Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Hamilton has a population of 569,353, and its census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 785,184. The city is approximately southwest of T ...
– 28 June 1974,
Biddeford Pool, Maine
Biddeford Pool is a large tidal pool, located off Saco Bay (Maine), Saco Bay south of the mouth of the Saco River on the south coast of Maine. It is approximately 6 miles southeast of downtown Biddeford, Maine, Biddeford, to which it is connected ...
) was a
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
painter, muralist, and designer.
Career
By 1898, Crisp was attending the Hamilton Art School, studying with the artist and teacher John Sloan Gordon. He remained there for three years. During this time, he also worked as an engraver at the ''Hamilton Herald''. He left Hamilton for New York City in the summer of 1900 to attend the
Art Students League
The Art Students League of New York is an art school at American Fine Arts Society, 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 ...
and worked there three years, valuing especially
Frank DuMond
Frank Vincent DuMond (August 20, 1865 – February 6, 1951) was one of the most influential teacher-painters in 20th-century America. He was an illustrator and American Impressionist painter of portraits and landscapes, and a prominent teac ...
as a teacher. He worked afterwards as a commercial artist, and as a painter and a muralist. From 1913 to 1917, he was appointed a drawing instructor at
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...
. He then went on to teach at the
Beaux-Arts Institute of Design
The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (BAID, later the National Institute for Architectural Education) was an art and architectural school at 304 East 44th Street in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, in New York City.
He was commissioned to paint British and Canadian recruiting on the Boston Common in 1918 for the Canadian War Memorials and painted decorations for the Reading Room of the new House of Commons in Ottawa (1920-1923), for the Imperial Bank of Commerce, King St, Toronto (1930), for the Capitol Building, Columbus, Ohio (1951) and for the State Educational Building, Albany, NY (1959). His paintings are in the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the
Morgan Library
The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...
, NY, the
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...
, Ottawa, the
National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to:
*National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra
*National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred
*National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C.
*National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...
, USA,
and the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, NY.
Crisp was a member of the New York Architectural League (1911), and the
National Society of Mural Painters
The National Society of Mural Painters (NSMP) is an American artists' organization originally known as The Mural Painters. The charter of the society is to advance the techniques and standards for the design and execution of mural art for the enri ...
(1914). He was a founder-member of the Allied Artists of America (1914), and also belonged to the
American Water Color Society
The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.
Qualifications
AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...
and the
New York Water Color Club
The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.
Qualifications
AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...
(1915). He was elected a full academician of the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
(1937) as well as exhibiting widely.
He retired to
Biddeford, Maine
Biddeford is a city in York County, Maine, United States. It is the principal commercial center of York County. Its population was 22,552 at the 2020 census. The twin cities of Saco and Biddeford include the resort communities of Biddeford Poo ...
, in 1956 and gave a large collection of his work to the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 1963, which celebrated the occasion with a major
retrospective
A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...
exhibition for Arthur Crisp and his wife. Arthur Crisp died in Maine in 1974, aged 93.
The Arthur Crisp Papers (1952-1963) are in the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY (13244-2010).