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George Copeland Ault (October 11, 1891 – December 30, 1948) was an American painter. He was loosely grouped with the
Precisionist movement and, though influenced by
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
and
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
, his most lasting work is of a
realist nature.
Biography
Ault was born in
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, US, into a wealthy family and spent his youth in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, England, where he studied at the
Slade School of Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
and
St John's Wood School of Art. Returning to the United States in 1911, he spent the rest of his life in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
and
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. His personal life henceforth was troubled. He became alcoholic during the 1920s, after the death of his mother in a mental institution. Each of his three brothers committed suicide, two after the loss of the family fortune in the
1929 stock market crash
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
.
![Bright Light at Russell's Corners by George Ault (1946)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Bright_Light_at_Russell%27s_Corners_by_George_Ault_%281946%29.jpg)
Although he had exhibited his works with some success, by the early 1930s his neurotic behavior and reclusiveness had alienated him from the gallery world. In 1937, Ault moved to
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States, in the northern part of the county, northwest of Kingston, NY. It lies within the borders of the Catskill Park. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 in 2000 ...
with Louise Jonas, who would become his second wife, and tried to put his difficulties in the past. In Woodstock the couple lived a penurious existence in a small rented cottage that had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Depending on Louise for income, Ault created some of his finest paintings during this time, but had difficulty selling them. In 1948, Ault was discovered dead five days after drowning in the Sawkill Brook on December 30, when he had taken a solitary walk in stormy and dark weather. The death was deemed a suicide by the coroner. In his lifetime, his works were displayed at 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), ...
and the
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
History
Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...
(in
Andover, Massachusetts
Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646."Andover" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th ed., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 387. As of th ...
), among others.
Ault worked in oil,
watercolor
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...
and pencil. He is often grouped with Precisionist painters such as
Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist known for his Precisionist paintings, commercial photography, and the avant-garde film, ''Manhatta'', which he made in collaboration with Paul Strand. Sheeler is recognized ...
and
Ralston Crawford
Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) was an American abstract painter, lithographer, and photographer.
Early life
He was born on September 5, 1906, in St. Catharines, Ontario, and spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York. He studied art beginning in ...
because of his unadorned representations of architecture and urban landscapes. However, the ideological aspects of Precisionism and the unabashed modernism of its influences are not so apparent in his work—for instance, he once referred to skyscrapers as the "tombstones of capitalism" and considered the industrialized American city "the Inferno without the fire". Ault painted what he saw around him, simplifying detail slightly into flat shapes and planes, and portraying the underlying geometric patterns of structures. In his wife's words, painting for him was a means of "creating order out of chaos." An analytical painter and ultimately a realist, Ault is noted for his realistic portrayal of light—especially the light of darkness—for he commonly painted nighttime scenes. Of his later paintings, such as ''January, Full Moon''; ''Black Night''; ''August Night''; and ''Bright Light at Russell's Corners'' (pictured), Roberta Smith of ''
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 worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote:
In 2011 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 ...
organized a major exhibition around Ault's work, which traveled to the
Georgia Museum of Art
The Georgia Museum of Art is an art museum in Athens, Georgia, United States, associated with the University of Georgia (UGA). The museum is both an academic museum and, since 1982, the official art museum of the state of Georgia. The permanent co ...
.
References
Bibliography
* Ault, Louise (1978). ''Artist in Woodstock: George Ault, the Independent Years.'' Dorrance Press.
* Fryd, Vivien Green (2003). ''Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe.'' University of Chicago Press.
or quotations only.* Lubowsky, Susan (1988). ''George Ault''. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art.
* Nemerov, Alexander (2011). ''To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America.'' Yale University Press.
* "What's New in Art". ''New York Times'', December 16, 1973.
* Schwartz, Sanford (1990). ''Artists and Writers''. New York: Yarrow Press.
* Smith, Roberta.
Review/Art; George Ault's Sad, Everyday Beauty in Stillness" ''New York Times'', April 29, 1988.
Further reading
*Harnsberger, R.S. (1992). ''Ten precisionist artists: annotated bibliographies''
rt Reference Collection no. 14 Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. .
External links
*
Short Biographyan
worksat 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 ...
George Ault papers, 1892-1980from the Smithsonian
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 ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ault, George
1891 births
1948 suicides
Artists from Cleveland
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
Alumni of St John's Wood Art School
20th-century American painters
American male painters
Painters who committed suicide
Suicides by drowning in the United States
Suicides in New York (state)
Precisionism
People from Woodstock, New York
Painters from Ohio
Painters from New York (state)
1948 deaths
20th-century American male artists
Public Works of Art Project artists