The 1957 letter to the REA Editor remembering conversations from 1904 with Ernest Hupeden is fascinating! These sort of memories give us insight into the man behind the murals. He was intelligent, educated, generous as well as a folk artist. And many of his predictions have come true.

 

Just read an article in your paper on Ernest Hupeden and his Valton paintings.

 

I never heard of the paintings before but I knew the man well as he has spent many days at our house painting for my folks and others.

 

He would paint a fine picture of anything you wished for a half pint of whiskey, but he condemned liquor traffic and swore off drinking many times.

 

His father educated him in Germany, and he also attended two or three different colleges, he told us. He was married and had one son—he left them and came to America.

 

He left because of some trouble with his wife and father, and he hated the German military machine. He voted Republican as near as I know, but in belief and heart he was a strong Socialist.

 

He said it would come in “God’s own time,” but soon or later we would have to fight Germany, and he wished he could help to crush the German military power.

 

He also told us how our education system in the U.S.A. was drifting away from us all the time as well as our other freedoms, and that sooner or later the wealth of the nation would all be in the hands of a few (and he was quite right).

 

He said “Germany has far better schools and colleges than America but they teach militarism in all of them and in time will try to rule the world.” He hated to see this take place, for it would mean that the Civil War under Lincoln was nothing but a “sham battle.”

 

I am not making this statement as fact, but the report came to us that he died in Yuba, Wisconsin. He was in a saloon; he got drunk and they put him out. He was found dead with five cents in his pocket. [Note from EHPF: Mr. Hupeden died in Hub City on a farm on December 8, 1911. It is surmised that he had a heart attack and died from the elements].

 

In conclusion I would say he was known all over the county. When not drinking he was kind hearted and willing to help anybody. He did a lot of painting between and in all the neighboring towns and except for his drinking was well liked by all.

 

Of all the paintings he did (since my father took him in one Saturday night in April 1904) they are all as fresh as when he did the work except one—a painting of a young wife of a man who lived on our place as a renter.

 

I have a painting he did for my father on a chest made of camphor wood, a chest that was through the Mexican war. It’s a China scene and the boat that carried the chest to China and back from Mexico before coming to Wisconsin.

 

Judson Erwin

Rt. 1, La Farge.