Sherman, Frederic Fairchild, 1874-1940 Search this
Extent:
1.4 Linear feet ((partially microfilmed on 2 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Scrapbooks
Date:
1910-1984
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence (1929-1984), a price list, subject files, notes, writings, art works (1929-1935), scrapbooks, printed material (1931-1984), and photographs document the life and career of Elliot Orr.
Reel D23 (frames 905-1246): One hundred twenty-five letters exchanged between Orr, his wife Elizabeth, and Frederic Fairchild Sherman discuss their art work (1934-1940). Other materials consist of a 6-page typescript, ELLIOT ORR: A CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PAINTER, by Marchal Landgren and an exhibition catalog for Orr (1936). A scrapbook about Frederic Fairchild Sherman contains clippings, photographs of works of art and illustrated poems by Sherman (1938-1940).
Reel 497: Letters were exchanged between Elliot Orr and his colleagues, dealers, galleries, and purchasers. Correspondents include Lester Burbank Bridaham, Marchal Landgren, Macbeth Gallery, Vose Galleries, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Wildenstein Galleries (1935-1955). Other materials consist of a curriculum vitae (1938), a Christmas card (1935), a clipping, and 3 exhibition catalogs (1938-1956).
Unfilmed: Correspondence, primarily between Orr, his family, and his colleagues including Frederic Fairchild Sherman (1929-1984), includes one letter with a sketch of "Andrews Mill and Farm". Subject files contain letters, printed material, and photographs concerning Orr's work for the Federal Art Project of Massachusetts (1938-1974) and the auction of Orr's collection of primitive art (1961-1969). Other materials consist of lists of works of art, a hand-made book, SONNETS, containing poems by Sherman and illustrated by Orr (1940), and a price list of works consigned to the Munson Gallery (1972).
Unfilmed: Art works include 6 studies for Orr's painting MacDOUGAL STREET (1935) and a sketch of Orr by Eugene Thomason (1929). Three scrapbooks contain letters, clippings, and exhibition announcements and catalogs (1928-1942). Printed material includes clippings (1931-1984), exhibition catalogs (1934-1984), and 2 books, ROMANTIC PAINTING IN AMERICA (1943) and AMERICAN WATER COLORS, DRAWINGS, AND PRINTS (1952), which contain reproductions of Orr's works. An album contains photographs of Orr, his family, home, and studio (1910-1957). Other photographs show Frederic Fairchild Sherman (1940) and Orr's works of art.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter; Chatham, Massachusetts. Born Flushing, New York. In 1927, Orr was a student of Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and from 1927 to 1929, he studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York under George Pierce Ennis, Henry B. Snell, and Wayman Adams. From 1929 to 1930 he studied under George Luks.
Provenance:
Portions of material on D23 (fr. 905-1214) lent for microfilming 1962; portions of material on D23 (fr. 1215-1246), reel 497 and unmicrofilmed donated 1971-1984 all by Elliot Orr.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
The papers of realist painter, Honoré Sharrer, measure 9.45 linear feet and 1.12 GB and date from circa 1920-2007. The collection documents Sharrer's career through biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, writings and notes, research and source files, printed and digital material, artwork, sketchbooks, and photographs of Sharrer, her family, friends, colleagues, and artwork.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of realist painter, Honoré Sharrer, measure 9.45 linear feet and 1.12 GB and date from circa 1920-2007. The collection documents Sharrer's career through biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, writings and notes, research and source files, printed and digital material, artwork, sketchbooks, and photographs of Sharrer, her family, friends, colleagues, and artwork.
Biographical material includes biographical notes and resumés, awards, paintbrushes used by Sharrer, and sales records, as well as comprehensive documentation, compiled 2004-2007 by her husband, Perez Zagorin, and her son, Adam Zagorin, of Sharrer's artwork in their possession. Included are digital images of Sharrer's artwork.
Correspondence is with family members including Sharrer's mother, Madeleine Sharrer, and her second husband, Reginald Poland; husband Perez Zagorin; son Adam Zagorin; and daughter-in-law, Mary Carpenter Also found is correspondence with artists including Peter Blume, Lester Burbank Bridaham, Gitta Caiserman-Roth, Kathy Calderwood, Mary Crutchfield, Betty Goodwin, Lincoln Kirstein, Mayumi Oda, and George Tooker. Other professional correspondents include galleries, museums, and other art institutions such as American Academy of Arts and Letters, Terry Dintenfass, Forum Gallery, Handmacher-Vogel, Inc., M. Knoedler & Co., Dorothy Miller relating to the 1946 Fourteen Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Women's Caucus for Art.
