I'm not sure about you, but whenever I think about wealthy and famous people, I tend to start thinking if they're actually the people we hold unto a pedestal. Typically when I think about these things I just forget and move on with my day, but there's a certain something about the Congdon family and Glensheen that makes me reflect on this topic more. Inside of this blog, I intend to dive further into why I believe that the Congdon family is truly just a family of normal people that worked their way to wealth and made their image the way we see it today.

I would like to preface by saying that most of these are my personal opinions and that they are not 100% fact. I am writing this to voice the opinions I have about the Congdon family. With that being said, let's begin.

 For me, when I look at the family and look at a lot of the pieces they left behind, I just see normal people that worked hard and made things happen. We know that Chester and Clara didn't start as wealthy people and that they had to work hard to get to where they were, much like us today. I think that this is shown a lot in their stylistic choices. They, in my opinion, don't always follow the popular stylistic choices of the times. A good example would be the rooms they styled after places they had traveled to like Italy and Japan.

They would buy things and pieces that they liked, even if the pieces didn't necessarily make them look rich. They would style rooms in ways they wanted and didn't do it solely just to show off wealth, they actually liked the things they would style rooms around. I see this a lot in the artwork done by Thomas Congdon, even though the room it's in isn't styled around the work itself. 

If we look at the sheets that outline their art purchases, we see that most of their art weren't particularly expensive pieces when they bought them, and even only cost them around twenty to thirty dollars. I'm not sure of who exactly some of these artists are and google isn't particularly helpful in finding who they are, so I will just list a couple by the names that the art is given on the document. Some examples I could find were "Oil Painting- Mt. Ranier", "Snow Scene Norway", "Edinburgh Castle", "Inner Temple Gateway" etc. You get the idea, there are a lot of inexpensive pieces that people like you and I can afford and display in our homes.

I'm gonna preface again by saying that I understand my header here is pretty confusing. This paragraph is mainly gonna focus on why I feel the way I do just to be clear. 

I would first like to start with the painting I have put on this section of my blog. This painting is called "Two Companions" By Emile Renard. The subject of the work is his daughter, of whom I do not know the name of, holding a cat. In my opinion, I don't believe that any ordinary rich person would buy a picture of an artist's daughter holding a cat, but in this case they did. I feel that cats as a subject in a painting isn't very common to see in rich people's homes. I would love to see more examples of rich people buying pieces of art that contain a kitty as the main example because I think it's funny. 

We know that people tend to buy their art because they enjoy the subject, but when you look inside of a person of wealth and their home, you see that they only tend to buy things that follow trends of the time and things that are particularly expensive and we don't see this when we look inside the Congdon's home or the receipts and log books of their purchases. This painting is expensive and was even when they bought it originally, but I think that they bought it because they enjoy the painting, and not to just flaunt wealth. I believe this because we know the Congdon's to be especially frugal even though we also know them to be quite wealthy based on the enormous mansion they used to live in. 

Just as a mini side point, and I know I could go deeper on this, but I'm not gonna. We know that they also liked supporting local artists and stuff, which isn't always and even typically is cheaper stuff to buy vs well know stuff that rich people would typically wanna buy. A good example of this is Clara and Chester's portraits, that are inside of the room that's just off of the living room downstairs. These portraits are made by David Ericson which we know to be an artist local to Duluth. 

Now, to wrap things up, to conclude, in conclusion, you get the Idea. When I went to the Glensheen Mansion and looked around their vast collection of artworks, I get the feel that this family in question, are just normal silly people like you and I. I believe this because they bought pieces they enjoyed having and reflected a lot of their core values, they liked supporting local artists even though it wouldn't always be the most expensive thing that flaunted wealth, and we know them to be frugal people in general so that means that they would more than likely not spend money unless necessary.

They're so silly, just like Rigby.