Arthur Beecher Carles (March 9, 1882 – 1952) was an American

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

painter.

Biography

Carles was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, and studied at the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1805, it is the longest continuously operating art museum and art school in the United States. The academy's museum ...

between 1900 and 1907. He studied with

Thomas Pollock Anshutz Thomas Pollock Anshutz (October 5, 1851 – June 16, 1912) was an American painter and teacher. Known for his portraiture and genre scenes, Anshutz was a co-founder of The Darby School. One of Thomas Eakins's most prominent students, he succeede ...

Hugh Breckenridge Hugh Henry Breckenridge (1870 – 1937), was an American painter and art instructor, who championed the artistic movements from impressionism to modernism. Breckenridge taught for more than forty years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, be ...

, Henry McCarter,

Cecilia Beaux Eliza Cecilia Beaux (May 1, 1855 – September 17, 1942) was an American artist and the first woman to teach art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Known for her elegant and sensitive portraits of friends, relatives, and Gilded Age p ...

, and

William Merritt Chase William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later became the Parsons School of Design. ...

. In 1907 he traveled to

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

where he remained until 1910. In France, he greatly admired the works of Cézanne and

Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...

, and became close friends with

John Marin John Marin (December 23, 1870 – October 2, 1953) was an early American modernist visual artist. He is known for his abstract landscape paintings and watercolors. Early life and education Marin was born on December 23, 1870, in Rutherford, N ...

and

Eduard Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine ''Art et Décoration'' in 1911 were the first modern ...

. He displayed six landscapes in the Salon d'Automne of 1908. In March 1910 his work was included in the “Younger American Painters” show held at

Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was k ...

’s

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

gallery,

291 __NOTOC__ Year 291 ( CCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known in Rome as the Year of the Consulship of Tiberianus and Dio (or, less frequently, year 1044 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomin ...

. Stieglitz gave Carles his first one-man show at 291 in January 1912. He returned to France from June to October 1912 and exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne. After his return to America he exhibited at the

Armory Show The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was organized by thAssociation of American Painters and Sculptors It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of the many exhibition ...

of 1913. He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia from 1917 to 1925 and taught privately afterwards. He continued a mentor relationship with many PAFA students through the 1930s, including the artist

Norman Carton Norman Carton (January 7, 1908 – February 14, 1980) was an American artist and educator known for abstract expressionist art. He was born in Ukraine, at the time part of the Russian Empire and moved to the United States in 1922 where he spent ...

. His later years were marked by bouts of alcoholism. In December 1941 he suffered a stroke that left him an invalid until his death in 1952. His daughter

Mercedes Matter Mercedes Matter (née Carles; 1913 – December 4, 2001) was an American painter, draughtswoman, and writer. She was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, and the Founder and Dean Emeritus of the New York Studio School ...

, also an artist and the founder of the

New York Studio School The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture at 8 West 8th Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York State is an art school formed in 1963 by a group of students and their teacher, Mercedes Matter, all of ...

, was married to photographer and designer

Herbert Matter Herbert Robert Matter (April 25, 1907 – May 8, 1984) was a Swiss-born American photographer and graphic designer known for his pioneering use of photomontage in commercial art. Matter's innovative and experimental work helped shape the vocabular ...

Legacy

Art historian Barbara Ann Boese Wolanin describes Carles as a link between Philadelphia and Paris, and as "one of the most brilliant colorists in the history of American art." She says of him: "His paintings range in style from

tonalism Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when Visual art of the United States, American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as g ...

and

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

to prophecies of

Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

. His approach was intuitive. An expressionist by nature, he was guided by feeling, believing that 'accuracy is an intellectual quality while art is an affair of the emotions'".Wolanin, 2000, "The Paintings of Arthur B. Carles", ''American Art Review'' vol XII issue 2: p. 164 Carles was given a retrospective exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1953, and again in 1959 at the Graham Gallery in New York.

Notes

References

* Wolanin, Barbara Ann Boese, 2000, "The Paintings of Arthur B. Carles", ''American Art Review'' vol XII issue 2: pp. 164–173 *

External links

Arthur B. Carles Artist Biography at QuestRoyal Fine Art

Arthur B. Carles Biography: Hollis Taggart Galleries

Arthur B. Carles Documentary: American INSIGHT
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carles, Arthur Beecher 1882 births 1952 deaths 20th-century American painters American male painters Burials at West Laurel Hill Cemetery American modern painters Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts faculty Painters from Pennsylvania 20th-century American male artists

Biography

Legacy

Notes

References

Further reading

External links