The Education of a Collector

Larry Ruth grew up surrounded by art. “My dad is a collector,” said Larry. “He started collecting Louisiana art in the late ‘sixties and early ‘seventies. He collected works by Robert Rucker, George Rodrigue, and Burny Myrick, among others.”

At his store, Gerard Furniture on Florida Boulevard, Gerard Ruth sold art as well as furniture. He made one of the rooms into a gallery, where he exhibited the works of Rucker, Myrick, and Rodrigue. Art always hung on the walls of the house in the Tara neighborhood where Larry and his three siblings grew up, and the children were given gifts of Newcomb pottery for birthdays and Christmas. So when Larry opened his art gallery last March, he was in familiar territory. 

L. Ruth Gallery of Louisiana Art is the same 800-square-foot room inside Gerard Furniture where Gerard once staged exhibits. On any given day a visitor can see approximately 145 paintings, etchings, and prints; seventeen pieces of Newcomb pottery; fifteen small sculptures by Steele Burden; and forty-nine carved and painted duck decoys. A few are consignment pieces, but most are from Larry’s personal collection, built from the time he was a child. 

Then there was the unforgettable outing with his father and Rodrigue to the infamous Jay’s Lounge in Cankton. “We saw a cock fight there one night when I was twelve. I was the only kid there. It was like the bar scene in Star Wars. Most of the men were speaking French. They were cooking gumbo with roosters that were the losers.”

Gerard also introduced Larry to artists and collectors. “He was friends with [restoration artist] Lloyd Young and several collectors, including General O.J. Daigle, who owned Tezcuco Plantation at one time, and Dr. Jim Nelson, a dentist from Gonzales,” said Larry. “Some of my great memories are of going to visit Lloyd Young with my dad to drop off or pick up paintings. He lived in a very modest cinder-block house in Gonzales. His studio had a sign on the door that said ‘The Shed.’ It was always interesting to see what he had in there. That’s how I learned about Louisiana paintings, mainly portraits and landscapes. He did repair work, cleaning, and revarnishing. He was an accomplished conservator.

“One time when I visited Mr. Young with my dad we saw a cat that had just had kittens. I went home with a kitten, to the surprise of my mom.”

Larry and his dad often visited Steele Burden at the Rural Life Museum. Burden, who both painted and made small porcelain sculptures, gave Larry a small painting that was made to order. “He gave it to me when I graduated from kindergarten in 1971. He asked me what I liked and I said, ‘Pirates!’ The painting depicts Jean and Pierre Lafitte spying an approaching ship on the Louisiana coast. It is signed on the front and signed and dated on the back.”

Artist Don Wright made pastel portraits of all four Ruth children. Larry was twelve at the time. “My mother put them away, but I think it’s time to bring them out of storage,” he said with a smile.

He met painter George Rodrigue several times at his dad’s store and visited the artist’s Lafayette studio with his parents. Then there was the unforgettable outing with his father and Rodrigue to the infamous Jay’s Lounge in Cankton. “We saw a cock fight there one night when I was twelve. I was the only kid there. It was like the bar scene in Star Wars. Most of the men were speaking French. They were cooking gumbo with roosters that were the losers.”

When Larry was about ten, he began accompanying his maternal grandmother, Eunice Brabham Rodriguez, to antiques shows where she searched for pieces of pressed glass to add to her collection. “She went to shows held by dealers in Baton Rouge, Jackson, Lafayette,” he said. “I went with her a few times when I was young. Later, when she got older, I drove her to them.”

He also learned from his father, who opened his first store in 1966 and moved to his present location in 1976. Twice a year, Gerard would drive to Dallas to go to market. “Market was in July and December. I’d be out of school, so sometimes I’d go with him,” said Larry. “Natchitoches was on the way. That’s the only time I met [folk artist] Clementine Hunter. I was eight or nine. She lived near Melrose Plantation in a little house. I couldn’t understand how she could be so old but didn’t have gray hair. My dad explained that she was wearing a wig.”

Shortly after graduating from LSU in 1988, Larry went to work for the State Times and Morning Advocate selling advertising. He stayed for twenty years and was advertising director of The Advocate when he left in 2010. He spent five more years in the marketing business, but he had begun collecting widely, acquiring works by Alberta Kinsey, Knute Heldner, Clarence Millet, and Morris Henry Hobbs, among others. He visited galleries, museums, and auction houses. He bought Newcomb pottery from antiques dealer Cary Long and collected American flint glass, a rare early form of the pressed glass his grandmother collected.

In 2016, Larry decided to follow his true passion and open an art gallery. It would be stocked with works he had collected, including some he had “put aside” for his future gallery. He was encouraged by collector Don Fuson, whom he had met on a 2013 tour of Fuson’s house sponsored by the Friends of Magnolia Mound Plantation, where Larry is a board member. 

“Larry was not the typical person on that tour,” recalled Fuson, who collects Newcomb pottery and Louisiana paintings. “He was really interested in the art. He stayed around after the tour ended to talk about art.

“We like the same period of Louisiana art [from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century]. Many of the artists were associated with the Arts and Crafts Club in the French Quarter in New Orleans. It was unusual for this kind of movement to happen in the South, which had a planting economy.”

Fuson and Larry became friends. “What has impressed me is, when you are a collector your spouse either fights it or accepts it,” said Fuson. “Larry’s wife Karen is very accepting of Larry’s passion and so are his [three] children.”

Larry consulted Fuson about his decision to sell some of his collection. “I knew that I wanted to open a gallery one day focusing on Louisiana art,” he said. “I wanted to pick Don’s brain to see what he thought. Maybe he would say, ‘You’re crazy!’ But he was very supportive of it.”

“Larry’s gallery is so vital and important to our community,” said Fuson. “We don’t really have a gallery that focuses on this kind of art. It can educate and inform and expose the community to the art. I’m excited for Larry and the city. I think it’s great.”

“Larry is very Old World,” said Maxine Watts, a Baton Rouge collector who learned about the gallery from a neighbor. “He’s very much an old soul. He knows a lot about the artists because that is his passion. He’s been strategic in focusing on Louisiana art. He’s done his due diligence about the pieces and the artists. He’s careful about where he buys things. I think it’s a great thing for Baton Rouge.”

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Larry opened with little fanfare last March. He ran an ad in The Advocate and sent out about six hundred brochures, but much of his business has come through word of mouth. He has educated himself about the art through reading, talking with other collectors, and knowing the artists themselves. He is on the advisory board of the LSU Museum of Art, serving on the collections committee.

Writer John Ed Bradley, who lives in Mandeville, collects many of the same artists Larry does. “I’ve sent a lot of people to his gallery,” he said. “I think he’ll do well. There’s always going to be that person who loves early twentieth century art. Larry will appeal to that person. There is almost a vacuum now in that kind of art. 

“Larry has true passion. He’s a real believer. There’s an innocence about the way he approaches it. He’s besotted with it, both the story of the object and the story of the artist. The real reason he’s doing it is that he can’t resist the impulse to be around the art every hour of the day.” 

Ruth Laney can be reachedat ruthlaney@cox.net. 

For more information about Larry Ruth’s gallery, see the website at lruthgallery.com.