Francis Chapin
“Chapin was born in Bristolville, Ohio.” (1)
“[He] came to Chicago to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) after earning a BS degree at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. When he enrolled in 1922, SAIC still maintained a conservative Beaux Arts pedagogy, stressing the importance of the human figure and privileging drawing over painting. But Chapin was also exposed to the New York artist Leon Kroll during his visiting professorship in 1925–26, tempering his traditional education with the commitment to freedom of expression that Kroll and his Ashcan School predecessors—George Bellows and Randall Davey, who also had visiting positions at SAIC several years earlier—emphasized to their students. By the time Chapin completed his graduate education in 1928, his work combined the superb technical skills valued by the school with the independence characteristic of the modernist approach to art stressed by Kroll.” (2)
“He would set down deep roots at the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibiting there over 31 times there between 1926 and 1951. In 1927 Chapin won the prestigious Bryan Lathrop Fellowship from the Art Institute – a prize that funded the artist’s yearlong trip to study in Europe. Upon his return to the United States Chapin decided to remain in Chicago, noting the freedom Chicago artists had in developing independently of the pressure to conform to pre-existing molds (as was experienced by artists in New York, for example). Chapin became a popular instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching there from 1929 to 1947 and at the Art Institute’s summer art school in Saugatuck, Michigan (called Oc-Bow) between 1934-1938 (he was the director of the school from 1941-1945). Chapin’s contemporaries among Chicago’s artists included such luminaries as Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, Edgar Miller, William S. Schwartz and Aaron Bohrod among others.” (3)
“He also taught at the John Herron Art Institute at the Indianapolis Art Museum and the University of Georgia.” (1)
“Although always based in Chicago, Chapin traveled widely, making a record of trips to such locales as Spain, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, and the American Southwest in paint. After 1947, he was a visiting artist at the University of Georgia, Stetson University in Florida, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Columbus, Georgia. He was an known internationally, having painted and exhibited in both Europe and Latin America and serving as an artist in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1960–62; nationally, where his work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the Whitney Museum of American Art; and locally, where he lived and worked, for most of his mature life, in a studio on Menominee Street in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago.” (2)
Reference:
1.
Askart Staff. Biography from the Archives of askART [internet]. [cited 2019 Jul 10]. Available from: http://www.askart.com/artist_bio/Francis_Chapin/25182/Francis_Chapin.aspx
2.
Bernard Friedman Staff. Francis Chapin [internet]. 2019 [cited 2019 Jul 10]. Available from: http://www.chicagomodern.org/artists/francis_chapin/
3.
Richard Norton Gallery Staff. Francis Chapin American, 1899-1965 [internet]. [cited 2019 Jul 10]. Available from: http://richardnortongallery.com/artists/francis-chapin