Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 – September 18, 1975) was an American painter and

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

. 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 photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus. While a student at

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

, Porter majored in fine arts; he continued his studies at the Art Students' League when he moved to New York City in 1928. His studies at the Art Students' League predisposed him to produce socially relevant art and, although the subjects would change, he continued to produce realist work for the rest of his career. He would be criticized and revered for continuing his representational style in the midst of the

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

movement. His subjects were primarily

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

, domestic interiors and

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

s of family, friends and fellow artists, many of them affiliated with the New York School of writers, 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 ...

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

, and James Schuyler. Many of his paintings were set in or around the family summer house on Great Spruce Head Island, Maine and the family home at 49 South Main Street, Southampton, New York. His painterly vision, which encompassed a fascination with

nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

and the ability to reveal extraordinariness in ordinary life, was heavily indebted to the French painters

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 gr ...

and

Édouard Vuillard Jean-Édouard Vuillard (; 11 November 186821 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist, and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, Vuillard was a member of the avant garde artistic group Les Nabis, creating paintings that assembled areas ...

. John Ashbery wrote of him: "Characteristically, ortertended to prefer the late woolly Vuillards to the early ones everyone likes". Porter said once, "When I paint, I think that what would satisfy me is to express what Bonnard said Renoir told him: 'make everything more beautiful.'"

Work in public collections

Porter bequeathed about 250 of his works to the Parrish Art Museum.Spike, John T. ''Fairfield Porter: An American Classic'', p. 282-307.New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1992 * ''Laurence at the Piano'' (1953), New Britain Museum of American Art. * ''Katie and Anne'' (1955),

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

* ''Still Life with Casserole'' (1955),

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; 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 one of the world's lar ...

* ''Elaine de Kooning'' (1957),

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

* ''Frank O' Hara'' (1957), Toledo Museum of Art * ''Maine Coast'' (1958), Metropolitan Museum of Art * ''Chrysanthemums'' (1958),

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...

* ''Schwenk,'' (1959),

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

* ''Children in a Field'' (1960),

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

* ''Boathouses'' (1961), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden * ''The Garden Road'' (1962), Whitney Museum of American Art * ''Jerry at the Piano'' (1962), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden * ''Jimmy and Liz'' (1963), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts * ''The Screen Porch'' (1964), Whitney Museum of American Art * ''Flowers by the Sea'' (1965), Museum of Modern Art * ''Interior in Sunlight'' (1965),

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

* ''The Mirror'' (1966),

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art gallery, art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of A ...

* ''Anne in a Striped Dress'' (1967), Parrish Art Museum * ''Under the Elms'' (1971), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts * ''Sunrise on South Main Street'' (1973), Metropolitan Museum of Art * ''The Dock'' (1974–75), Farnsworth Art Museum * ''Near Union Square--Looking up Park Avenue'' (1975), Metropolitan Museum of Art * ''October Interior'' (1963), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art * ''Apple Blossoms I'' (1974), ''The Christmas Tree'' (1971), ''Street Scene'' (1969), Muscarelle Museum of Art "John MacWhinnie" (1968) (Parrish Art Museum) "Inez MacWhinnie" (1974)Mother of John MacWhinnie,artist (Parrish Art Museum)

References

External links

Fairfield Porter Papers Online at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Ken Moffatt, ''The Art of Fairfield Porter: An American Painter Celebrated a Sense of Place,'' 17 Feb 2010, Artes Magazine

* ttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/may/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview13?INTCMP=SRCH David Herd, ''Waiting for the mailboat (Letters of James Schuyler),'' The Guardian, 28 May 2005* Audio recording of Fairfield Porter, October 29, 1963, from Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Library,

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Porter, Fairfield 1907 births 1975 deaths Harvard University alumni American art critics 20th-century American painters American male painters American modern painters Art Students League of New York alumni People from Winnetka, Illinois 20th-century American non-fiction writers Painters from Illinois 20th-century American male artists