Lucile Blanch

Lucile E. Blanch, née Lundquist, (December 31, 1895 – October 31, 1981), was an American painter and Guggenheim Fellow. She was noted for her murals, commissioned by the government during the Great Depression years of the 1930s to create a more uplifting environment.

Lucile Blanch
Blanch in 1930
Born
Lucile E. Lundquist

(1895-12-31)December 31, 1895
Hawley, Minnesota, U.S.
DiedOctober 31, 1981(1981-10-31) (aged 85)
Kingston, New York, U.S.
EducationMinneapolis School of Art
Known forPainting

Early life and education

Lucile E. Blanch was born in 1895 in Hawley, Minnesota to Charles E. and May E. Lundquist. She was variously known as Lucille Blanch, Lucile Lunquist Blanch, Lucile Lundquist-Blanch, and Lucille Lundquist-Blanch.

Raised in rural northern Minnesota, Blanch enjoyed gardening as a child.[1] Her mother, a gifted musician, insisted on young Blanch starting strict piano lessons at age 7, though Blanch would eventually protest her lessons at 12 years old.[1] After grade school, Blanch's mother signed her up for "teachers college," which she attended briefly before writing a 12-page letter (front and back) to her parents describing her desire to go to art school.[1]

She studied on a scholarship at the Minneapolis School of Art with her future husband Arnold Blanch, and other notable artists like Harry Gottlieb and Adolf Dehn. From 1918, she studied under Boardman Robinson, as part of the Art Students League of New York.[2] She was only one of ten students in the country to be awarded full-time tuition to the Art Students League, that year.[1] She also studied with artists like Kenneth Hayes Miller, Frank Vincent DuMond and Frederick R. Gruger.[3]

While in New York, she married her husband, Arnold Blanch, and they traveled to France to continue their art studies.[2]

Career

Blanch and her husband later moved to Woodstock, New York where they helped build the Woodstock Art colony. They divorced in 1935.[4]She was friends with Eugenie Gershoy, who sculpted her at work.[5] The couple was also friends with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, sharing the same studio building and telephone in San Francisco when Arnold was appointed a teaching position and Rivera was commissioned to paint two murals in the city.[1] Blanch would remember Kahlo in her later years: "[Diego's] dear little wife--she and I became buddies...The four of us had a wonderful winter. They were very good playmates."[1]

After her move to Woodstock, New York, Blanch began exhibiting work in local group shows as well as with the New York Society of Women Artists and the Whitney Studio Club. As Lucile and her husband Arnold were building their reputation as Woodstock artists they supported themselves by selling tapestries they wove, as well as running a small cafeteria. They eventually would become key figures in the revitalization of the Woodstock Art Colony.[6]

She received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933,[7][8] and from that point on her art was collected and was shown in a number of important galleries, notably the Whitney Museum.[9][10] From 1932 to 1943, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Whitney Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. had were collecting her work.[6]

After her divorce to Arnold Blanch, Lucile taught at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida from 1935 to 1936.

In 1937, she was given a solo exhibition at the Milch Galleries.[11] Also in 1937, her work appeared in an exhibition of American oil paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Arts which showcased realistic scenes alongside surrealist and abstract work.[12] In 1939, she participated in an annual contemporary American watercolor show yet again at the Whitney Museum of American Art which included seventy artists who were invited to send two watercolor or pastel works each.[13] Later in 1939, Blanch participated in an exhibition by the American Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers - their first since 1932. The exhibition began May 16, 1939 and continued until June 10 that same year.[14]

In 1938, Blanch worked with artist Philip Evergood and George Picken in administrating the WPA Project in New York.[1]

From 1938 to 1941, Blanch was an artist-in-residence at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she continued to teach until she turned 70 in 1965.[15]

A retrospective of Blanch's long career was held at the Woodstock Artists Association in the fall of 1978, when the artist was 83 years old.[16] The exhibition was reviewed by the Woodstock Times' Dennis Drogseth, as having "admirable successes...mixed with not so admirable failures--but that these inconsistencies are a part of the creative effort."[16] Drogseth argues that, while Blanch insisted that her work remained the same over the course of her career, "...in style and approach Blanch has not been faithful to a single point of view."[16]

Murals

Murals were produced from 1934 to 1943 in the United States through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the Section of Fine Arts, of the Treasury Department. Murals were commissioned through competitions open to all artists in the United States.[17] Almost 850 artists were commissioned to paint 1371 murals, most of which were installed in post offices.[18] 162 of the artists were women. The murals were funded as a part of the cost of the construction of new post offices, with 1% of the cost set aside for artistic enhancements.[18]

In 1938 Lucile Blanch painted an oil on canvas WPA commissioned mural titled ''Osceola Holding Informal Court with His Chiefs in the United States post office in Fort Pierce, Florida. The mural is on display at Fort Pierce City Hall.[19] In the town of Appalachia, Virginia, she painted the mural Appalachia, also oil on canvas in 1940.[20] The tempera mural, Rural Mississippi-from Early Days to Present was completed in 1941 for the Tylertown, Mississippi post office. In addition, she painted murals in the post offices of Flemingsburg, Kentucky and Sparta, Georgia.[21] The Flemingsburg mural was completed in 1943 as an oil on canvas, titled Crossing to the Battle of Blue Licks,[22] while the Sparta post office project consisted of three panels. The oils on canvas depicted an antebellum plantation house, the granite quarry near Sparta and the third showed local Hancock County scenery.[23]

Death

She died in 1981 in Kingston, New York.

