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About Frederic M. Grant
Frederic Milton Grant spent his youth in Sibley near the Iowa-Minnesota border, where he attended local schools and demonstrated an extraordinary talent for art. Apparently his first significant art instruction came from *John H. Vanderpoel at the *Art Institute of Chicago some time during the first decade of the twentieth century. He may also have received additional training from Alphonse Mucha who taught there from 1907 to 1909. Later Grant moved to New York where he studied under Henry B. Snell and *Jonas Lie.
It is reported that young Grant traveled to France and enrolled in the *Académie Colarossi in Paris. Grant was also a fine musician and frequently composed his own scores. In this discipline he was particularly influenced by the modern French composers. Soon after 1910 (possibly earlier) Grant also became a student of *William Merritt Chase, for in 1913 he received the Chase Prize in Venice. In Paris Grant studied informally with *Richard E. Miller, from whom he learned "much of the ornate and the exotic which he has put into his subsequent paintings" (Bulliet, 1936-A). Apparently Grant traveled a good deal in Europe during this time, but when World War I broke out in 1914, he returned to America. Settling in Chicago, he became active in the local art community.
Although the influence of Chase was still evident in his work, for the most part Grant’s style had evolved to become an interesting blend of romantic subjects rendered with a quasi-impressionist technique. His color was usually applied in large strokes of brilliant contrast, all too often resulting in a decorative artificiality. In 1916 he won the first award from the Chicago Artists Guild and the Fine Arts Building Prize in Chicago. In the following year the Art Institute of Chicago presented Grant with the Cahn and Butler Prizes. When America became involved in World War I, the artist served with the United States Navy Reserve Fleet. Resuming his activities in the Midwest, Grant worked in a variety of media including etching, watercolor, and tempera. By this time Grant’s subjects ranged from allegorical to religious to historical. Although his landscapes were unusually large and impressive in color, they were used as backdrops for a storytelling theme – only seldom did he execute pure landscapes.
As Grant continued to work through the early 1920s his eye-catching compositions received various prizes from the Art Institute. In addition to his easel pictures, Grant received numerous poster commissions in this period. In 1926, the year he won the Logan Prize, the local art critic, Maude I.G. Oliver compared his pictures and posters: "Even in an arrangement, wherein his favorite white peacock would play the leading part, evidence of poster practice in general and of ‘color surprise’ in particular is startling apparent." Judging from many of his canvases from the 1920s, one must assume that Grant abandoned his *plein-air practices to work up his large compositions in the studio. Perhaps one factor that contributed to his predilection for romantic subjects was his obsession with travel. Grant visited Europe, the Far East, and numerous spots in America, especially California. Commenting on a one-man exhibition of Grant’s work at Anderson Galleries, art critic for the Chicago Tribune Eleanor Jewett observed: "You will find the same richness of color which has always distinguished his painting, but the color has deepened and mellowed. There is the same fine use of design, the same knowledge and practice of structure, the same sure sense of arrangement that has always distinguished Mr. Grant’s pictures but, in addition, there is in these canvases a reality that vouches for the truth of the atmosphere".
Such a showing of many of Grant’s works revealed the artist’s ability to capture the essence of atmosphere as he proved in much earlier works, but nonetheless, the majority of his paintings from this period tend toward romantic artificiality and have little to do with impressionism.
Grant continued his work, using Chicago as his base throughout the early years of the Depression. As in the case of his associates, Grant’s exhibition activity decreased drastically, but
occasionally his work was seen in New York at *Grand Central Art Galleries or in Boston’s Vose Galleries. Grant lived and painted in the Chicago area until shortly after World War II when he moved to Oakland, California. Here he did not relinquish his work, exhibiting locally and sending paintings back to shows in Oak Park and River Forest, Illinois. Grant was active until his death at the age of seventy-two. |
Paintings by Frederic M. Grant
| At the Beach |
| oil on canvas: 30 x 30 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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