The Art Students League of New York at 150
When First Lady Michelle Obama sought a painter for her official White House portrait in 2016, she took much the same course as the city of Chicago did in 1885 when it needed a monument commemorating Abraham Lincoln: she consulted the faculty of the Art Students League of New York. From Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Sharon Sprung, for 150 years the League has counted the finest artists in the world among its faculty. The group of students that founded the school in 1875 determined to retain this extraordinary level of educators—a central mission that alone settles the school’s place as one of the world’s great art instruction institutions. But what’s really special about the League is not its faculty, but its student access to that faculty. The League grants no degrees, has no admissions requirements, and maintains an exceptionally affordable tuition on a rolling enrollment basis. Today as in 1875, the League makes its world-class faculty available to all.
The League was founded by artists hungry for technical knowledge in a country that had, in the late nineteenth century, only a few schools for disseminating that knowledge. In 1874, the most prominent of these—the National Academy—was forced to temporarily suspend classes. Rumors of financial ruin that this interruption generated were unfounded, but nonetheless the disenfranchised students banded together to find an alternative way to hire their favorite teachers for lessons in small classes. These displaced instructors were able to leverage their own terms: rather than to teach in the manner the Academy had determined, the off-duty Academicians were allowed to run their own studios as they saw fit at the Art Students League. The early League was in essence a dozen tiny art schools under one roof. This was a fine stop-gap, but there were hurdles to the League’s long-term stability—not least, the League didn’t have an actual roof to throw over its vaunted faculty: it shared space with the American Fine Arts Society, the Society of American Artists, and the Architectural League (hence the grand engraving on the building’s facade alluding to architecture, which has not been offered in a century or more).
By the time the National Academy was back in business, the League’s stop-gap design had taken root as a viable adjunct to the more conservative Academy. Daniel Chester French,[i] Thomas Eakins[ii] and Augustus Saint-Gaudens[iii] joined the faculty— passionate educators who relished the freedom from oversight in their studios, they were also among the most celebrated artists in America. As young painters jockeyed to join their ill-ventilated classrooms, the League eclipsed the other groups with whom it by then shared a space. The 1892 Beaux Arts building that housed the League and three sister organizations became the League’s exclusive property. When lecturer and landscape master George Inness died in 1894,[iv] his memorial exhibition was held in the galleries of the Art Students League in its permanent home on 57th Street.[v]
Scrambling for easel position in the early morning to spend many silent hours painting a motionless model in an under-ventilated, windowless room—this discipline is available to all, but it is not for everyone. This is the central paradox that powers the League: it offers students
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Jules Bastien LePage, 1880
nothing but exceptional instruction, and it requires of them nothing but a passion for excellence. That compact has produced an enormous, dynamic, and highly-engaged student body that in turn has guided the hiring of the most dynamic and engaging artist-teachers—and unsurprisingly, it has attracted the exceptional personalities that might not flourish in a more structured setting— whether because they are women or people of color or social outsiders that fit poorly into the constraints of the academic system. The atelier organization of the school is centuries old, but socially, pedagogically, and aesthetically, the League has always been cutting edge. This led, in the earliest days, to extraordinary careers like that of Harriet W. Frishmuth,[vi] an Olympic sculptor who studied under Gutzon Borglum.
At the turn of the century, the League brought on painters who had studied Impressionism alongside Claude Monet. William Merritt Chase,[vii] Frank Vincent DuMond[viii] and Childe Hassam[ix] transmitted French Independent technique to a generation of realist painters in their studios and through the League’s plein air classes during the summer recess. Young American painters took the maulstick and ran with it. Perhaps the League’s first “house style,” a sooty urban
realism rendered in Impressionist strokes, crystallized around the classes of Robert Henri. That lineage that would encompass the instruction of Everett Shinn[x] and Guy Pène du Bois[xi] and continue through in the studios of Thomas Hart Benton,[xii] John Sloan,[xiii] Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and George Grosz.[xiv]
Alongside this evolution, a revolution was brewing on 57th Street. Alfred Stieglitz’s lieutenant Abraham Walkowitz was studying alongside Georgia O’Keeffe, while Stuart Davis and Man Ray toiled down the hall. When the epochal Armory Show presented Modernism to American eyes in 1913, League artists were well-represented in its ranks. Some of the faculty cheered the revolution, while Kenyon Cox[xv]—the artist who designed the League’s logo—panned the rise of abstract art as a fad. But the seed was planted—and just as the founding students demanded the finest of 1875, in the years between the World Wars, the League became a potboiler of radical modernism.
