Robert Beck (born October 17, 1950) is an American

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

and writer. He is best known for his

plein air ''En plein air'' (; French for 'outdoors'), or ''plein air'' painting, is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look. The theory of 'En plein air' painting ...

paintings of scenes in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania (particularly the New Hope area);

Jonesport, Maine Jonesport is a town in Washington County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,245 at the 2020 census. Jonesport is a fishing and lobstering town. It contains the villages or hamlets of Jonesport, Mason Bay, Monsapec, and West Jonesport. ...

; and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, typically in multiple-painting series.

Background

Beck was born in Teaneck, New Jersey on October 17, 1950, to Dorothy and Charles Beck. He was the youngest of three children. His family moved to Chalfont, Pennsylvania in 1964. Beck left a career in the business world to pursue painting, and at the age of 40 attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia for two years as a part time student, while also working as a portrait painter.

Painting

Beck’s style suggests a mix of “Impressionist brushwork with a Realist’s eye for the telling detail to create paintings that capture both the look and the personality of his subject...There is a through line that extends from

Edward Redfield Edward Willis Redfield (December 18, 1869 – October 19, 1965) was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his impressionist scenes of the New Hope area ...

capturing a landscape on-site in one day and Beck’s similar approach to other aspects of the Bucks County landscape.” He refers to his plein air painting as "documentary" painting. Gallery director Richard Rosenfeld wrote,“Sometimes Beck refers to himself as a documentary painter. Realistic accuracy is a powerful element in his work, but the term documentary suggests an objectivity, a detachment that belies what he does. Rather his works depict how he feels about a particular place at a particular time using great finesse in not crossing the line into expressionism and violating verisimilitude.” Beck is known for painting in series – multiple images addressing diverse aspects of the same subject. These “visual essays” began with a series in Lambertville, New Jersey, that led to an exhibition of 50 small paintings, "Lambertville Portfolio," that was presented at the Rago Arts and Auction Center in 1998. Its success led to two more annual exhibitions there, before Beck opened his own studio/gallery in the town in 1999. Beck’s painting series include work created while traveling the Mississippi River on a towboat pushing barges, a month-long trip through the American West, portraits of contemporary artists in the New Hope, Pennsylvania Arts Colony, amidst a symphony orchestra during its performances, with a racing team in Europe, and traveling with surgeons in Senegal. For more than 20 years he has painted scenes of life in the Maine maritime community, a majority of which were painted in Jonesport. Beck’s studio work reveals a more nuanced approach to painting where the work is often more thoughtful and less dramatic. While his plein air work often exhibit short, sharp brushstrokes in an almost frenetic attempt to capture his subject at the moment, his studio paintings have a much more tranquil surface, which allows him to veer “away from Realism and toward the poetic suggestiveness of Symbolism.”

Exhibitions

Beck had exhibited regularly in solo and group shows since 1988. His work has been the subject of three solo museum exhibitions beginning in 2007 with an exhibit at Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie (''Love's Notions and Novelties'', 2007). His second focused on his Maine paintings at the

Maine Maritime Museum Maine Maritime Museum, formerly the Bath Marine Museum, offers some exhibits about Maine's maritime heritage, culture and the role Maine has played in regional and global maritime activities. Maine Maritime Museum has a large and diverse collecti ...

in 2016. In 2021, the

James A. Michener Art Museum The Michener Art Museum is a private, non-profit museum that is located in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1988, it was named for the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer James A. Michener, a Doylestown resident. Situated within ...

organized a career spanning retrospective, ''It’s Personal: The Art of Robert Beck''. Beck's work has been presented in 30 solo gallery exhibitions, including the

National Arts Club The National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and members club on Gramercy Park, Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1898 by Charles DeKay, an art and literary critic of the ''New York Times'' to "stimulate, foster, and promote public ...

(''Iconic Manhattan'', 2012), the Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia (''Philadelphia Heartbeat'', 2011),''Robert Beck Philadelphia Heartbeat'' (Exhibition Catalog). October 2011. the Morpeth Gallery, Pennington and Hopewell, NJ (1997–99); also in solo and joint exhibitions at the Gallery of Robert Beck (2000-2016). His paintings have been included in invitational exhibitions at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (''Second Time Around'', 2014), the James A. Michener Museum (''Local Mill Makes Good'', 2014; ''Art and the River'', 2008, ''New Hope Arts'' (Continuum, 2012), the Gratz Gallery (''Now & Then'', 2010), Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (''American Artists'', 2006), The Phillips Mill 75th Anniversary Retrospective (2004), and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (''The Unbroken Line'', 1997).His most recent invited group exhibitions include
The Work of Art: Museum Collecting Unpacked
' (James Michener Art Museum, 2022) and
Don’t Feed the Art: Woodmere’s Animal Menagerie
' (Woodmere Art Museum, 2022).

