Esther Rolick (1922–2008) was an American painter born in Rochester, New York, on October 9, 1922. She studied at the Art Students League and was represented by Jacques Seligmann Galleries in New York in the early 1950's. She was a fellow at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and her exhibition credits range from the Whitney Museum of American Art to Le Centre D'Art in Haiti. Rolick traveled and painted extensively, especially in Bogota, Colombia, Rome, and Tahiti. She is listed in Who Was Who in American Art, and her papers are in the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution.
She was known for her style which was considered to be both
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
and
neo-romantic. In some of her works she painted with what one critic called "meticulous realism" but was better known for works incorporating fantastic elements. Her most prolific periods centered around dream-scapes of fantasy plants, flowers, and peaceful and friendly wildlife. She was one of the few female artists in the avante-gard movement of the late 1940s and 1950s. She taught college classes for many years and achieved recognition for taking innovative approaches.
Early life and training
Rolick attended public schools in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
and graduated from the city's Washington High School in 1940. She took art classes while in school and also studied under the sculptor
William Ehrich in Rochester's
Memorial Art Gallery.
In 1941, a local newspaper printed a photo of Rolick with a sculpted figure called "The Refugee", a piece that was to appear in a student exhibition in the gallery of Rochester's
Rundel Memorial Library
The Rundel Memorial Building is a historic library building located at Rochester in Monroe County, New York. It is the original downtown site of the Rochester Public Library, and along with the Bausch & Lomb Library Building directly across the str ...
.
She traveled to New York City in the early 1940s to study under the American
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
artist,
Harry Sternberg
Harry Sternberg (1904–2001), was an American painter, printmaker and educator. He taught at the Art Students League of New York, from 1933 to c. 1966.
Biography Childhood, family life, and education
Sternberg's parents had immigrated from Russ ...
, and others at 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 ...
.
In 1945 and 1946 and again in 1953,
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March  ...
, the philanthropically supported artists' community in Saratoga Springs, New York, accepted her applications for its weeks-long residencies.
In 1948, she was able to travel and study in Europe for the first time, possibly with financial support from the actress Hildegarde Watson.
In 1947 and 1952, she received fellowship awards to work at the
MacDowell Colony
MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowell ...
in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
In 1954, she received a fellowship from the
Huntington Hartford Foundation to work at an estate in Pacific Palisades, California.
Career in art
In 1943, Rolick participated in an annual competition held by the A.C.A Gallery in New York to select an artist for a solo exhibition during the following year. When the gallery's jury was unable to select a winner, she and six other finalists were named to an honorable-mention group for a small-group show instead.
In January 1947, she was given a solo exhibition of drawings at the
Jacques Seligmann Galleries in New York and a few months later her paintings appeared in a group show at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
.
When the Seligmann Galleries gave her a solo exhibition of paintings in January 1948, a critic for the ''New York Times'' noted in them a "directness and fervor" and said they showed considerable improvement on the works she had previously shown.
When that exhibition closed in New York, Seligmann toured it around the country. When it appeared in Louisville, Kentucky, a critic for the Louisville ''Courier-Journal'' said Rolick had been remarkably successful for a 24-year-old artist, having made sales to collectors, including the art historian
Wilhelm Valentiner William Reinhold Valentiner (May 2, 1880 – September 6, 1958) was a German-American art historian, art critic and museum administrator. He was educated and trained in Europe, first working at the Mauritshuis in The Hague and at museums in Berli ...
.
Later in 1948, Seligmann included Rolick's paintings in a group of six. At that time a ''Times'' critic called her paintings "technically sure and sophisticated".
During the 1950s and 1960s, she traveled abroad to places having warm climates with abundant sunshine, including Italy, Spain, North Africa, Haiti, and Colombia. Scenes from these locations subsequently frequently appeared in her work.
in New York City she maintained a small studio and her inner circle was composed of avant-garde artists of the time including Jackson Pollack.
Rolick presented a solo exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and drawings in 1950 at the Rochester Historical Society.
Later in the year, she received a settlement payment in a suit she had brought after a warehouse fire had destroyed many of her paintings.
Four years later, Seligman mounted her third solo show. In it,
Howard Devree
Howard Devree (May 7, 1890 – February 9, 1966) was an American editor and art critic. He joined ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a wor ...
of the ''New York Times'' saw higher-key, more decorative work than he had seen before along with some of the "sturdy, primarily expressionist paintings" he had previously noted.
During the remainder of the 1950s, Rolick had solo exhibitions in both commercial and nonprofit galleries, including the Rochester Historical Society (paintings and drawings, 1956), the Harry Salpeter Gallery in New York (recent paintings, 1956), the F.A.R. Gallery in New York (drawings, 1959), and the art gallery at
Hofstra University
Hofstra University is a private university in Hempstead, New York. It is Long Island's largest private university. Hofstra originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University (NYU) under the name Nassau College – Hofstra Memorial of Ne ...
(oils, watercolors, and drawings, 1959).