Max Weber[xvi] studied with Matisse and George Grosz at the Bauhaus, and the instruction he brought to New York exploded the idea of what art could be for a whole generation of painters: Milton Avery,[xvii] Mark Rothko,[xviii] James Rosenquist,[xix] and Louise Nevelson.[xx] Jackson Pollock, the League’s most famous alum, didn’t really thrive at the League. It was all the training he had, and it connected him to the most important mentors in his life—Thomas Hart Benton and Stuart Davis—but he only became “Jack the Dripper” after he found his way out of the League.
After the war, the League experienced a perfect collision of its two impulses. Recipients of GI Bill benefits were able to apply their scholarships to the League in spite of its continued conference of
Childe Hassam, Harriet Jones, 1919
Max Weber, The Sugar Bowl, 1909
no degrees—and this afforded thousands of veterans the opportunity to study radical modern art in the legitimizing setting. Vets could study at the Sorbonne, but many preferred 57th Street: New York had arrived as an artistic capital, and the ascending king, Jackson Pollock, was its rising star. The exploding enrollment was a mixed blessing: this is when its beautiful Beaux Arts gallery with skylights was converted into two big classrooms to house the glut of new students. William Zorach’s[xxi] circle of Woodstock-colony artists donated land for a small campus upstate. As was becoming typical of the League’s infrastructural planning, the ad hoc solution was designed to be a temporary fix, but it didn’t turn out that way: enrollment soared for decades, and the gallery has never been reclaimed. Diversity was also up: because the army was racially integrated, GIbill beneficiaries were, too. Romare Bearden,[xxii] Norman Lewis, Joseph Delaney were leading Black alums and instructors at the League, and after the war, an increasingly diverse student body flowed into the school.
The social diversity was mirrored by a visual diversity. The school continued to offer traditional courses in life-drawing and portraiture, but as the wide-ranging aesthetics of modernists, social realists, illustrators, abstractionists and even conceptual artists came to feel at home in the big tent, the student body demanded and received instruction in pioneering contemporary art across the spectrum. Cy Twombly,[xxiii] Robert Rauschenberg, and Donald Judd rubbed elbows, while traditionalists whose paintings would not have offended still haunted the League’s halls.
The last quarter of the century made New York strange to itself. The “Ford to City: Drop Dead” years saw cultural institutions faltering left and right: Central Park was a place to get mugged, the Yankees nearly decamped for New Jersey, and Carnegie Hall passed the hat to hold onto its building. Amid a hallowing midtown, the League’s building, a few blocks away from Carnegie Hall, was a time machine. Tuition had not risen in decades, and the century-old skylights of the gallery could not be repaired with the dwindling revenue. By 1980, the League had shuttered its upstate campus in Woodstock, and was subsidizing every student’s bargain-basement tuition from the League’s dwindling endowment. Laurie Goulet[xxiv] and Will Barnet[xxv] drew out the League’s separate legacies of Matissean color and sober realism—but without the surprising bequest from Vaclav Vytlacil,[xxvi] the League’s finances would have faced existential dilemmas. As it happened, the century ended with a new campus upstate.
What makes the League an icon of the world instruction and not just New York’s or America’s is that it is a magnet globally. If you want to come to New York on a Student Visa, you need to be enrolled as a student, so the League has developed one certificate for international students to comply with the Visa regulations. Ironic for an institution that grants no degrees, but this means that, while a chunk of students can walk to class from their homes, the hallways are today filled with the sound of many international languages. Any attempt to characterize the house style of the League today would be an effort in vain: its recent alums include conceptualists Ai Weiwei,[xxvii] abstract painter Larry Poons,[xxviii] and portraitist Sharon Sprung.[xxix] The League is embracing a sequential art program, conceptual art classes, crit-based classes like the top MFA programs, and beyond. It has to: just as the origins of the institution were in serving the needs of the National Academy, with the National Academy a shadow of itself, the needs of art students today are as pressing as ever.
What remains is that the student body and the teachers at the League embrace its founding values: art is for everyone, and its perfection is incredibly difficult. The model still poses, and artists still jockey for best easel position, toil in sweaty silence to chase the impossible—but the League has always been elastic in its response to the needs of its students.
After all, it is a league of students.
—Jonathan Spies
Jonathan Spies is a former student of Joseph Peller, Board Member, and Life Member of the Art Students League. His article, “The Dream Ball Comes Home,” will appear in the forthcoming 150 Stories from the Art Students League of New York.
Footnotes
[i] Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), famous for Washington D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial statue, taught at the League in 1890 and again in 1898.
[ii] Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) began teaching at the League in the 1880s.
