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Oliver Newberry Chaffee

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Oliver Newberry Chaffee Jr.
"Myself in the Mirror", c. 1926
Born(1881-01-23)January 23, 1881
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
DiedApril 25, 1944(1944-04-25) (aged 63)
Asheville, North Carolina, U.S.
Resting placeWinthrop Street Cemetery, Provincetown, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationDetroit Fine Arts Academy,
Parsons School of Design,
Art Students League of New York,
Cape Cod School of Art,
Académie Julian
MovementModernist, Fauvism, Abstract
Spouse(s)Mary Georgia Cole (m. 1912–c. 1923; divorce),
Ada Gilmore (m. 1926–1944; death)

Oliver Newberry Chaffee Jr. (1881 – 1944) is an American Modernist painter and printmaker. He is known for his connections to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he help found the Provincetown Art Association.

Biography

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Oliver Newberry Chaffee Jr. was born on 23 January 1881, in Detroit, Michigan.[1] He was from an affluent family, and his father left him a trust fund after he died, allowing Chaffee to pursue his art.[2]

In the late 1890s, he entered the Detroit Fine Arts Academy (also known as the Detroit Museum School).[2] In 1903, Chaffee moved to New York City to attended the New York School of Art (now known as Parsons School of Design), and studied under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri.[2] Followed by study at the Art Students League of New York, under Charles Webster Hawthorne.[2] Hawthorne encouraged painting outdoors, and in the summer of 1904, Chaffee joined Hawthorne at the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown.[2]

Around 1906, Chaffee moved to Paris.[2] Chaffee’s early paintings were impressionistic.[2] After Chaffee studied in Paris at Académie Julian and after seeing the work of the Fauves like Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, as well as by Picasso, his own work evolved into more abstraction.[3] He also developed more color and light in his work as he gained experience and more travel.[2] During World War I, he fled from Paris.[3]

His work was part of the 1913 Armory Show, the first American modern art exhibit in New York City, which later travelled to Boston and Chicago.[2] Chaffee spent his summers in Cape Cod.[2] He moved to Provincetown in 1914, and help found the Provincetown Art Association.[3][4]

From 1921 to 1923, Chaffee and his first wife Mary moved to France.[2] They maintained an apartment in Paris and a house in Vence.[2] The couple divorced, and Chaffee eventually remarried, and he lived in Vence until 1928.[2] In the spring of 1928, he and his second wife Ada moved to Provincetown, splitting time also in Owls Head, Maine and winters in Ormond Beach.[2]

Death and legacy

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Chaffee died in 1944 in Asheville, North Carolina,[5] and he is buried at the Winthrop Street Cemetery in Provincetown.

Caffee's work is included in public museum collections, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[1] National Gallery of Art.[6] The Frick Art Reference Library holds files of work by Chaffee.[7][8] The Archives of American Art in Washington DC, holds three collections about Chaffee.[9]

Solveiga Rush (1930–2020) was an art historian and Professor Emerita at the University of Cincinnati, she had researched and wrote about Chaffee.[10] In 1991, Chaffee had a retrospective exhibition at Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Rush wrote the accompaniment book.[4]

Personal life

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On January 4, 1912, he married artist Mary Georgia Holbrook Cole, whom he met in Cape Cod.[2][11] Together, they had a daughter, Jane Merrick.[5] The marriage ended in divorce around 1923.[2]

His second marriage in 1926 was to artist Ada Gilmore.[2][12] She had studied at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, also under Robert Henri.[12]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Oliver Chaffee". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Rush, Solvleiga (1991). Oliver Newberry Chaffee, 1881-1944. Taft Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0915577224.
  3. ^ a b c Titherington, Lois (2017-02-20). "They Ate, They Drank, They Partied, They Painted: P'town's Beachcombers". CapeCod.com. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  4. ^ a b Minton, David (2 June 1991). "Forgotten Artist Gets His Due At Taft". Newspapers.com. Lexington Herald-Leader. p. 18. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  5. ^ a b "Oliver N. Chaffee, Portrait and Landscape Painter Is Dead In Asheville". The Times Machine. The New York Times. April 27, 1944.
  6. ^ "Oliver Newberry Chaffee". National Gallery of Art (NGA). Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  7. ^ "Oliver Newberry Chaffee [graphic] : artist file : study photographs and reproductions of works of art with accompanying documentation 1920-2000". FRESNO Frick Art Reference Library. 1920.
  8. ^ Chaffee, Oliver Newberry (1930). "Oliver Newberry Chaffee [graphic] : artist file : study photographs and reproductions of works of art with accompanying documentation 1930?-1990 / [compiled by staff of The Museum of Modern Art, New York]". Museum of Modern Art Art Reference Photo Files.
  9. ^ Throm, Judy (1981). "The Curator's Report". Archives of American Art Journal. 21 (4): 32–33. doi:10.1086/aaa.21.3.1557472. ISSN 0003-9853. JSTOR 1557288. S2CID 222438985.
  10. ^ "Solveiga Rush research material concerning Oliver Chaffee, circa 1975-2005". Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  11. ^ "Cole–Chaffee". Newspapers.com. The Atlanta Constitution. 10 January 1912. p. 8. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  12. ^ a b Heller, Jules; Heller, Nancy G. (2013-12-19). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. p. 120. ISBN 978-1-135-63882-5.

Further reading

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