Style

Blanch began her career focusing on realist subjects, but she increasingly became an abstractionist.[10] By 1928, Blanch's style was set apart by color and humor. Her choice of subject at this time coming primarily from circus performers and animals shown depicted in bright spot lighting.[24]

Awards

In 1931, Blanch was awarded Medal of First Award for Graphic Arts at San Francisco Art Association's annual exhibit.[11]

In 1933, Blanch was given a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to enable creative work in painting abroad for one year. The average monetary value of the fellowships given that year were $2,500 each.[25]

In 1934, received a prize for her work at the Wanamaker Regional Exhibition in New York.

  • Blanch in her studio, 1940

References
  1. Drogseth, Dennis (September 14, 1978). "An interview with Lucile Blanch: 'I felt I wanted the composition to reach outward, make it arrive within the consciousness'". Woodstock Times. pp. 10–11.
  2. "Lucile Blanch Show a Total Retrospective". Kingston Daily Freeman. Kingston, New York. August 7, 1971. p. 27. Archived from the original on April 23, 2019. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  3. "Lucile Blanch/American Art". americanart.si.edu. Smithsonian Art Museum. Archived from the original on January 21, 2015. Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  4. Ann Lee Morgan (June 27, 2007). "Blanch, Arnold". The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists. Oxford University Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-19-802955-7. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved July 19, 2013.
  5. "Lucile Blanch by Eugenie Gershoy / American Art". Americanart.si.edu. Archived from the original on April 26, 2014. Retrieved July 26, 2013.
  6. "Lucile Blanch". Papillon Gallery. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
  7. "Lucile Blanch - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Gf.org. August 22, 1933. Archived from the original on June 2, 2013. Retrieved July 26, 2013.
  8. "Biography for Lucile Blanch". Askart.com. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  9. "Lucile Blanch". Papillon Gallery. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
  10. Crump, Robert (2009). "Lucile Lunquist Blanch". Minnesota prints and printmakers, 1900-1945. Minnesota Historical Society. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-87351-635-8. Archived from the original on February 2, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2020.
  11. Heller, Jules; Heller, Nancy (1995). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities.
  12. "100 Artists Have Oils in Whitney Museum Show". New York Herald Tribune. November 11, 1937.
  13. "Whitney Museum Opens Annual Watercolor Show". New York Herald Tribune. February 22, 1939.
  14. "Painters and Gravers Open Exhibit Tomorrow". New York Herald Tribune. May 15, 1939.
  15. Jaffe, Jody (1971). "Lifetime of art goes on view". Life.
  16. Drogseth, Dennis (September 14, 1978). "Blanch upstairs, collage show downstairs at WAA". Woodstock Times. p. 10.
  17. Rediscovering the People's Art: New Deal Murals in Pennsylvania’s Post Offices Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine". Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission: 2014.
  18. University of Central Arkansas. "Arkansas Post Office Murals Archived January 15, 2019, at the Wayback Machine".
  19. "Florida WPA Art". WPAmurals.com. Archived from the original on November 8, 2014. Retrieved December 16, 2014.
  20. "Browse New Deal projects by State and City". livingnewdeal.org. Living New Deal. Archived from the original on February 6, 2015. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
  21. Fazio, Michael W.; Parrish, William E.; Blackwell, Tomas; Franks, Curtis (October 1, 1979). "Four Building Act of 1926 Post Offices and Thirty-Two Public Works Administration Post Offices "Mississippi Post Offices Thematic Resources, 1931-1941."" (PDF). National Park Service. Starkville, Mississippi: United States Department of the Interior. p. 11. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 12, 2016. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  22. "Post Office Mural-Flemingsburg KY". Living New Deal. Berkeley, California: University of California. 2016. Archived from the original on March 23, 2015. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  23. "Mercer's Artist in Residence" (PDF). The Mercer Cluster. Macon, Georgia. April 30, 1965. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 29, 2016. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  24. Appleton Read, Helen (1928). "Features: Contemporary Art: The work of the Younger Generation". Vogue.
  25. "Guggenheim Fund Announces Award of 38 Fellowships: 29 Go to Writers, Artists, and Research Workers in United States". New York Herald Tribune. March 27, 1933.


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