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About Frederick Dellenbaugh
The explorer-painter-architect was born in McConnelsville, Ohio on 13 September 1853. At the age of seventeen Dellenbaugh was hired as the artist to accompany Major John Wesley Powell’s second Colorado River expedition, a three-year project, which ended in the Grand Canyon. He returned there in 1875 when Powell was head of the U.S. Geological Survey. Dellenbaugh made further trips west, including New Mexico, Arizona, and California. These trips set the tone for his landscape paintings.
In 1882 at the Académie Julian in Paris he studied under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre but a more important influence was Carolus-Duran, a kind of juste-milieu painter who attracted many American students. He instructed them how to paint with a brush, introduced painterly realism, and encouraged personal interpretations of nature. In 1884 Dellenbaugh visited Concarneau where he could have met Edward Simmons and Alexander Harrison, among others. Further instruction in Munich reinforced he use of a sober, naturalistic palette.
In the Workshop: The Grinding Hole is one of five depictions, dated 1886 through 1888, of the workers in the Ulster Knifeworks of Ellenville, New York, a business that had moved from Sheffield, England in 1871. Dellenbaugh also worked in the nearby artists’ colony called Cragsmoor. This particular painting was presented to the artist’s mother on Christmas Day, 1887. The composition is a delicate balance of slight angles, anchored by the seated workman in the center. The naturalistic palette is nearly monochromatic and the accuracy and authenticity of the scene indicate German sources. Examples of French naturalism may come to mind as well, however the style of Frederic Ulrich (who also studied in Munich) is quite close. Two years earlier, Ulrich had painted Village Print Shop (Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago), which features a dimly lit interior, a limited range of earth tones, and an almost haphazard photographic composition; we sense that both painters refused to "prettify" reality. Dellenbaugh may have exhibited In the Workshop as The Grinder at the Boston Art Club in 1890.
Meanwhile, Dellenbaugh was actively exhibiting his other works a the National Academy of Design (1880-98), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1881-88), at the Brooklyn Art Association (1881 and 1886), and at the Boston Art Club (1890 and 1898). At the Paris Salons of 1883 and 1884 he showed several works including a subject from Concarneau, and later at the World’s Columbian Exposition On the Moquis Cliffs, Arizona (unlocated) was on display. Although his western paintings are not well known, Dellenbaugh’s published books — on Powell, Custer, and others, include North Americans of Yesterday (1901) and Romance of the Colorado River (1902). As an architect, Dellenbaugh might be called a "creative amateur" because his houses at Cragsmoor feature idiosyncracies such as windows of different sizes and impractical narrow staircases. He died in New York City on 29 January 1935.
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Paintings by Fredrick Dellenbaugh
| In the Workshop |
| oil on canvas: 25 x 32 inches |
| signed and dated 1887: lower left |
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Click Pic ture to Enlarge |
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