Awards and Affiliations

Beck has won many awards and honors for his work including: * Medal of Honor for Excellence and Contribution to the Arts, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 2014 * Elected Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists (2020) * Honored Legacy Artist, New Hope Arts (2018) * Honored Artist, Phillips Mill Annual Juried Exhibition (2017) * Elected member of the Salmagundi Club (2019) * Emerson Prize, Woodmere Museum of Art (1997) * Mary Butler Award, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Fellowship (2001) * Finalist,

Pew Fellowship in the Arts The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a nonprofit grantmaking organization and knowledge-sharing hub for arts and culture in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US established in 2005. In 2008, Paula Marincola was named the first executive director. Th ...

(2000) * Woodmere Prize, Woodmere Museum of Art (1999) * Lawrence Stein Memorial Award, Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie (2021) * Frances D. Bergman Memorial Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1991)

Writing

Beck has been a columnist for ICON magazine since 2005. His essays appear under the heading “A Thousand Words” and he pairs a painting with each column. His essays address his life as an artist, describing techniques, environment, and issues involved in creating an image, but also issues that surround his subject. For the artist, “essay and its image represent two dimensions of the same subject, One goes deep, the other goes wide. The painting relies on the viewer’s recollection and experiences, while the writing goes beyond the picture frame and expands the narrative.” Fifty of Beck's essays and paintings are collected in ''A Thousand Words: Essays and Paintings by Robert Beck'' published by the James A. Michener Art Museum as a companion to its retrospective exhibition on Beck’s paintings.

Collections

Robert Beck's paintings can be found in many private and public collections. A select list of public collections include: James A Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, Pa) Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia, Pa)

(Bath, ME)

(NYC)

Penn Museum The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...

(Philadelphia, Pa.) Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie (Trenton, NJ) Grundy Museum (Bristol, Pa)

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

(Philadelphia, Pa) Delaware Valley University (Doylestown, Pa) DownEast Institute for Applied Research (University of Maine) Philadelphia School District Board of Education (Philadelphia, Pa) New Hope/Solebury School District (Bucks County, Pa)

Campbell Soup Company Campbell Soup Company, trade name, doing business as Campbell's, is an American processed food and snack company. The company is most closely associated with its flagship canned soup products; however, through mergers and acquisitions, it has gro ...

(Camden, NJ)

Other Work

In 1994 Beck was elected president of

ArtsBridge ArtsBridge is a university scholarship program in the United States created by Lawrence University president Jill Beck in April 1996 when she was dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine The University ...

, an artist support organization with over 400 members in Lambertville, New Jersey. The same year, he began a term on the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Fellowship, and served through 1995. Beck has continually taught advanced painting at a variety of schools, including The Lawrenceville School, The Flemington Art School, and Artworks Trenton, as well as in his own studio since 1995. In 1995 Beck supported a local AIDS support organization by painting a fundraiser while it happened, and the organization auctioned the work at the end of the evening. Beck has supported numerous organizations in a similar fashion such Fisherman's Mark, the

American Cancer Society The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. Established in 1913, the society is organized into six geographical regions of both medical and lay volunteers operating in more than ...

, the Riverside Symphonia, and the James A. Michener Art Museum. Beck is frequently asked to lecture on art at colleges, universities, museums, and art organizations. In 2008, he worked closely with Michael Raphael on the design of his home and studio. The home would win the Bucks County AIA Honor Award–Residential Award. In 2009, Beck began a two year stint as the host of ''The River'', a two hour radio interview program on WDVR-FM in

Sergeantsville, New Jersey Sergeantsville is a historic unincorporated community located within Delaware Township, in Hunterdon County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Sergeantsville was first settled by a Mr. Thatcher in 1700, and was later named for Charles Sergeant ...

where he spoke with a wide range of guests from a former Secretary of the Navy to the Director of Campbell Soup’s Test Kitchen.David Leopold, ''It’s Personal: The Art of Robert Beck'' (Doylestown, PA: James A. Michener Art Museum, 2021) p.96 ISBN 978-1-879636-02-6

References

External links

Robert Beck
– the artist's website.
Michener Museum
– Robert Beck.
Salmagundi Club listing

Filmmaker Bob Krist's short film, ''Robert Beck: Over East''

''State of the Arts'' short film on Robert Beck
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beck, Robert 1950 births American artists Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Living people People from Teaneck, New Jersey