Jane Freilicher (November 19, 1924 – December 9, 2014) was an American representational painter of urban and country scenes from her homes in

lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

and Water Mill, Long Island. She was a member of the informal New York School beginning in the 1950s, and a muse to several of its poets and writers. Freilicher was at the center of a milieu of important New York painters and poets, including painters

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

Joan Mitchell Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Grace Hartigan Grace Hartigan (March 28, 1922 – November 15, 2008) was an American Abstract Expressionist painter and a significant member of the vibrant New York School of the 1950s and 1960s. Her circle of friends, who frequently inspired one another in t ...

Fairfield Porter Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 – September 18, 1975) was an American painter and art critic. He was the fourth of five children of James Porter, an architect, and Ruth Furness Porter, a poet from a literary family. He was the brother of photo ...

Larry Rivers Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) (1923 – 2002) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists ...

, and poets of the New York School including

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

Kenneth Koch Kenneth Koch ( ; 27 February 1925 – 6 July 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry. This was a loose group of poets includ ...

, Frank O’Hara and

James Schuyler James Marcus Schuyler (November 9, 1923 – April 12, 1991) was an American poet. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection ''The Morning of the Poem''. He was a central figure in the New York School and is of ...

. Along with Frankenthaler, Hartigan, Mitchell, and

Nell Blaine Nell Blair Walden Blaine (July 10, 1922 in Richmond, Virginia – November 14, 1996 in New York City) was an American landscape painter, expressionist, and watercolorist. From Richmond, Virginia, she had most of her career based in New York City ...

, she was among only a handful of women artists who were exhibiting alongside their male counterparts. In 1996 she was awarded the Annual Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Museum in

East Hampton, New York The Town of East Hampton is located in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, at the eastern end of the South Shore of Long Island. It is the easternmost town in the state of New York. At the time of the 2020 United States census, it had a total ...

.''Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets.'' 2013. p. 93.

Personal life

Jane Niederhoffer was born in Brooklyn on November 19, 1924.Jane Freilicher.
Tibor de Nagy. February 3, 2014.Carol Kort; Liz Sonneborn.
A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts
'. Infobase Publishing; 1 January 2002. . p. 72–74. Her parents were linguist Martin and musician Bertha Niederhoffer. She enjoyed painting and drawing as a young child and thought "I might do something in art, not for fame or achievement, but out of a romantic inclination to beautiful things. A free-floating feeling that something was creative ''in me.''" At 17 she graduated from high school and eloped with Jack Freilicher,Terence Diggory.
Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets
'. Infobase Publishing; 2009. . p. 172–173.Dinitia Smith

''The New York Times.'' April 19, 1998. Retrieved February 3, 2014. a jazz pianist. They were married from about 1941 to 1946, when the marriage was annulled. She met Larry Rivers through Jack Freilicher and Hans Hofmann and in the 1950s Rivers and Freilicher were good friends.Jane Freilicher papers (MS Am 2072)
Houghton Library, Harvard University. Retrieved February 4, 2014. In 1952 she met Joe Hazan, who was a businessman and dancer before becoming a painter. They were married in 1957 and had one child, Elizabeth. She lived and worked on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and the couple had a summer house which they built on Mecox Bay in

Water Mill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production o ...

on Long Island, New York. Hazan died on October 27, 2012 at 96 years of age. Freilicher died in Manhattan at the age of 90 on December 9, 2014. She is survived by her daughter, painter Elizabeth Hazan, and three grandchildren, Lucian, Katherine, and Benjamin Hicks.

Art

Freilicher studied art under

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

and in 1947 earned her bachelor's degree at

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

. She received her master's degree in 1948 from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

'sAnn Lee Morgan, Former Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists
'. Oxford University Press; 27 June 2007. . p. 166. Teacher's College, where the art historian

Meyer Schapiro Meyer Schapiro (23 September 1904 – 3 March 1996) was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for developing new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. An expert on earl ...

was one of her teachers. As the result of Hofmann's influence she first made abstract expressionist paintings. Then, influenced by artist

Pierre Bonnard Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...

