Franklin Chennault Watkins (December 30, 1894 – December 4, 1972) was an American painter.
Early life and education
Born in
New York City, Watkins was the son of Benjamin Franklin Watkins of
Reidsville, North Carolina
Reidsville is a city in Rockingham County in the U.S. state of North Carolina. At the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 14,580. Reidsville is included in the Greensboro–High Point Metropolitan Statistical Area of the Piedmont T ...
, and Shirley Chennault Watkins of
Louisville; he was a cousin, through his mother's sister, of poet
Ogden Nash.
His father was an inventor who made his career marketing patents. He had a brother, Edmund, who became a journalist and writer of short stories, and two sisters. As a baby he was taken to
London, where his family lived; at other points throughout his childhood he lived in
Rye, New York, Louisville, and
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His father's income fluctuated so that the family's financial situation was never stable, and this affected his education; he entered
Groton School
Groton School (founded as Groton School for Boys) is a private college-preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts. Ranked as one of the top five boarding high schools in the United States in Niche (2021–2022), it is affiliated ...
in 1908, but was forced to withdraw two years later due to money woes. He matriculated at the
University of North Carolina, but, not liking the atmosphere, left after four days. He spent a year at the
University of Virginia and several terms at the
University of Pennsylvania before settling on a career in art, and he entered the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1913.
His teacher there was
Cecilia Beaux, and while a student he received two
Cresson Traveling Scholarships; he left for two years to work in New York and earn money for tuition, but returned in 1916.
Henry McCarter
Henry Bainbridge McCarter (1864-1942) was an American illustrator and painter known for his influence on the modernism, modernistic art movements. McCarter worked as an illustrator in New York before becoming an instructor at the Pennsylvania Ac ...
was another teacher.
Watkins would remain associated with the school for much of the rest of his life. During
World War I he painted
camouflage for the
United States Navy, and from 1918 to 1923 he was a
commercial artist with the Philadelphia advertising firm of N. W. Ayer.
Serving alongside him in the Navy was
Arthur B. Carles
Arthur Beecher Carles (March 9, 1882 – 1952) was an American Modernist painter.
Biography
Carles was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts between 1900 and 1907. He studied with Thomas Pol ...
, who would become a lifelong friend.
Career
Watkins first gained notice with the painting ''Suicide in Costume'' depicting a man in a clown costume lying on a table and holding a smoking gun. The piece, which was highly controversial and criticized for its morbid subject matter, won the 1931
Carnegie Prize. So great was its notoriety that the artist kept a low profile for some years thereafter.
Today the painting is owned by the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...
.
Its success opened doors for Watkins in Philadelphia society, and he soon gained a reputation as a portraitist, though he also painted still lifes, landscapes and animals.
In 1934
Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 – January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sus ...
commissioned him to provide sets and costumes for
George Balanchine
George Balanchine (;
Various sources:
*
*
*
* born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze; ka, გიორგი მელიტონის ძე ბალანჩივაძე; January 22, 1904 (O. S. January 9) – April 30, 1983) was ...
's ballet ''Transcendence''.
He was also a
muralist, providing decorations for the
Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. Notable sitters included
Jefferson B. Fordham
Jefferson B. Fordham (1906 – June 28, 1994) was the ninth Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the tenth Dean of the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
Education
Fordham was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Universi ...
, dean of the law school at the University of Pennsylvania;
Eugene Strecker, the psychiatrist;
Joseph S. Clark
Joseph Sill Clark Jr. (October 21, 1901January 12, 1990) was an American writer, lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 90th Mayor of Philadelphia from 1952 to 1956 and as a United States Senator from Pennsylvani ...
, Mayor of Philadelphia; and the three Beinecke brothers. He was commissioned to paint a portrait of
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, but the
attack on Pearl Harbor intervened, and the president never sat for him. The artist's portraits could be controversial; the likeness of Clark in particular was not well-received, and was only accepted by the city at the subject's insistence. Some critics have stated that Watkins derived his influence from
Thomas Eakins. He also painted many religious works, and has been compared to
William Blake.
Other artists cited as influences include
Paul Gauguin,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
.
Watkins, known as "Watty" among friends, received many awards throughout his career, and was honored with numerous one-man shows during his life. These included bronze medals at the 1937
Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris and the
Musee du Jeu de Paume
Jeu de Paume ( en, Real Tennis Court) is an arts centre for modern and postmodern photography and media. It is located in the north corner (west side) of the Tuileries Gardens next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. In 2004, Galerie National ...
in 1938, a gold medal from the
Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1939, and the 1953
Fulbright
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
professorship to Italy.
He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1967. He occasionally wrote articles about his discipline for art magazines; one particularly notable piece, "An Artist Talks to His Students", appeared in the ''Magazine of Art'' in December, 1941.
He taught at his alma mater for nearly a quarter-century.
Personal life and legacy
Watkins married twice, having no children by either marriage. His first wife, whom he married in 1927, was Fredolyn Gimbel, daughter of Ellis Gimbel of the
Gimbels
Gimbel Brothers (known simply as Gimbels) was an American department store corporation that operated for over a century, from 1842 until 1987. Gimbel patriarch Adam Gimbel opened his first store in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1842. In 1887, the compa ...
family. After their divorce, he married Mrs. Ida Quigley Furst. He was proud of his
Southern
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
heritage, and considered himself North Carolinian throughout his life, although he had not lived in the state save for a brief sojourn in Winston-Salem in 1910 and 1911. Nevertheless, he exhibited work as part of the Piedmont Festival of Music and Art in 1944 and 1946, and he and his wife visited Reidsville not long before his death.
An early oil study is currently owned by the
Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
In October 1972 the
Vatican Museum
The Vatican Museums ( it, Musei Vaticani; la, Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of ...
planned to open a wing dedicated to contemporary art; Watkins was one of six Americans whose work was chosen for display. The artist and his wife traveled to Italy for the event only to find it postponed. They decided to remain there on a visit, but he died in
Bologna soon after.
Besides the collections already noted, works by Watkins may be found in the
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...
, the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the
University of Michigan Museum of Art, the
Woodmere Art Museum, and the
Whitney Museum of American Art.
The
Archives of American Art contain his papers and an oral history interview conducted the year before his death.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watkins, Franklin Chennault
1894 births
1972 deaths
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Painters from New York City
Artists from Philadelphia
Painters from Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts faculty
American muralists
American portrait painters
20th-century American male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society