Harold Weston
Encyclopedia
Harold Weston was an influential American modernist
painter whose work included impressionism
, realism
and abstraction
, as well as a highly regarded political activist.
, to S. Burns and Mary Hartshorne Weston. A twin brother, Edward, died at the age of six months. The family was well-off financially. At the age of 15, Harold spent a year traveling in Europe and attending school in Switzerland
and Germany
. It was in Europe that Harold Weston began to draw.
After his return to the United States in 1910, Harold Weston was stricken by polio
. His left leg was paralyzed. But Weston refused to take the advice of doctors who declared that he would never walk again. Through a regime of physical conditioning and the use of leg braces and a cane, Weston learned how to walk (albeit with a pronounced limp). He began to hike, clinging to trees as he went up and down hill.
Weston entered Harvard University
in 1912 and graduated magna cum laude
with a degree in Fine Arts in 1916. Weston continued to hone his graphic art skills, serving as editor of the Harvard Lampoon
and contributing a large number of original cartoons and artworks to the magazine. In 1914, he studied under the American painter Hamilton Easter Field
at the Summer School of Graphic Arts in Ogunquit, Maine
.
Unable to enlist due to his paralyzed leg and with World War I
looming, Weston volunteered with the YMCA
, serving as a hospitality liaison with the British Army
in Baghdad
in the Ottoman Empire
. He encouraged soldiers to draw and paint to pass the time, and organized Baghdad Art Club in 1917 as a means of exhibiting and promoting their art. Because of this work, he was appointed Official Painter for the British Army in 1918.
proved to have a lasting impact on his work. The colors and light he witnessed there deeply affected his palette. Lacking paint, watercolor and paper, he was unable to capture the colors and light he saw and was reduced to writing about them in letters home. He produced only a handful of charcoal sketches from this period in his life.
Weston also witnessed the horror of famine and disease while in the Middle East. He saw men die of heat exhaustion, and became intensely frustrated at his inability to save others—especially children—from starvation.
Weston returned to the United States
after the war via the Far East. For four months, he lived in a tiny one-room apartment in New York City
, working in exchange for rent. He explored the city's bureoning art galleries, becoming acquainted with the latest in modern art
reaching American shores.
Using contacts he had made while living in the city, Weston gave the first solo exhibition of his work at the Montross Gallery in New York City. Seventy sketches and 63 paintings were shown in November 1922. The show was a huge success. Restricted to landscapes, critics nevertheless heaped praise on his vibrant use of color and the unique American perspective he brought to his work.
Weston met his wife, Faith Borton, in early 1923. He invited his sister and some of her Vassar College
friends to his cabin that winter. Faith impressed him with her ability to withstand the harsh winter weather, her intelligence and her creativity. The deeply religious Quaker
family disapproved of the agnostic
Weston. But he adopted her family's faith and they were married on May 12 of the same year.
Over the next two years, Harold and Faith Weston lived in the one-room cabin in the Adirondack Mountains
. They kept house together, tended the garden together and painted together. Weston preferred to paint when it was cold. Temperatures in the cabin often plunged as low as 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and Faith Weston found the living harsh.
Faith Weston was too embarrassed to show her family the portraits, but Harold proudly displayed them to Alfred Stieglitz
, who considered them daring and new. The Montross Gallery, however, refused to show them.
In August 1925, Harold Weston collapsed from a kidney infection. Doctors removed one of his kidneys, but pneumonia set in. He was near death for nearly a month before he began to recover. Doctors advised him to move to a warmer clime, but the Westons decamped instead for a farmhouse near Céret
in the French Pyrenees
. The house they lived in was centuries old, and built into a hillside. A working sheep barn below the living quarters helped keep it warm in winter. A chapel to one side held services every day, the bell in the tower over their rooms ringing the faithful to worship.
, Weston learned the technique and began to experiment with it. During a stay at the beach with friends, Weston watched as they touched. He quickly sketched out the various positions and embraces they engaged—in until a skiff loaded with local fishermen became too interested, and the cavorting nude couple had to reclothe themselves for the day. Weston transformed the sketches into etchings, which he called 'the Love Series.'
