Jane Freilicher (November 19, 1924 – December 9, 2014) was an American representational painter of urban and country scenes from her homes in

lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York City, is the southernmost part of the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is History of New York City, the historical birthplace o ...

and Water Mill, Long Island. She was a member of the informal New York School beginning in the 1950s, and a muse to several of its poets and writers. Freilicher was at the center of a milieu of important New York painters and poets, including painters Helen Frankenthaler,

Joan Mitchell Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

, Grace Hartigan, Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers, and poets of the New York School including

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

Kenneth Koch Kenneth Koch ( ; February 27, 1925 – July 6, 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77.) He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry. This was a loose group of poets inc ...

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

and James Schuyler. Along with Frankenthaler, Hartigan, Mitchell, and

Nell Blaine Nell Blair Walden Blaine (July 10, 1922–November 14, 1996) was an American landscape painter, expressionist, and Watercolor painting, watercolorist. From Richmond, Virginia, she had most of her career based in New York City and Gloucester, Mass ...

, she was among only a handful of women artists who were exhibiting alongside their male counterparts. In 1996 she was awarded the Annual Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York.''Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets.'' 2013. p. 93.

Personal life

Jane Niederhoffer was born in Brooklyn on November 19, 1924.Jane Freilicher.
Tibor de Nagy. February 3, 2014.Carol Kort; Liz Sonneborn.
A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts
'. Infobase Publishing; January 1, 2002. . p. 72–74. Her parents were linguist Martin and musician Bertha Niederhoffer. She enjoyed painting and drawing as a young child and thought "I might do something in art, not for fame or achievement, but out of a romantic inclination to beautiful things. A free-floating feeling that something was creative ''in me.''" At 17 she graduated from high school and eloped with Jack Freilicher,Terence Diggory.
Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets
'. Infobase Publishing; 2009. . p. 172–173.Dinitia Smith

''The New York Times.'' April 19, 1998. Retrieved February 3, 2014. a jazz pianist. They were married from about 1941 to 1946, when the marriage was annulled. She met Larry Rivers through Jack Freilicher and Hans Hofmann and in the 1950s Rivers and Freilicher were good friends.Jane Freilicher papers (MS Am 2072)
Houghton Library, Harvard University. Retrieved February 4, 2014. In 1952 she met Joe Hazan, who was a businessman and dancer before becoming a painter. They were married in 1957 and had one child, Elizabeth. She lived and worked on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and the couple had a summer house which they built on Mecox Bay in

Water Mill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production ...

on Long Island, New York. Hazan died on October 27, 2012, at 96 years of age. Freilicher died in Manhattan at the age of 90 on December 9, 2014. She is survived by her daughter, painter Elizabeth Hazan, and three grandchildren, Lucian, Katherine, and Benjamin Hicks.

Art

Freilicher studied art under Hans Hofmann and in 1947 earned her bachelor's degree at

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...

. She received her master's degree in 1948 from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

'sAnn Lee Morgan, Former Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists
'. Oxford University Press; June 27, 2007. . p. 166. Teacher's College, where the art historian Meyer Schapiro was one of her teachers. As the result of Hofmann's influence she first made abstract expressionist paintings. Then, influenced by artist

Pierre Bonnard Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist gr ...

, she settled into a "softly brushed, meditative lyric" paintings of still lifes and landscapes. She particularly made "urban pastoral" scenes of lower Manhattan and Water Mill scenes which appear to be taken as she looks out her windows on lower Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. "Usually there is a vase in the foreground, filled with flowers painted in lush, riotous colors, the light behind it..." The Long Island works feature nearby fields and sometimes Mecox Bay. The urban landscapes of lower Manhattan are taken from her penthouse view towards the

Hudson River The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...

. Freilicher's work was considered by art critic Hilton Kramer to be "pre-eminent among the representational painters of the New York School's second generation." Critic Franklin Einspruch called Freilicher ''"one of the last true scions of Giorgio Morandi."'' Freilicher has also made woodcut, intaglio and lithograph prints. In 1952 she began showing her works at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, which was also associated with poets. In 2013 an exhibition "Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets" of her work was held at Tibor de Nagy in New York City. It reflected the relationships and inspiration that she was for James Schuyler,

and

. The exhibition traveled in 2014 to Chicago where it put on display at the Poetry Foundation. In October 2017, New York's Paul Kasmin Gallery announced its representation of the Estate of Jane Freilicher.

New York School

In the 1950s she became part of an informal circle of writers and artists called the New York School. She was featured in ''Mounting Tension'', a 1950 film by Rudy Burckhardt in which John Ashbery and Larry Rivers fight for her affections. James Schuyler wrote ''Presenting Jane'', in one scene she walked on water. In ''A Terrestrial Cuckoo'' O'Hara describes his dream of paddling down a jungle river with her, one of many poems he wrote about her. Freilicher was a catalytic and consequential presence. She not only forged close friendships with this group of poets, she also served as a muse. They also regularly sought her advice for poems in progress. O'Hara wrote among his most celebrated series of poems about the artists which weaves her name into the titles. Ashbery and O'Hara both dedicated several books to her. Her friends and fellow artists included Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan and Fairfield Porter.Gina Bellafonte
''A Painter Amid Friends''
New York Times. May 25, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2014. Hartigan,

and Helen Frankenthaler also exhibited at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Freilicher's papers, including poetry and photographs, of her relationship with New York School writers and artists are now owned by the

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, Lamont Library, and Loeb House, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library s ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Awards

* 1974 - American Association of University Women Fellowship * 1976 - National Endowment of the Arts Grant * 1987 - Saltus Gold Medal, National Academy of Design * 1996 - Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award * 2005 - Gold Medal for Painting, American Academy of Arts and Letter

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

* Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, (12 exhibitions through 1967), 1952 * Cord Gallery, Southampton, New York, 1968 * Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1970 * John Bernard Myers Gallery, New York, 1971 * Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, 1972 * Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, 1974 * Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1975 * Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 1976 * Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1977 * Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1979 * Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, 1979

Collections

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

, New York *

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Located in the Wade Park District of University Circle, the museum is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian art, Asian and Art of anc ...

, Ohio * Grey Art Gallery,

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

, New York *

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

, Washington, D.C. *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, New York *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York *

National Academy Museum and School The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

, New York *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, New York * Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Utah

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freilicher, Jane Abstract expressionist artists American abstract painters 1924 births 2014 deaths Painters from Brooklyn Brooklyn College alumni Teachers College, Columbia University alumni 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women painters 21st-century American women