Illinois Fauvist Artist Louise Woodroofe Impressionist Oil on Board

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Illinois Fauvist Artist Louise Woodroofe Impressionist Oil on Board :
$1200.00

A gem of a painting! Beautiful fauvist colors depicting Providence in the early 20th Century by Illinois Artist Louise Woodroofe.

(1892- 1996)

Louise M. Woodroofe was active/lived inIllinois.Louise Woodroofe is known for circus figures and genre andlandscape painting, teaching.

Source:
Treadway/Toomey sale catalogue, May 2001

Louise Woodroofe\'s palette isvibrant, powerful, bold and uniquely artistic. Her brushwork is sure,immediate and precise and her individualistic artistic technique is uniquelyhers. Influenced by the French Impressionist and Fauvist masters,Woodroofe also was a student of American architecture and had a degree inPainting from Syracuse University (1919). The artist was born in Champaign, Illinois, January 28, 1892. She yearnedto be an artist from childhood and drew realistically in her early years.She studied and exhibited at the University of Illinois and Syracuse Universityin the teens and developed a fine impressionistic style but her extraordinarilybold Fauvist techniques took hold after she met and studied with the innovativeHuge Breckenridge at the Breckenridge School of Art in East Gloucester,Massachusetts. Breckenridge was highly stimulated by the ParisianPointillists and Impressionists but it was the dramatically placed vibrantcolors of the \"wild beasts\" (the Fauvists) that changed the paletteof Breckenridge and he taught the Fauve movement\'s use of brilliant pigmentslaid down in broken color to Woodroofe and other students in East Gloucester andat the PAFA. Woodroofe adhered to the American Fauvist movement as taught by Breckenridge,giving special attention to the scientific analysis of color as it applied toher needs and any given composition. Woodroofe was a confident painter whostudied buildings and architecture for years, thus many of her canvases havehouses and buildings in them. Her brushwork was laid down with vigor andspeed. She painted in the picturesque fishing village of East Gloucester,where she painted in nature alongside Jane Peterson and Eleanor Parke Custisduring the 1920s and 1930s. She also painted in Los Angeles, San Diego,San Francisco (CA) and in Milwaukee (WS) before settling in the Chicago (ca.1927). Woodroofe exhibited at the 32nd Annual Exhibition of American Artat the Cincinnati Art Museum (1925), was given one-woman exhibitions at theFindley Gallery (Chicago) and by 1928 she was an Assistant Professor ofArchitecture at the University of Illinois (1928), becoming a full Professor ofArt in 1948. She won numerous awards for painting excellence from1930-1965 and was voted the \"Most Supportive University FacultyMember\" at the University of Illinois (1978).Woodroofe was known to be exceedingly shy when it came to publicity and shekept personal data private and refused to be interviewed. However, shewas a member of the North Shore Arts Association (1931-1937), the NationalAssociation of Women Painters and the American Watercolor Society. Herpaintings were shown at the National Arts Club and the National Academy ofDesign. In 1925, she exhibited Gloucester paintings at the 32nd AnnualExhibition at the Cincinnati Museum alongside Childe Hassam, Robert Henri andMary Cassatt. She also exhibited at the North Shore AA, Butler Instituteof American Art, PAFA and in galleries in Chicago and London, England. During an era in which women were somewhat restricted to obeying theirhusbands, Woodroofe led an interesting diversified life. After paintingfor over a decade in Gloucester, she traveled with the Ringling Brothers circusso that she could paint clowns and circus acts (1940s) and she was given freepasses to the Ringling circus by John & Henry Ringling North throughout the1960s. At the end of the 1940s the Crane Gallery of London, England gaveWoodroofe a one-woman exhibition of her circus paintings and as late as 1955she won an award for a circus subject at the National Academy. After 1940, whenshe was not teaching summer painting classes in Syracuse, she traveledthroughout the U.S. painting villages and coastal towns. Never satisfiedwith her artistic output, Woodroofe continuously experimented with techniquesand by the end of her life she was an Abstract Modernist. Well known throughoutthe U.S. and especially the Chicago area, The American Institute ofArchitecture gives deserving students The Louise Woodroofe Prize each year forartistic and academic achievement. Louise Woodroofe was advanced and innovative, unafraid to be as bold as malecounterparts and to develop and individually unique style and artisticlook. She supported herself selling paintings that best exemplified theAmerican Fauvist movement that was initiated by men like Breckenridge and wasin full swing by 1928. Woodroofe never married. She dedicated herlife to painting and teaching and she died in Illinois February 15, 1996 at theage of 104 a well-respected painter and college professor.

Submitted by Patricia Jobe Pierce,Pierce Galleries, Inc. of Nantucket & Hingham, MA
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