Weston arranged for an exhibition of his work in Paris, and later at the Montross Gallery. The gallery promised to display the nudes, alongside his landscapes, but reneged and put them in a closet.
The Westons—now with small children in tow—returned to America in 1930. They took up residence for a short period in Greenwich Village before returning to the cabin in the mountains near St. Huberts.
, the Art Institute of Chicago
and the Museum of Modern Art
. His painting Green Hat won third prize in painting at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939.
The 1930s led Weston away from art, however. The national crisis brought about by the Great Depression
brought out Weston's social and political consciousness. When in 1936 the Treasury Relief Art Project asked him to paint murals for the General Services Administration
building in Washington, D.C.
, Weston eagerly agreed. Over the next two years, Weston created 22 panels that depict moments in the construction process. Realizing that his GSA work had to inspire as well as be visually pleasing, Weston adopted motifs from the art deco
movement because the style was associated with a forward-looking, positive time in American life. Weston also turned away from abstraction and toward photo-realism.
led Weston to abandon painting entirely in 1942 in favor of political work. Disturbed by memories of the starvation he had seen in the Middle East, he lobbied full-time for humanitarian food relief. In 1943, he founded Food for Freedom, and built a coalition of civic, religious, labor and farm organizations representing more than 60 million Americans which advocated for food aid for refugees in Europe and Asia. He became an expert on food policy and the politics of farm policy in the U.S.
Weston conceived of an international food relief agency which would provide a permanent mechanism for supplying food to refugees around the globe. He personally lobbied Eleanor Roosevelt
for the idea; she credited him as the impetus behind the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
.
Exhausted from his political endeavors and wishing to return to painting, Weston seized upon the idea of painting the United Nations
headquarters, then under construction in New York City. He worked on the painting for three years, further refining his hyper-realistic style.
In 1954, the Westons purchased a winter home in Greenwich Village. Harold Weston was 56, and not as able to weather the harsh Adirondack winters as he had been.
But he was still politically active. That same year, Weston helped found the National Council on Arts and Government, an artists' group which lobbied for government support for the arts. He later served as its vice president and president. In 1965, the group won passage of legislation creating the National Endowment for the Arts
.
He also joined the International Association of Plastic Arts (later the International Association of Arts [IAA]) in 1954, and served as its United States Committee president from 1961 to 1967.
. Abstract art was a natural extension of the hyper-realism he had been perfecting since the 1940s. But it also enabled him to abandon realism and return to modern art. In nature, Weston saw the pattern and rhythm which he could transfer to canvas. He painted his last significant work, the 'Stone Series,' from 1968 to 1972. It was based on stones found on the Gaspé Peninsula
in Canada
.
In 1971, Harold Weston published his only written work, Freedom in the Wilds: A Saga of the Adirondacks.
Harold Weston died on April 10, 1972 in New York City.
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
painter whose work included impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, realism
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
and abstraction
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, as well as a highly regarded political activist.
Early life
Harold Weston was born February 14, 1894 in Merion, PennsylvaniaMerion, Pennsylvania
Merion Station is an unincorporated community in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is contiguous to Philadelphia and is also bordered by Wynnewood, Narberth, and Bala Cynwyd...
, to S. Burns and Mary Hartshorne Weston. A twin brother, Edward, died at the age of six months. The family was well-off financially. At the age of 15, Harold spent a year traveling in Europe and attending school in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. It was in Europe that Harold Weston began to draw.
After his return to the United States in 1910, Harold Weston was stricken by polio
Poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route...
. His left leg was paralyzed. But Weston refused to take the advice of doctors who declared that he would never walk again. Through a regime of physical conditioning and the use of leg braces and a cane, Weston learned how to walk (albeit with a pronounced limp). He began to hike, clinging to trees as he went up and down hill.
