially prominent in their day. Although they may have been locally respected, these founding figures wouldn't have necessarily risen to the level where a portrait would be done for them.

At least, not until Curtis accepted the mission. Fittingly, Curtis has roots in Southeast Missouri, where she has held workshops since 1984.

"The majority of artists in this area have, at some point, studied with me," Curtis said matter-of-factly.

Curtis was clear that artistic talent is a "learned skill."

"All artists have to learn. I teach the basic rules of painting, the basic knowledge that artists have had for, you know, forever. I can explain in a day-and-a-half all the basic principles and elements that you need to know to become a good artist. But it'll take you a lifetime to learn it. You'd have to paint, over and over, following the rules, just like playing a piano. It's a learned skill, it's technical — that's what I teach."

Curtis lamented that recent art theories have done away with what she called "the basics."

"All that knowledge was thrown out on modern art. [Modern art] was just like, 'Paint. Whatever you do, if it's an original idea, it's art. So, you can throw some paint on a canvas, drive a car over it. It's an original idea, so therefore it's art,'" she said sarcastically.

Although Curtis did not begin painting until the age of 25, she knew right away that she wanted to do portraits. Unfortunately, she could not find a teacher.

Even in graduate-level art and sculpture classes, Curtis said, there was no instruction beyond simply telling the students to create work.

"Then you'd get a critique and a grade. There was no instruction in painting in any class I ever had in any of the universities I attended. But you wouldn't buy your child a piano and say, 'Go in there and play, and when you hit a wrong note, I'll tell you.' [Leonardo] da Vinci said that painting without knowledge is like going to sea with no rudder and no compass. So, when you're out there in the middle of the ocean, maybe you'll get where you want to go ... but what are the chances? It's the same way when you're painting without knowledge. It's a learned skill," Curtis repeated, pausing dramatically between "learned" and "skill" to emphasize both words.

"Anybody that wants to paint, I can teach them. The rest is up to them, and it takes a lot of time and practice. I've been painting over 50 years and I'm still learning and there's no end to it."

Curtis offered another local artist, Don Sahli, as an example of a painter who can instinctively transfer vision to canvas. But, Curtis was careful to note, those "instincts" only come on the heels of endless application and practice.

Speaking of her most recent work, Curtis said she did not have the luxury of directly observing Jean Pierre Girardeau, now long-deceased. But even without earlier art or a photograph, Curtis explained, she still needed "something to work with."

"I have to see what I paint. I can't just pull it from my imagination," she said.

A reenactment Curtis witnessed at Fort de Chartres in Illinois grounded her. The satchel Jean Pierre is painted with, along with his attire and large sleeves came directly from Curtis's photographs and observations at Fort de Chartres.

"Then I just used a face that I thought was French," Curtis said. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you whose face I used," Curtis said, pausing to consider it.

"There is a very prominent artist who painted a portrait of Thomas Jefferson from just a statue, and I liked the face of it."

Curtis said she used that painting's facial structure, but darkened the eyes and hair to create someone who she thought looked French.

Curtis admitted there was no guarantee her portrait matches the likeness of Jean Pierre.

"He may have been a little short fat man," Curtis shrugged.

Humans, she continued, tend to be visually-oriented. Curtis reflected on "thousands of different paintings of Jesus," each reflecting slight or dramatic variations.

"It's all in the vision of the person who's doing it," Curtis said.

The value of the Jean Pierre Girardeau painting, she said, isn't determined by its accuracy, but rather its ability to fulfill a piece of Cape Girardean cultural legacy — by making real a figure who is otherwise invisible.

"The viewer takes on the job of determining what the likeness represents. It is different for each person," Curtis explained.

"People know we aren't passing this off as a portrait of (Jean Pierre), but as an artist's concept of what he might have looked like. It's not in any way a portrait of him."