[iii] Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) is represented here by his portrait of the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), himself famous to New Yorkers for his Joan of Arc in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
[iv] George Inness (1825-1894) taught at the League sporadically in the
[v] The American Fine Arts Society still exists as a shell organization that nominally runs owns the League’s building, but it exists only on paper.
[vi] Harriet Frishmuth (1880-1980) studied under Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, at the League after studies in Paris under Rodin.
[vii] William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) began teaching at the League in 1898; his pupil, Georgia O’Keeffe, produced her earliest mature works in his atelier.
[viii] Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1951) studied at the League from 1884-1889 before teaching classes of his own. His instruction at the League would last five decades, touching the careers of such luminaries as Georgia O’Keeffe and Norman Rockwell.
[ix] Childe Hassam (1859-1935) taught at the League from December 1898 to May 1899, “probably,” writes Lisa Miller in Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, “‘The Subject that I am Known For’: Hassam’s Pursuit of a Legacy” (1992), “filling in for the absent Frank Duveneck.”
[x] Everett Shinn (1876-1953) battled with Anthony Comstock during his time at the League, calling the antiVice crusader a “moral mothball” after one of his raids on the League’s offices.
[xi] Guy Pène du Bois (1889-1958) taught at the League in 1935 and opened his own school around the same time.
[xii] Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) taught at the League from 1926 until his embittered break with the New York art scene in 1935.
[xiii] John Sloan (1871-1951) began teaching in 1914 and served as the League’s president over his two decades at the school.
[xiv] George Grosz (1893-1959) took his post after the League’s president, John Sloan, petitioned for Grosz’s hire. Sloan’s pleas were rebuffed by the League’s board, however, and Sloan resigned in angry protest. Grosz was hired the very next year.
[xv] Kenyon Cox (1856-1919) painted the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most famous portrait of Saint-Gaudens and followed him as a great instructor—as well as a vocal critic of the “willful caprice” of early abstract art.
[xvi] Max Weber (1881-1961) would be a meteoric influence on American modernism for his own work as well as his years of instruction at the League, which began in 1919.
[xvii] Avery (1885-1965) studied at the League in the late 1920s and ‘30s.
[xviii] Mark Rothko (1903-1970) studied alongside Jackson Pollock with Stuart Davis and Max Weber.
[xix] James Rosenquist (1933-2017) studied under Grosz beginning in 1955.
[xx] Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller, Hans Hofmann, and George Grosz beginning in the 1930s.
[xxi] William Zorach (1887-1966) taught at the League beginning in 1929.
[xxii] Romare Bearden (1911-1988 arrived began his studies under Grosz in 1936; Lewis (1909–1979) taught at the League himself and Joseph Delaney (1904-1991) cited his teacher, Thomas Hart Benton, as a central figure in his work.
[xxiii] Cy Twombly (1928-2011) studied alongside Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) in the late 1940s.
[xxiv] Laurie Goulet (1925-2021) transmitted the ideas of her teacher Anni Albers to the League in her classes from 1981 to 2004.
[xxv] Will Barnet (1911-2012) began taking classes in 1930 under Stuart Davis before joining the faculty in 1936.
[xxvi] Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) took a permanent post at the League in 1946, teaching a generation of artists to light the brightest marquee: Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Knox Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly, and Tony Smith, among perhaps thousands of others.
[xxvii] Ai Weiwei (b. 1955) studied at the League in the 1990s.
[xxviii] Larry Poons (b. 1937) began teaching at the League in 1966.
[xxix] Sharon Sprung (b. 1953) studied at the League in 1975 and joined its faculty in 2004.
George Inness (1825-1894)
Porto D’Anzio, Italy, 1872
Oil on board
9 3/4 x 12 7/8 inches
Signed lower left: G. Inness
John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902)
Coney Island: From Brighton Pier, c. 1879-80
Oil on canvas
14 x 24 1/4 inches
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)
The Jester (Sketch of the Court Jester), 1875
Oil on panel 15 x 9 inches
Signed lower right
John White Alexander (1856-1915)
Contemplation, c. 1900
Oil on canvas laid down on panel
39 x 25 inches
Hermon Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947)
Indian Girl with Papoose, 1896
Bronze, brown patina
16 1/8 x 7 x 6 5/8 inches
Signed: H. a. MacNeil / Sc.
Inscribed on base: ROMAN BRONZE WORKS N.Y.
