Eugene Speicher

American, 1883 - 1962

(not assigned)New York, New York, USA

SchoolLandscape, still life

BiographyEugene Speicher was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1883, and began his training as an artist at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. In 1907 he moved to New York to study with Frank Vincent DuMond and William Merritt Chase at The Art Students League. Perhaps his strongest influence came from evening classes taught by Robert Henri. Speicher's first successful portrait, which won The Art Students League Kelley Prize in 1908, was of fellow student Georgia O'Keeffe. After a year abroad to study in the great museums and galleries of Europe, Speicher returned to embark on his artistic career, finding quick financial success in portraiture. Among his celebrated clients were the actress Catherine Cornell (as Cordelia), socialites Mrs. C.V. Whitney and Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, artists Henry Emerson Tuttle and Paul Rohland, and the industrialist A. Conger Goodyear. Speicher, however, limited himself to less than eight portrait commissions a year, preferring to explore his own aesthetic interests.
In 1936, Esquire magazine named Speicher "America's most important living painter." He received awards from the National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery, and Virginia Museum of Arts. His work is in the collections of over 50 American museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Dallas Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, and Cleveland Museum of Art. Speicher was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1930. The Academy has mounted three previous exhibitions of his work: a memorial show in 1963, an exhibition of landscape and still-life paintings in 1969, and a sale of paintings and drawings in 1984.
His work has been featured in solo museum shows at Carnegie Institute (1924), Albright-Knox Museum (1950), and the Butler Institute (1952). (Source: American Academy of Arts and Letters press release for exhibition Eugene Speicher: An Artist Reconsidered (2003) published on , Accessed August 19, 2004)

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