My mother, Maria Hector, used to say in Spanish: "cuando una puerta se cierra ciento se abren"; with this principle in mind I decided, late in life, to dedicate the rest of my existence to promote the works by my father Javier de Winthuysen, from my personal point of view. I said promote alone because the conservation of his work I had consistently done ever since I returned to live in the USA, in 1974.
Conservation of works of art is one of the finickiest and more expensive business you may imagine. Almost thirty years ago I had the luck to find the right conservator, Justine Wimsatt and Associates. She confessed at our last meeting, December, 2008, that through the years working on Winthuysen' paintings she had come to deeply appreciate the luminosity of his work. This last work mounted on a pannel, cleaned and varnished is a landscape in Santa Eulalia del Rio, Ibiza, of the river view with the old bridge blooming oleanders and an imposing mountain profile. The meticulous cleaning has now revealed the intricate brush work on this painting. At close range what you see does not define the place only when you step back the magnificent landscape opens up to you. I remember vividly this particular site view; at the time I was twelve years old and sat on a rock to enjoy the place while my father painted and smiled at me from under his white beard!
How to promote the paintings and writings of an environmental artist previously promoted, in the United States by many institutions, exclusively for his work as historian neoclassic garden conservator, and landscape protectionist, was to go against the current. The landscape architects writers of dissertations had decided to see Winthuysen personality as a result of his learned principles on historic Neoclassic Gardens which was totally reversed of what he did to arrive to define his landscape theory. Javier de Winthuysen (1874-1953) finished writing his memoirs in 1953; Maria Hector his companion and support tried to publish them, in the late 60' , in Spain. She encountered fervent opposition from those who believed in the undissolved quality marriage "status quo" part of the Spanish Catholic society of the Franco regime. To publish the unabridged typed manuscript, in the original Spanish language, in Maryland, USA, with an excursively English printer was an unrecorded event in the annals of printing. It was in 2005 when the original Spanish memoirs were published and in 2008 the English version followed, with a small sector of Illustrations and text composed by me with my monetary support and moral support from the Winthuysen Foundation, Inc..
The promotion of these publications is still done through repeated donations to libraries and individuals related to the museum and art world.