There were few solo or group exhibitions of her work during the rest of her life. In the early 1990s, Rolick moved from Manhattan back to Rochester. She died in a nursing home in Rochester in 2008.
Artistic style
Rolick made sculptures and drawings early in her career but received most notice for her oils. She was known for realist paintings and fantastic treatment of natural subjects.
One critic saw a
Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...
-like immediacy and emotional content in them.
Another saw this directness as freedom from "extraneous thoughts".
Her work was labeled
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
and neo-romantic.
Mid-career, she showed watercolors along with oils and drawings. Critics' reactions were much the same as before. One said she had a flair for dramatic presentation and expressionist emotional projection.
Others noted her bold use of colors and stylized treatment of natural subjects"fantasy paintings" that were "based on keen observation".
At the end of her career, her work drew little comment. In that period, she added collages and constructions to the paintings and drawings for which she continued to be best known.
An untitled painting of animals and human figured from 1941, shown at right, shows her handling of color and treatment of fantastic subjects in oil. A drawing from 1942, "Self-Portrait in Shoe", shown at left, indicates a light-hearted use of fantasy early in her career. An oil of 1948-1949 called "Nuns and Priest Pass by Ruins, Florence", shown at right, indicates her mid-career handling of color and fantasy in an urban setting. At left, another oil, "Night Is a Black Cat", of 1951, shows her ability to paint in a decorative style while still maintaining what a critic called "sinister" overtones.
Art teacher
In the mid-1960s, Rolick began to teach at
Mercy College. The school was founded in 1950 by the
Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute of Catholic women founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. As of 2019, the institute had about 6200 sisters worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations. They a ...
religious order. Originally located in
Tarrytown, New York
Tarrytown is a village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a stop on the Metro-North ...
as a school for women called Mercy Junior College, it moved to nearby
Dobbs Ferry
Dobbs Ferry is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 10,875 according to the 2010 United States Census. In 2019, its population rose to an estimated 11,027. The village of Dobbs Ferry is located in, and is a p ...
in 1961 and, now known as Mercy College, became a four-year school. In 1968 it received accreditation and subsequently became independent, nonsectarian, and coeducational.
Having joined the faculty at about the time the school expanded its curriculum and moved to Dobbs Ferry, she was an assistant professor of fine arts by 1970.
By 1979, her course load included drawing, multi-media, and art appreciation.
During the roughly two decades that she taught there, she helped develop several innovative programs including a class on "Black Music and Art" of 1970–71 in which she interviewed prominent members of the
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...
music and art communities.
Mercy College had a reputation of innovative programming, including evening and weekend classes. As one component of this innovation, Rolick joined with a member of the music department in 1979 to teach classes that began at 1:30 in the morning.
Personal life and family
Rolick was born on October 9, 1922, in Rochester, New York.
Her father was Ellis Rolick (born 1892 in Ivenets, White Russia, currently Belarus, died 1951 in Rochester). The family name was originally "Rolnik" and there are several branches of the family still bearing that name both in the United States and Israel. He ran a local shoe store and was well known for selling boots and shoes to farmers out of a hand-pushed barrow at the Rochester Public Market.
Rolick's mother was Rose (Lifschitz) Rolick (born 1898 in Polish Russia, died 1960 in Rochester) who helped her husband run the shoe business while also raising a large family. The two were married in 1919 in Rochester shortly after his first wife had died. Rolick was their youngest child. She had four step-brothers and sisters from her father's first marriage. They were Sophia Rolick (1912-2008), Idaire Rolick (1912-1993), Suzanne Rolick (1913-1993), Emanuel Rolick (1916-1987). She also had a brother and sister from his second marriage: Dorothy Rolick (1918-2005) and Samuel Rolick (1920-2006).
There is little information about Rolick's personal life. Reliable sources do not contain evidence of marriage, close friendships, or most other personal affairs. She had one child given up for adoption in the late 1940s. Regarding health issues, in 1946, the writer
Leo Lerman
Leo Lerman (May 23, 1914 – August 22, 1994) was an American writer and editor who worked for Condé Nast Publications for more than 50 years.Grimes, William (August 23, 1994). Leo Lerman, 80, Editor at Conde Nast Magazines. ''The New York Time ...
, who was at Yaddo during Rolick's first time there, wrote that she suffered from depression (he said it was "manic depressiveness"). Saying that Rolick was generally cheerful, he described an occasion when she came to breakfast "with her face black—horribly awful and corrupt with darkness" and added, "You could see misery eating at her". He said another Yaddo resident told him Rolick could be heard weeping and sobbing during the night.
Rolick lived in Manhattan during most of her career. She returned to Rochester in the early 1990s and, in the early years of the next decade, moved to the Jewish Home of Rochester, a long-term care facility. She died there on September 29, 2008.
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rolick, Esther
1922 births
2008 deaths
Artists from Rochester, New York
American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
American women painters
American women sculptors
Jewish American artists
Jewish painters
Jewish sculptors
Yaddo alumni
20th-century American artists
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women