An interview of Holger Cahill conducted 1960 April 12-15, by John Morse and Peter Pollack, for the Archives of American Art.
Cahill discusses his work as national director of the Federal Art Project. He recalls other administrators and artists who participated, and describes the allocation of the art works produced. Of particular interest is an anecdote about Jackson Pollock's experiments with his characteristic style while on the WPA. Peter Pollack contributes his own recollections of his work under Cahill developing community art centers as part of the federal program.
Biographical / Historical:
Holger Cahill (1887-1960) was an art administrator from New York, New York. Cahill was the National director of Federal Art Project, administered under Federal Project No. 1 of the Works Progress Administration (later the Work Projects Administration). The FAP provided work to unemployed artists. Cahill was the director throughout its existence.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr., 14 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
An interview of Paul Manship conducted by John Morse for the Archives of American Art. Manship speaks of his training under Solon Borglum, his interest in Greek mythology and the influence of early Greek sculpture on his work, his views on the Federal Art Project, art and nature and modern distortion, the nature of design and the learning process, and abstract art. He discusses his "Prometheus" sculpture at Rockefeller Center.
Biographical / Historical:
Paul Manship (1885-1966) was a sculptor in New York, New York.
General:
Sound has been lost on tape reels; reels discarded.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
An interview of Charles Burchfield conducted 1959 August 19, by John D. Morse, for the Archives of American Art.
Burchfield speaks of his studio on Clinton Street; his early training under Henry George Keller; copying the paintings of Charles Dana Gibson; working as a wallpaper designer for H.M. Birge and Co., in Buffalo, New York; his different styles; his watercolor technique; restoration and preservation of his watercolors; his paintings, including Black Iron, Crabbed Old Age, End of the Day, The House of Mystery, The Song of the Katidids, Winter, and others; his writings; his reading tastes and interest in music; European abstract artists; critics; and teaching. Also included is a footnote by Morse describing his day with Burchfield.
Biographical / Historical:
Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893-1967) was a painter from Gardenville, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 41 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Topic:
Sculptors -- United States -- Interviews Search this
An interview of Edward Fowles conducted by John D. Morse on 1959 Aug. 21 for the Archives of American Art.
Fowles speaks of his youth in England, how he came to work for Duveen Brothers, collectors he knew, and his experiences as an art dealer. Fowles also discusses art criticism, the art market, and trends in art collecting.
Biographical / Historical:
Art dealer; New York, N.Y. Fowles directed the Paris branch of Duveen Brothers from 1917 to 1938, then purchased the firm from Lord Duveen in 1939 with two partners. By 1958 he had bought out his partners. Fowles was vice president of the gallery from 1938 to 1945, when he became president. In 1964, he sold the firm to the Norton Simon Foundation.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Occupation:
Art dealers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Gallery owners -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
An interview of Samuel M. Kootz conducted 1960 Mar. 2, by John Morse, for the Archives of American Art.
Biographical / Historical:
Samuel M. Kootz (1898-1982) is an art dealer in New York, N.Y.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 1 digital wav file. Duration is 35 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
An interview of Isabel Bishop conducted by John D. Morse on 1959 May 29 for the Archives of American Art.
Bishop speaks of her painting materials and methods including the preparation of canvases, types and qualities of paint, permanence, underpainting, varnishes, and subject matter. Bishop also describes the methods of Kenneth Hayes Miller.
Biographical / Historical:
Isabel Bishop (1902-1988) was a painter in New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 1 digital wav files. Duration is 46 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Book illustrators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
An interview of William Zorach conducted by John Morse on 1959 April 2 for the Archives of American Art.
Biographical / Historical:
William Zorach (1887-1966) was a sculptor in Brooklyn, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hrs., 4 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Biographical materials include certificates, awards, and honorary degrees, membership information, personal and family photographs, a few sketches, and a transcript of an oral history Interview with E.P. Richardson conducted by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1982.
There are acquisitions files for the Richardsons' personal art collection that invoices, photographs, correspondence with galleries and collectors, appraisals, price lists, and artwork examination forms.