Writings and notes comprise drafts of several essays on art by Sharrer, preliminary notes for Tribute to the American Working People, and a mock-up for an unpublished book, "One White Christmas," written by Sharrer's grandmother, Honoré Sachs, and illustrated by Sharrer.
Research and source files consist of source material used throughout the course of Sharrer's career, including printed and photographic material used in the creation of Tribute to the American Working People, and later work dating up to, and including, the last decade of her life.
Printed material comprises announcements and catalogs for exhibitions and events featuring Sharrer, including a catalog for Fourteen Americans, as well as clippings about her and others, such as the Life Magazine cover story "Nineteen Young Americans."
Artwork and sketchbooks include studies for paintings and illustrations, and other preliminary sketches, as well as 14 sketchbooks of pencil and ink sketches dating from circa 1960s t0 2003.
Photographic material consists of photos of Sharrer, her family, friends, colleagues, exhibition installations, and houses. Also found are photos, negatives, and transparencies of Sharrer's artwork, as well as photos of artwork by Madeleine Sharrer and Lester Burbank Bridaham.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 8 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1941-2007 (0.44 linear feet; Boxes 1, 10, 1.12 GB; ER01-ER10)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1938-2006 (1.84 linear feet; Boxes 1-3, 10)
Series 3: Writings and Notes, circa 1940s-circa 1990s (5 folders; Boxes 3, 10)
Series 4: Research and Source Files, circa 1920s-2005 (3.43 linear feet; Boxes 3-6, 10-11)
Series 5: Printed Material, circa 1930s-2005 (0.85 linear feet; Boxes 6-7, 11, OV 13, OV 17)
Series 6: Artwork, 1941-circa 1990s (0.8 linear feet; Boxes 7, 11-12, OV 13
Series 7: Sketchbooks, 1960s-2003 (0.55 linear feet; Boxes 7, 12)
Series 8: Photographic Material, circa 1930s-circa 2000 (1.83 linear feet; Boxes 8-9, 12, OVs 13-16)
Biographical / Historical:
Realist painter Honoré Sharrer (1920-2009) lived and worked in New York, Massachusetts, London, Montreal and Charlottesville, Virginia. She was best known for her five-panel painting, Tribute to the American Working People, completed in 1951 and first shown at M. Knoedler & Co. in New York to wide critical acclaim.
Sharrer was born in 1920 in West Point, New York, where her father was an Army officer, and grew up in the United States, the Philippines, Paris, and La Jolla, California. She studied at the Yale University School of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute, and worked as a welder in shipyards in California and New Jersey during World War II. She moved to New York in the 1940s and lived subsequently in Amherst, Massachusetts, London, and Montreal.
Sharrer's Workers and Paintings (1943) was included in the landmark Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Fourteen Americans, in 1946, and her painting, Man at Fountain, was featured in the 1950 Life Magazine cover story, "Nineteen Young American Artists." Tribute to the American Working People, which depicted a factory worker surrounded by smaller scenes of ordinary life, was considered her masterwork, but in the years that followed it's unveiling at M. Knoedler & Co., Sharrer was noticeably absent from the art scene; between 1951 and 1969 she did not have a single solo exhibition. While many of her contemporaries immersed themselves in Abstract Expressionism, Sharrer continued to paint, in meticulous detail, the daily experiences of ordinary working people, and her later work often dealt with female perspectives and was imbued with humor and elements of magical realism.
In 2007 the Smithsonian American Art Museum held an exhibition titled Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's 'Tribute to the American Working People,' which was devoted exclusively to her most famous work, now in the Smithsonian's permanent collection, and the source material she used when painting it. Sharrer's works can also be found in the Metroplitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Sharrer settled in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the early 1990s. She was married to her second husband, historian Perez Zagorin, for 61 years, before her death in 2009. Her mother, Madeleine Sharrer, was also a painter who married Reginald Poland, Director of the Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, following the death of Sharrer's father, Robert Allen Sharrer.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview with Perez Zagorin, 2007, January 17-18, and the Madeleine Sharrer papers, 1954-1988.