Inscribed on underside: No.1
Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919)
Study of a Girl Oil on canvas
7 x 6 inches
George Inness (1825-1894)
Near Montclair, 1882-85
Oil on artists board
20 x 16 inches
Signed lower right: G. Inness
Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1951)
The Train Trestle
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches
Signed lower left
F. Luis Mora (1874-1940)
Market Segovia, c. 1905
Oil on artists board
7 3/8 x 9 1/4 inches
Signed lower right: F. Luis Mora
Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984)
Woman Reading in an Interior, c. 1915
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed lower right
36 x 27 inches
Robert Lewis Reid (1862-1929)
Woman in a Forest Glade
Oil on canvas
Luigi Lucioni (1900-1988)
Vermont Landscape with Trees, 1936
Oil on board
20 x 15 7/8 inches
Signed and dated lower left and inscribed indistinctly verso
Paul Manship (1885-1966)
Spear Thrower, 1921
Bronze, black over dark green patina
20 1/8 x 18 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches
Signed and dated on base: PAUL MANSHIP / © 1921
Numbered: No. 14
Inscribed on base: ROMAN BRONZE WORKS N-Y
Paul Manship (1885-1966)
Europa and the Bull, sketch, 1922
Bronze, dark brown patina
4 1/8 x 5 7/8 x 2 7/8 inches
Signed on base: Paul M / 1925
Robert Henri (1865-1929)
Sketch of Betalo, Nude, c. 1916
Oil on panel
19 3/4 x 23 5/8 inches
Signed lower right, inscribed "117K" on verso
Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930)
Near Provincetown
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 1/4 inches
Signed and inscribed "TO MY FRIEND RILLINGIK" lower left
Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958)
Seaside (Amagansett Beach), 1939
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed and dated lower left: Guy Pène du Bois '39
Artist label on the reverse: "Seaside CAT No 192"
Harriet W. Frishmuth (1880-1980)
Sweet Grapes, 1927-1928
Bronze with greenish-brown patina
18 3/4 x 4 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches
Inscribed on back of base:
© HARRIET W. FRISHMUTH / 1928
Inscribed on back of base: GORHAM CO FOUNDERS QGAF
Harriet W. Frishmuth (1880-1980)
Longing, 1929
Bronze, dark brown patina
15 3/4 x 4 3/4 x 5 3/8 inches
Signed and dated on base: HARRIET W. FRISHMUTH 1929
Stamped on base: Gorham Co. Founders / QHBV
Everett Shinn (1876-1953)
Woman on a Staircase, Sketch, circa 1935
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 inches
Signed on the reverse: E. SHINN
Everett Shinn (1876-1953)
Carriage, Paris, 1900
Watercolor and soft pencil on paper
4 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches
Signed and inscribed: Everett Shinn 1900 / Paris, France
Reginald Marsh (1898-1954)
Tugboat at Dock, c. 1937
Watercolor and pencil on paper
13 3/4 x 20 inches
Signed lower right
Reginald Marsh (1898-1954)
Traffic Post, 14th Street, 1952
Oil on masonite
48 x 12 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975)
Ten Pound Hammer, 1965
Bronze, brown patina
10 x 11 x 8 inches
Signed on base: © Benton ‘65
Inscribed on base: For Harry Jackson / Tom
Arnold Blanch (1896-1968)
The People, 1938
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches
Signed lower right
Henry Gasser (1909-1981)
Road to the Sea, c. 1940
Oil on canvas
25 x 29 1/4 inches
Signed lower right: Henry Gasser
Fletcher Martin (1904-1979)
Lunch Break, c. 1940
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 37 3/8 inches
Signed lower right
Fletcher Martin (1904-1979)
Sleigh Ride, Woodstock, New York, c. 1955
Watercolor on paper
14 x 11 inches
Signed lower right
Ernest Fiene (1894-1965)
Along the Kanahawa River, West Virginia, 1936
Oil on canvas
26 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Ernest Fiene (1894-1965)
China Town, 1925
Watercolor on paper
18 1/2 x 14 5/8 inches
Signed and dated to lower right ‘Ernest Fiene 1925’
George Grosz (1893-1959)
Newspaper Seller, New York, 1932
Watercolor on paper | 25 5/8 x 18 1/8 in.