Weston entered Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1912 and graduated magna cum laude
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
with a degree in Fine Arts in 1916. Weston continued to hone his graphic art skills, serving as editor of the Harvard Lampoon
Harvard Lampoon
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...
and contributing a large number of original cartoons and artworks to the magazine. In 1914, he studied under the American painter Hamilton Easter Field
Hamilton Easter Field
Hamilton Easter Field was an important American artist, teacher, author, critic, collector and patron of the arts.-References:...
at the Summer School of Graphic Arts in Ogunquit, Maine
Ogunquit, Maine
Ogunquit is a town in York County, Maine, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 1,226. The popularity of the town as a summer resort is epitomized by its motto, "Beautiful Place by the Sea."...
.
Unable to enlist due to his paralyzed leg and with World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
looming, Weston volunteered with the YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
, serving as a hospitality liaison with the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
in Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. He encouraged soldiers to draw and paint to pass the time, and organized Baghdad Art Club in 1917 as a means of exhibiting and promoting their art. Because of this work, he was appointed Official Painter for the British Army in 1918.
Main period of work
Weston's sojourn in the Middle EastMiddle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
proved to have a lasting impact on his work. The colors and light he witnessed there deeply affected his palette. Lacking paint, watercolor and paper, he was unable to capture the colors and light he saw and was reduced to writing about them in letters home. He produced only a handful of charcoal sketches from this period in his life.
Weston also witnessed the horror of famine and disease while in the Middle East. He saw men die of heat exhaustion, and became intensely frustrated at his inability to save others—especially children—from starvation.
Weston returned to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
after the war via the Far East. For four months, he lived in a tiny one-room apartment in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, working in exchange for rent. He explored the city's bureoning art galleries, becoming acquainted with the latest in modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
reaching American shores.
Adirondack works
But Weston concluded that the working life was draining him of his creative energies. In 1920, with the help of some local carpenters, he built a one-room log cabin near St. Huberts, New York. Throughout 1921 and the winter of 1922, he painted and sketched in charcoal, pencil, oil and watercolor on cardboard and canvas. Weston was convinced that modern art had become stuck in a rut, and he was determined to create something new.Using contacts he had made while living in the city, Weston gave the first solo exhibition of his work at the Montross Gallery in New York City. Seventy sketches and 63 paintings were shown in November 1922. The show was a huge success. Restricted to landscapes, critics nevertheless heaped praise on his vibrant use of color and the unique American perspective he brought to his work.
Weston met his wife, Faith Borton, in early 1923. He invited his sister and some of her Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
friends to his cabin that winter. Faith impressed him with her ability to withstand the harsh winter weather, her intelligence and her creativity. The deeply religious Quaker
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
family disapproved of the agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
Weston. But he adopted her family's faith and they were married on May 12 of the same year.
Over the next two years, Harold and Faith Weston lived in the one-room cabin in the Adirondack Mountains
Adirondack Mountains
The Adirondack Mountains are a mountain range located in the northeastern part of New York, that runs through Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, Saint Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties....
. They kept house together, tended the garden together and painted together. Weston preferred to paint when it was cold. Temperatures in the cabin often plunged as low as 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and Faith Weston found the living harsh.
'Landscape nudes'
But the period produced a significant change in Weston's work. Isolated, Weston turned his attention away from landscapes and to his own wife's body. He painted her nude figure repeatedly, applying his painting techniques to the contours and curves of her body. The paintings Harold Weston produced came to be known as 'landscape nudes'—a radical departure from traditional nudes.Faith Weston was too embarrassed to show her family the portraits, but Harold proudly displayed them to Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
, who considered them daring and new. The Montross Gallery, however, refused to show them.
In August 1925, Harold Weston collapsed from a kidney infection. Doctors removed one of his kidneys, but pneumonia set in. He was near death for nearly a month before he began to recover. Doctors advised him to move to a warmer clime, but the Westons decamped instead for a farmhouse near Céret
Céret
Céret is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It is the capital of Vallespir historical Catalan comarca.-Geography:...
in the French Pyrenees
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...
. The house they lived in was centuries old, and built into a hillside. A working sheep barn below the living quarters helped keep it warm in winter. A chapel to one side held services every day, the bell in the tower over their rooms ringing the faithful to worship.