Provenance:
The Honoré Sharrer papers were donated in 2006 and 2007 by Perez Zagorin, Sharrer's husband. A small addition was donated by Adam Zagorin, Sharrer's son, in 2018.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D. C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
7.4 Linear feet ((partially microfilmed on 2 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Drawings
Scrapbooks
Sketchbooks
Date:
1912-1986
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence, writings, art works, scrapbooks, printed material, photographs, and files on Julio De Diego and Kimon Nicolaides and other topics, related to Bridaham's career as an artist and writer.
REEL 8: Printed material, including articles written by Bridaham for periodicals (1950-1957), 15 exhibition catalogs (1928-1968), clippings by and about Bridaham (1930-1959), 6 press releases (1956-1957), a transcript of a radio discussion which included Bridaham (1951), 2 advertisements, a lecture announcement (1957), instructions on using egg tempera for Bridaham's students, a guide book to the Louisiana State Museum (1956), brochures about Strathmont Museum (1958), and resumes.
REEL 3: Material related to Kimon Nicolaides, including a radio address given by him, 1933; publicity for his book THE NATURAL WAY TO DRAW; exhibition catalogs; clippings; press releases; and a photograph of one of his sculptures. [Microfilm title: Kimon Nicolaides papers]
UNMICROFILMED: Correspondence with Kimon Nicolaides and Henry Schnackenberg (1921-1923), Julio De Diego (1941-1952), Ethel Spears (1961), Isabel Bishop (1975), and George and Edith Rickey. Letters to Mamie Harmon concern a Nicolaides exhibition and book (1938-1941). Writings include nine v. of diaries (1946-1954) kept during his tenure at the Art Institute of Chicago, and notes and drafts for an unpublished book (1938-1982).
Subject files concerning Ivan Albright's poetry, the Colonial Craft Survey for Massachusetts (1935), Olof Krans (1939), the reorganization of the Metropolitan Museum's photographic department (1949), Romanesque and Gothic sculpture and the Society for Contemporary American Art. A file (1921-1983) on Julio De Diego contains Bridaham's research materials, sketches and drawings by the artist, a journal kept by De Diego in New York (1932) and photographs of De Diego, his family including third wife Gypsy Rose Lee, friends and art works. Kimon Nicolaides' file (1921-1986) contains his writings and drawings (1928), drawings by Vivian Gordon and Howard Ahrens (1923-1986), photographs and other research materials.
Printed materials consists of clippings (1930-1972), "The Chicago Artist" newsletter (1938), press releases, a book cover, Artists Equity publications (1952-1953), posters, exhibition catalogs and anouncements and membership cards. Photographs show Bridaham, friends, National Art Week activities with Macena Barton, Charles Biesel, Jules Eboli and Richard Florsheim, his studio and drawings (1928-1949). Other materials include over 150 prints and drawings (1927-1977) of Moroccan scenes, Colorado wildflowers and other subjects, resumes, an illustrated notebook of Bridaham's plans for art works (1931-1932) and a list of his works (1974).
ADDITION: Material concerning the latter part of Bridaham's life, including original works of art, photographs, a dream sketchbook (1945), a notebook devoted to Julio de Diego; Bridaham's letters to Jeanette Fowler, 1989-1990 and other correspondence, 1940s-1950s; and printed material.
Biographical / Historical:
Museum director, art historian, painter, and printmaker; d. 1992. Bridaham received a degree in chemical engineering from M.I.T. and studied art history at Harvard's Fogg Museum from 1936-1937. He received a 1931 American Field Service fellowship for study in France and Morocco, and studied studio art at the Art Students League under Kimon Nicolaides and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Between 1938 and 1954, Bridaham was a staff officer at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was also the director of the Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, and of the Strathmont Museum, Elmira, N.Y. He is the author of Gargoyles, Chimeras and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture.
Related Materials:
Lester Bridaham photographs and papers relating to gargoyles, 1895-1987, are located at The Getty Research Institute Special Collections.
Provenance:
Donated 1974-1987 by Lester Burbank and Dorothy Bridaham. In 1996, an additional 0.8 ft. was donated from the Jeanette Fowler estate.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm.
Lester Burbank Bridaham. The wonderful world of maestro Julio De Diego, 1942-1954. Lester Burbank Bridaham papers, 1912-1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Researchers interested in accessing audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Yasuo Kuniyoshi papers, 1906-2016, bulk 1920-1990. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by Stephen Diamond, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Glass plate negatives in this collection were digitized in 2019 with funding provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