, she settled into a "softly brushed, meditative lyric" paintings of still lifes and landscapes. She particularly made "urban pastoral" scenes of lower Manhattan and Water Mill scenes which appear to be taken as she looks out her windows on lower Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. "Usually there is a vase in the foreground, filled with flowers painted in lush, riotous colors, the light behind it..." The Long Island works feature nearby fields and sometimes Mecox Bay. The urban landscapes of lower Manhattan are taken from her penthouse view towards the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. Freilicher's work was considered by art critic

Hilton Kramer Hilton Kramer (March 25, 1928 – March 27, 2012) was an American art critic and essayist. Biography Early life Kramer was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was educated at Syracuse University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English; Col ...

to be "pre-eminent among the representational painters of the New York School's second generation." Critic

Franklin Einspruch Franklin Einspruch is an American artist and writer based in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. Biography Franklin Einspruch was born in Dallas, Texas. Einspruch completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Master ...

called Freilicher ''"one of the last true scions of Giorgio Morandi."'' Freilicher has also made woodcut, intaglio and lithograph prints. In 1952 she began showing her works at

Tibor de Nagy Gallery The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is an art gallery located on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. History Tibor de Nagy Gallery is among the earliest modern art galleries in New York City. The gallery was founded by Ti ...

, which was also associated with poets. In 2013 an exhibition "Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets" of her work was held at Tibor de Nagy in New York City. It reflected the relationships and inspiration that she was for

, Frank O’Hara and

. The exhibition traveled in 2014 to Chicago where it put on display at the

Poetry Foundation The Poetry Foundation is an American literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from ''Poetry'' magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Rut ...

. In October 2017, New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery announced its representation of the Estate of Jane Freilicher.

New York School

In the 1950s she became part of an informal circle of writers and artists called the New York School. She was featured in ''Mounting Tension'', a 1950 film by

Rudy Burckhardt Rudy Burckhardt (April 6, 1914 – August 1, 1999) was a Swiss-American filmmaker, and photographer, known for his photographs of the hand-painted billboards that began to dominate the American landscape in the 1940s and 1950s. Life Burckhardt was ...

in which John Ashbery and

fight for her affections. James Schuyler wrote ''Presenting Jane'', in one scene she walked on water. In ''A Terrestrial Cuckoo'' O'Hara describes his dream of paddling down a jungle river with her, one of many poems he wrote about her. Freilicher was a catalytic and consequential presence. She not only forged close friendships with this group of poets, she also served as a muse. They also regularly sought her advice for poems in progress. O'Hara wrote among his most celebrated series of poems about the artists which weaves her name into the titles. Ashbery and O’Hara both dedicated several books to her. Her friends and fellow artists included

and

.Gina Bellafonte
''A Painter Amid Friends''
New York Times. May 25, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2014. Hartigan,

and

also exhibited at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Freilicher's papers, including poetry and photographs, of her relationship with New York School writers and artists are now owned by the

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Art ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Awards

* 1974 - American Association of University Women Fellowship * 1976 - National Endowment of the Arts Grant * 1987 - Saltus Gold Medal, National Academy of Design * 1996 - Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award * 2005 - Gold Medal for Painting, American Academy of Arts and Letter

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

* Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, (12 exhibitions through 1967), 1952 * Cord Gallery, Southampton, New York, 1968 * Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1970 * John Bernard Myers Gallery, New York, 1971 * Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, 1972 * Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, 1974 * Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1975 * Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 1976 * Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1977 * Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1979 * Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, 1979

Collections

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, New York *

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

, Ohio *

Grey Art Gallery The Grey Art Gallery is New York University’s fine art museum, located on historic Washington Square Park, in New York City's Greenwich Village. As a university art museum, the Grey Art Gallery functions to collect, preserve, study, document, in ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

, New York *

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

, Washington, D.C. *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *

National Academy Museum and School 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 fi ...

, New York *

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), ...

, New York *

Utah Museum of Fine Arts The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is the region's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works ...

, Utah

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freilicher, Jane Abstract expressionist artists Abstract painters American women painters 1924 births 2014 deaths Artists from Brooklyn Brooklyn College alumni Teachers College, Columbia University alumni 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women