Correspondence is with colleagues, art dealers, collectors, museums and museum curators, foreign scholars, organizations, galleries, artists, art historians and critics, publishers, editors, librarians, friends, and family. Topics regard purchasing art for various collections, consultations about art and collecting including authentications and attributions, publishing, general art history, lectures, and personal matters, among other topics. There is correspondence with the Archives of American Art, Castano Galleries, Lawrence Fleischman, James Thomas Flexner, Alfred V. Frankenstein, George Croce, Walter Heil, Earl Krentzin, Wilmarth Lewis, Russel Lynes, John Francis McDermott, Philadelphia Museum of Art, J. Hall Pleasants, Anna Rutledge, Charles Sellers, Smithsonian Institution, Regina Soria, Victor Spark, William Stevens, Robert Vose, William Woolfenden, and many others. Scattered correspondence with artists is with Isabel Bishop, Louis Bouche, William Bostick, Eve Garrison, Edward Hopper, Irene Jungwirth, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Hughie Lee-Smith, Reginald Marsh, Gerald Mast, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Walt Speck, and John Wedda, among many others. The greatest extent of correspondence is with Andrew Wyeth, Harold Cohn, and Frederick Simper. There is also personal correspondence with family and friends, and between E.P. and Constance Richardson.
E.P. Richardson's prominence as an art historian, writer, and expert on collecting is well documented through his prolific writings. Materials include drafts, notes, typescripts, and outlines for articles, exhibition catalog essays, and lectures. Also found are research files and publishing documentation for Richardson's books, including Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America (1948), Painting in America (1956), Charles Willson Peale and his World (1983), and American Romantic Painting (1944). There are also miscellaneous notes and four diaries. Two of the diaries comment on the social and cultural life of Detroit; the authenticity of paintings; Richardson's reflections on contemporary American painting, thoughts about museums, dealers, artists, and art historians (especially Wilhelm R. Valentiner); and travel.
Notebooks compiled by Richardson on a wide variety art-related topics cover nearly six decades. There are also numerous research files organized Richardson about individual artists and art history. And, the art collector files contain reference materials about art collectors and their collections including Lamont du Pont Copeland, Michael W. Freeman, Nelson Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Allen, and the Marquis de Somerlous. There are three index card file boxes containing bibliographic data on published books and articles.
Professional and committee files document Richardson's professional and consulting work for the Art Quarterly, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Collection of Fine Arts, the National Portrait Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the John D. Rockefeller III collection, Winterthur Museum, the White House, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Constance C. Richardson's papers include business and professional correspondence with various institutions, most extensively with the Macbeth Gallery. In addition, there is a smaller amount of personal correspondence, photographs and slides of her artworks, printed materials, two illustrated notebooks on her work, and miscellaneous notes. Also included is Constance's artist palette.
Biographical / Historical:
Art historian, museum director, and writer E. P. (Edgar Preston) Richardson (1902-1985) served as director of the Detroit Institute of Arts (1945-1962) and Winterthur Museum (1963-1966). He was also a board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1966-1977 and, in 1954, co-founded the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
E. P. Richardson was born in 1902 in Glens Falls, New York and died in Philadelphia in 1985. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1925 and studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for the three years following graduation. In 1930 he became educational secretary at the Detroit Institute of Arts, was quickly named assistant director in 1933, and served as director from 1945 to 1962. He left Detroit to take the position of director of the Winterthur Museum, where he remained until 1966.
Richardson married Constance Coleman in 1931. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1905, Constance Coleman Richardson was an award-winning and widely exhibited realist style painter of American landscapes. She gave up painting in the 1960s and died in 2002.
While at the Detroit Institute of Arts, E. P. Richardson co-founded the Archives of American Art with Lawrence Fleischman, and served as the Archives' first director. Richardson was also art advisor to John D. Rockefeller III for over ten years, editor of Art Quarterly from 1938 to 1967, and a member of various boards, including the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian Arts Commission, and the National Portrait Gallery. He authored numerous books including ones on artists Washington Allston and Charles Willson Peale, and The Way of Western Art: American Romantic Painting (1939), Painting in America: The Story of Four Hundred and Fifty Years (1956), A Short History of Painting in America (1963), and American Art, an Exhibition of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3d (1976).
Related Materials:
Related collections among the holdings of the Archives of American Art include an interview with E.P. Richardson dated February 6, 1978 conducted by Linda Downs; and several miscellaneous manuscripts that include an E.P. Richardson Letter to Rockwell Kent, June 15 1959; E.P. Richardson letters to Lawrence Arthur Fleischman, May 13, 1962 and August 22 1954; and a Yasuo Kunioshi letter to E.P. Richardson, July 25 1948.
