Aline Fruhauf (1907–1978) was an American

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfred Grévin (1827–1892) * Alf ...

and painter known for her various mixed-media caricatures of musicians, the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

justices, and other new age artists such as Stuart Davis,

Yasuo Kuniyoshi was a Japanese-American painter, photographer and printmaker. Biography Kuniyoshi was born on September 1, 1889 in Okayama, Japan. He immigrated to the United States in 1906, choosing not to attend military school in Japan. Kuniyoshi original ...

Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...

, and

Raphael Soyer Raphael Zalman Soyer (December 25, 1899 – November 4, 1987) was a Russian-born American painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Soyer was referred to as an American scene painter. He is identified as a Social Realist because of his interest in men ...

, among others.

Career

Aline Fruhauf's career began early for her as she went from art student to professional caricaturist while still attending

Parson's School of Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...

in New York. Her first caricature appeared in

New York World The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publi ...

in 1926, her drawings were featured in New York dailies, and she was given a regular column in

The Morning Telegraph ''The Morning Telegraph'' (1839 – April 10, 1972) (sometimes referred to as the ''New York Morning Telegraph'') was a New York City broadsheet newspaper owned by Moe Annenberg's Cecelia Corporation. It was first published as the '' Sunday ...

a year later. She also regularly contributed to the periodical Musical America in 1927. In 1930, she enrolled in The

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

, in order to transition from editorial pieces in newspapers to exhibiting and selling her art in galleries, as a result of the fall of the

Stock Market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, as ...

and the decline of newspaper sales. Aline's first commissioned series were caricatures of legal figures based on satirists

Ape Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a clade of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and as well as Europe in prehistory), which together with its siste ...

and

Spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

. This series of New York judges (1934–36) was the first time she had been on a regular payroll and was getting paid for what she loved to do. One of her most successful pieces from this series of prints was of the

justices, ''The Nine Old Men'' (1936). During the 1930s, Fruhauf was regularly featured in theater and art magazines, like ''Creative Art'' in 1933, for her series of caricatures on artists and art dealers, and later she joined the graphics division of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

(WPA)

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...

, working there from March to December 1936 and preparing a series of caricatures of the WPA artists that were writing essays for the book ''Art for the Millions''. By doing this, she met emerging New York artists like

and Stuart Davis. In 1944, Aline and her husband, Dr. Erwin Vollmer, moved to Bethesda when he was posted to the Naval Medical Center, and after settling in, she contacted a former lithography classmate and resumed printmaking. In 1950, she was approached by a music critic of

The Washington Star ''The Washington Star'', previously known as the ''Washington Star-News'' and the Washington ''Evening Star'', was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Washington, D.C., between 1852 and 1981. The Sunday edition was known as the ''Sunday Star ...

to do a series of caricatures of a Washington orchestra. This piece became known as "The Face of Music in Washington" and featured 24 paintings of conductors, composers, critics, and musicians displayed at the Dupont Theatre Art Gallery in 1957. In the later part of her career she was honored with solo exhibitions at

The Smithsonian The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

in 1966, and

The Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

in 1977.

Personal life

Aline Fruhauf was born in 1907 in New York City. In 1934 Aline married Erwin P. Vollmer and they later had two daughters. She died aged 71 on May 27, 1978 in Bethesda, Maryland.

Published work

After Aline's death in 1978, a collection of her caricatures and journal entries were compiled into a memoir titled "Making Faces: Memoirs of a Caricaturist" published in 1987. Most of the journal entries are from the earlier part of her career, but the book contains caricatures from her entire career and art from other artists that Fruhauf worked with.

Papers

Photographs of Aline's work and friends, sketches, letters, clippings, typescripts and exhibition materials are stored in the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

research collection (62 items on 5 partial reels of microfilm) known as "The Aline Fruhauf Papers".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fruhauf, Aline 1907 births 1978 deaths American caricaturists American women painters 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women artists Parsons School of Design alumni Art Students League of New York alumni Federal Art Project artists