Signed lower right: GROSZ
Inscribed lower center: Newspaper / 32 Street Scene
George Grosz (1893-1959)
Tanzfeier, c. 1922
Ink on paper
13 7/8 x 10 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Kimon Nicolaides (1891-1938)
Energy Manifestation #4, 1933
Oil on canvas
30 x 24 inches
Signed and dated lower left
Hananiah Harari (1912-2000)
Abstract Street (Untitled), 1939
Oil on canvas
12 x 32 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Charles Alston (1907-1977)
Landscape with Hills, c. 1940
Watercolor on paper
13 1/2 x 18 1/4 inches
Signed lower right
Will Foote (1874-1965)
View of Arizona Desert near Wickenberg, c. 1927
Oil on artist's board
12 x 16 inches
Signed lower center, titled and dated on the reverse
Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997)
Untitled, 1956
Oil on canvas
54 x 48 inches
Signed lower left
William Scharf (1927-2018)
Tropic of Crucifix, 1957
Oil on canvas
40 x 47 inches
Signed and dated on the reverse
William Scharf (1927-2018)
Untitled, 1962
Oil on canvas
48 x 50 inches
Signed lower left; signed and dated verso
Anthony Padovano (1933-2023)
Abstraction, 1962
Steel & bronze, mounted to period travertine marble base
8 5/8 x 9 x 3 1/4 inches, base 2 1/8 inches
Overall height: 10 3/4 inches
Signed and dated: PADOVANO 1962
Carl Holty (1900-1973)
Abstract Composition #1, 1961
Oil on canvas laid down on board
11 1/2 x 9 inches
Signed lower right: Holty
Jose de Creeft (1884-1982)
Ecstasy, 1956
Alabaster
14 3/4 x 11 1/2 x 10 inches
Signed, rear: J de Creeft
Lorrie Goulet (1925-2021)
Elysium, 2000
Alabaster
20 x 24 x 11 inches
Signed: GOULET
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)
Barns and Silos in New Jersey, 1985
Oil on canvas
28 x 34 inches
Signed lower center
Alice Neel (1900-1984)
The Family, 1982
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper
Sheet 31 1/2 x 27 inches
AP 20/25
Signed and dated lower right and numbered "AP 20/25" lower left in pencil
Kikuo Saito (1939-2016)
Seven Causeways, 1977
Acrylic on canvas
22 x 93 inches
Signed and dated on the reverse
Al Loving (1935-2005)
Have a Nice Day, 1992
Mailbox, acrylic paint, rag paper
8 1/2 H x 6 1/2 inches W x 18 3/4 D inches
Also included in the exhibition:
George Bellows (1882-1925)
Business-Men's Class, Y.M.C.A., 1916
Lithograph on wove paper
11 1/2 x 17 1/8 inches
Edition of 64
Arnold Blanch (1896-1968)
Nude
Oil on board
20 x 16 inches
Signed lower right
John F. Carlson (1874-1945)
Forest Landscape, c. 1925
Watercolor on paper
Sight: 21 x 24 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (1858-1923)
Summer Landscape
Oil on board
11 x 15 inches
Signed lower right
Edward Dufner (1872-1957)
Sunlight and Shade, c. 1920
Oil on artist board
9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches
Signed upper right
Ethel Edwards (1914-1999)
Moth
Mixed media on board
30 x 40 inches
William Gambini (1918-2010)
Flying Eagle, 1959
Oil on panel
8 3/4 x 14 inches
Signed, titled, dated on the reverse
George Grosz (1893-1959)
In The Streets, 1922
Ink on paper
11 1/4 x 8 7/8 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Childe Hassam (1859-1935)
Harriet Jones, 1919
Oil on board
10 x 6 inches
Signed and titled verso
Charles Hinman (b. 1932)
Alizarin Orionids, 2003
Watercolor on paper
12 x 12 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966)
Hurrah for the new gallery, 1959
Oil on paperboard
22 x 26 inches
Signed & dedicated "To Sam & Jane Kootz"
George Inness (1825-1894)
A Cloudy Day, 1886
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches
Signed and dated lower center
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)
Dark Diagonal, 2012
Pastel on paper
9 x 12 inches
Signed lower center
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)
Summer Studio, 2012
Pastel on paper
9 x 11 1/2 inches
Signed lower center
Rockwell Kent (1882-1971)
Figure Study
Ink on paper
6 x 10 inches
Estate stamped lower right
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)
The Capture of Marmelade, 1987
Color screenprint on paper
32 x 22 inches | AP 1/30
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered
Hayley Lever (1876-1958)
Floral Still Life with Two Apples
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches
Signed lower right
Knox Martin (1923-2022)
Untitled
Acrylic and gold foil on canvas
9 x 9 inches
Signed lower edge
George Picken (1898-1971)
The Octagon at Blackwell's Island, 1928
Oil on canvas
22 x 27 inches
Signed lower right
Paul Resika (b. 1928)
Roses, 1988
Oil on canvas
21 1/2 x 18 inches
Signed lower right
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907)
Jules Bastien LePage, 1880
Bronze
14 1/4 x 10 1/8 inches
Max Weber (1864-1920)
The Sugar Bowl, 1909
Watercolor and gouache on paper
mounted on board
6 7/8 x 5 3/4 inches
Signed and dated lower right