Additional E.P. Richardson papers are found at the Detroit Institute of Arts and in the archives of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel D46) including E.P. Richardson's research material on Jeremiah P. Hardy. These materials are housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
Edith Wilkinson first donated a letter to E. P. Richardson from herself in 1957. E.P. Richardson donated papers to the Archives of American Art in 1958 and 1960 and lent materials for microfilming in 1961. Addition material was donated by Constance Richardson in 1985, and by Martha Fleischman in 2003.
Restrictions:
Use of original material requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact References 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.
Letters; and research material for OLD MASTERS IN AMERICA (1955).
REEL 865: Material compiled in preparation for OLD MASTERS IN AMERICA (Rand McNally, 1955) " a practical guidebook" to the paintings of 40 European "old masters" in American and Canadian art museums. Copies of 4 form letters sent by Morse; 160 letters, 1951-1954, from the museums, some galleries, and some private collectors; and completed questionnaires which list the paintings and usually their dimensions and dates. [Questionnaires have not been filmed as they contain info. found in the publication.]
REEL 3161: Four letters received, 1958-1960, including a letter from Morse's cousin, Ruth Sperry regarding his mother, and letters from Edward Hopper, Byron Browne and William Zorach regarding articles by Morse in ART IN AMERICA.
Biographical / Historical:
Writer, editor; Sarasota, Florida.
Provenance:
Material on reel 865 donated 1959 by John D. Morse; material on reel 3161 donor is unknown.
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.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Charles Burchfield, 1959 August 19. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Sculptors -- United States -- Interviews Search this
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Mitchell Samuels, 1959 August 11. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview of Mitchell Samuels conducted 1959 August 11, by John D. Morse, for the Archives of American Art. Interview is introductory only and is less than three minutes in length.
Biographical / Historical:
Mitchell Samuels (1880?-1959) was an art dealer in New York, N.Y.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 1 digital wav file. Duration is 2 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Isabel Bishop, 1959 May 29. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Louis Bouché, 1959 August 7. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
United States. Works Progress Administration Search this
United States. Work Projects Administration Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Holger Cahill, 1960 April 12 and 15. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Edward Hopper, 1959 June 17. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- Interviews Search this
An interview of Edward Hopper conducted 17 June 1959, by John D. Morse, for the Archives of American Art.
This interview was conducted in the Board Room of the Whitney Museum. The interview begins with the reading of Mr. Hopper's 1933 "Notes on Painting" in which Hopper states that the aim of painting is to create the most exact transcription of the most intimate impression of nature. Mr. Hopper then speaks of his change of feelings since the publication of this statement; his realization that the return to nature which he had prophesied has not yet occurred; his move towards realism despite contemporary abstraction (citing Eakins similar position in the 17th century); techniques on canvas and use of zinc; his decision to avoid protective varnishes in the belief that it is the responsibility of the owner to keep the works preserved; his success as a subconscious result of his painting honestly; the belief that "Apartment Houses" crystallized his style from thenceforth. Mr. Hopper then reads a statement that was published in Reality magazine in 1953 in which Hopper posits that art is an outward expression of inner life. In an addendum, John Morse states that a ledger of all of Mr. Hopper's works, catalogue dates, and prices exists.Hopper reads from two statements on art written for other purposes. He also comments on the materials he uses, why he choses some of the subjects he does, and his predictions about the future of American art.
Biographical / Historical:
Edward Hopper, (b. 1882; d. 1967), painter of New York, N.Y.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- Interviews Search this
An interview of Louis Bouché conducted on 1959 August 7, by John D. Morse, for the Archives of American Art.
Bouché speaks of his art education in France; painting trips to Brittany; studying at the Art Students League with Dimitri Romanovsky and Frank Vincent DuMond; the Armory Show, 1913; managing a gallery at Wanamaker's (the Wanamaker Gallery of Modern Decorative Art) in the 1920s; his technique and materials; teaching; the Penguin Club; his taste in books and music; and abstract expressionism.
Biographical / Historical:
Louis Bouché (1896-1969) was a painter and teacher in New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav file. Duration is 53 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Edward Fowles, 1959 Aug. 21. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