European influences
Europe changed Weston's palette again. His colors became lighter, and his work more abstract. He and Faith made side-trips to Paris, France and became acquainted with painters working there. Captivated by etchingEtching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
, Weston learned the technique and began to experiment with it. During a stay at the beach with friends, Weston watched as they touched. He quickly sketched out the various positions and embraces they engaged—in until a skiff loaded with local fishermen became too interested, and the cavorting nude couple had to reclothe themselves for the day. Weston transformed the sketches into etchings, which he called 'the Love Series.'
Weston arranged for an exhibition of his work in Paris, and later at the Montross Gallery. The gallery promised to display the nudes, alongside his landscapes, but reneged and put them in a closet.
The Westons—now with small children in tow—returned to America in 1930. They took up residence for a short period in Greenwich Village before returning to the cabin in the mountains near St. Huberts.
Toward domesticity and realism
Weston continued to turn out prodigious amounts of artwork. With a small family surrounding him, he focused more and more on the everyday: A quilt, plants in the garden, snowshoes. His work was displayed at the Phillips Memorial GalleryPhillips Collection
The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H...
, the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
and the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
. His painting Green Hat won third prize in painting at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939.
The 1930s led Weston away from art, however. The national crisis brought about by the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
brought out Weston's social and political consciousness. When in 1936 the Treasury Relief Art Project asked him to paint murals for the General Services Administration
General Services Administration
The General Services Administration is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. The GSA supplies products and communications for U.S...
building in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Weston eagerly agreed. Over the next two years, Weston created 22 panels that depict moments in the construction process. Realizing that his GSA work had to inspire as well as be visually pleasing, Weston adopted motifs from the art deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
movement because the style was associated with a forward-looking, positive time in American life. Weston also turned away from abstraction and toward photo-realism.
Political work
The advent of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
led Weston to abandon painting entirely in 1942 in favor of political work. Disturbed by memories of the starvation he had seen in the Middle East, he lobbied full-time for humanitarian food relief. In 1943, he founded Food for Freedom, and built a coalition of civic, religious, labor and farm organizations representing more than 60 million Americans which advocated for food aid for refugees in Europe and Asia. He became an expert on food policy and the politics of farm policy in the U.S.
Weston conceived of an international food relief agency which would provide a permanent mechanism for supplying food to refugees around the globe. He personally lobbied Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
for the idea; she credited him as the impetus behind the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was an international relief agency, largely dominated by the United States but representing 44 nations. Founded in 1943, it became part of the United Nations in 1945, was especially active in 1945 and 1946, and largely shut down...
.
Exhausted from his political endeavors and wishing to return to painting, Weston seized upon the idea of painting the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
headquarters, then under construction in New York City. He worked on the painting for three years, further refining his hyper-realistic style.
In 1954, the Westons purchased a winter home in Greenwich Village. Harold Weston was 56, and not as able to weather the harsh Adirondack winters as he had been.
But he was still politically active. That same year, Weston helped found the National Council on Arts and Government, an artists' group which lobbied for government support for the arts. He later served as its vice president and president. In 1965, the group won passage of legislation creating the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
.
He also joined the International Association of Plastic Arts (later the International Association of Arts [IAA]) in 1954, and served as its United States Committee president from 1961 to 1967.
Later life
Known more for his political work than his painting by his mid-60s, Weston sought to return to his first artistic love. He abandoned realism in favor of abstraction. He found inspiration while vacationing on the Isle of Rhodes in GreeceGreece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
. Abstract art was a natural extension of the hyper-realism he had been perfecting since the 1940s. But it also enabled him to abandon realism and return to modern art. In nature, Weston saw the pattern and rhythm which he could transfer to canvas. He painted his last significant work, the 'Stone Series,' from 1968 to 1972. It was based on stones found on the Gaspé Peninsula
Gaspé Peninsula
The Gaspésie , or Gaspé Peninsula or the Gaspé, is a peninsula along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, extending into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
In 1971, Harold Weston published his only written work, Freedom in the Wilds: A Saga of the Adirondacks.
Harold Weston died on April 10, 1972 in New York City.