Paul Chidlaw (April 5, 1900April 25, 1989) was an American painter and art instructor who spent most of his career in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

Early life, studies and travels

Paul Chidlaw was born in

Cleves, Ohio Cleves is a village in Miami Township, Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, located along the Ohio River. The population was 3,234 at the 2010 census. Founded in 1818, it is named for John Cleves Symmes who lived here, laid out the original tow ...

on April 5, 1900 to Edward H. and Carolyn (Guise) Chidlaw. He resided in Cincinnati for the majority of his life. He was obsessed with the art world since the age of eight when he would get clay from the fields and creeks to make ceramics. When he was growing up in Cincinnati his aunts would take him to the Cincinnati Art Museum and they would point out the "finished" and "unfinished" works. The

Frank Duveneck Frank Duveneck (né Decker; October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919) was an American figure and portrait painter. Early life Duveneck was born in Covington, Kentucky, the son of German immigrant Bernhard Decker. Decker died in a cholera epidemic whe ...

paintings were "unfinished." He studied at the

Art Academy of Cincinnati The Art Academy of Cincinnati is a private college of art and design in Cincinnati, Ohio, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. It was founded as the McMicken School of Design in 1869, and was a department of the U ...

from 1919 to 1923. In 1927, after working as a designer for commercial firms in Cincinnati for several years, he traveled to France and studied at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau. He later moved to Paris and studied with

Jean Despujols Jean Despujols ( Salles en Gironde 19 March 1886-Shreveport, 1965) was a French, later naturalised American, painter. He was a pupil of Paul Quinsac at the école des Beaux-Arts of Bordeaux. In 1914 he won the Prix de Rome for painting but the out ...

and André Lhote. Chidlaw found that his formal academic art training was restrictive. In 1989 while reflecting on his studies in France, Chidlaw remarked: "Because of my academic training, my painting was rather reserved. I was always trying to imitate nature. I wasn't as free. I was more less in a box." Not having yet achieved renown as an artist himself, Chidlaw had to finance his stay in Paris by finding employment in a foreign exchange section at a banker's trust. After traveling extensively in Europe, Chidlaw lived in

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...

for a year.

Professional career

Chidlaw returned to Cincinnati in 1935 and taught and painted various commissions including

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

(WPA) murals under the

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...

. During World War II, he served in the

United States Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

. He taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 1947 until his retirement in 1963. After retirement, he taught drawing and painting in a studio in the Rookwood Building in Mount Adams from 1964 to 1977, when he was appointed artist-in-residence at

Edgecliff College Edgecliff College was a private Catholic women's college located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded in 1935 and merged with Xavier University, also of Cincinnati, in 1980. History The college was founded as Our Lady of Cincinnati College by t ...

. In 1979 Edgecliff awarded him an honorary doctorate. Toward the end of his life, his eyesight failed due to macular degeneration but he then turned to music to inspire his final abstract paintings.

Quotes

Recognition and legacy

His paintings include: ''At the Wailing Wall'' (an oil painting on canvas), and ''The Farm Has a Song'' (an oil painting on canvas in 1978). He painted in oil, watercolor, acrylic, etchings, pastel, charcoal and pencil. In his 1980 painting ''Boogie Woogie'', a "cheerful pastiche of color suggests a deluge of bright streamers and confetti drifting down from a pale winter sky at New Year's. The mood is upbeat and celebratory." As part of the sensory process involved in creating his art, Chidlaw used a music motif as a form. Pigments vibrated in dulcet violin tones, or reverberated as percussion, and the notes of color blended in an exultant symphony of emotion. Chidlaw felt that his use of color was one of his greatest strengths, and he gave close consideration to how colors "sounded" and mingled optically on the canvas. His colorful abstract paintings often suggested landscapes. He also was known for his calligraphy-like gesture drawings. He mentored numerous aspiring artists at the

. In 1985, the Miami University Art Museum held a major retrospective of his work entitled, ''Paul Chidlaw: Paintings and Graphics''. In 1986, the Art Academy of Cincinnati named the Chidlaw Gallery after him because they considered him to be one of the finest artists (and certainly the earliest abstract expressionist) in the 20th Century in the Cincinnati area.

Notable students

Jim Dine Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist whose œuvre extends over sixty years. Dine’s work includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, l ...

, American pop artist took classes with Chidlaw in 1953. *

Tom Wesselmann Thomas K. Wesselmann (February 23, 1931 – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture. Early years Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati. From 1949 to 1951 he atte ...

, American artist associated with the Pop Art movement

Family

Childlaw married Madge Smith, a librarian at the

Cincinnati Art Museum The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...

, in 1952. He died of heart failure on April 25, 1989 at his Hyde Park home at the age of 89. He is buried at

Spring Grove Cemetery Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum () is a nonprofit rural cemetery and arboretum located at 4521 Spring Grove Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the third largest cemetery in the United States, after the Calverton National Cemetery and Abraham ...

in Cincinnati.

References

External links

Paul Chidlaw on artnet

Paul Chidlaw on Pinterest

Paul Chidlaw on MaryRanGallery.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chidlaw, Paul Artists from Cincinnati 20th-century American painters American male painters Painters from Ohio 1900 births 1989 deaths American abstract artists American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts People from Cleves, Ohio 20th-century American male artists