Adelaïde Alsop Robineau
Adelaïde Alsop Robineau | |
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Adelaïde Alsop Robineau (4th from left) and others at the Art Academy of People's University (now the Lewis Center) in University City, Missouri in 1910, celebrating the opening of a new kiln. Samuel E. Robineau is second from left. | |
Born |
Adelaïde Alsop 1865 |
Died | 1929 |
Nationality | American |
Known for | studio pottery |
Notable work | Scarab Vase, 1910 |
Movement | American art pottery |
Spouse(s) | Samuel E. Robineau |
Adelaïde Alsop Robineau (1865–1929) was an American china painter and potter who is considered one of the top ceramists of her era.[1][2]
Family and education
Adelaïde Alsop was born in 1865 in Middletown, Connecticut.[3] She developed an early interest in both drawing and the then–popular pursuit of china painting. As a young woman she helped to support her family by teaching drawing at the boarding school where she had formerly been a student.[4] During one summer break, she enrolled in the painter William Merritt Chase's summer school, her only experience of advanced training in painting and drawing.[4] She later studied ceramics with Charles Binns at Alfred University and with Taxile Doat.[5]
In 1899, she married Samuel E. Robineau, a French ceramics expert who was at one time editor of Old China magazine.[4][5] The couple had three children.[5]
Art career
In 1899, Robineau and her husband launched Keramic Studio, a periodical for potters and ceramic artists that continued in print until 1919.[5] Within a few years, Robineau became the magazine's sole editor.[4] Around the same time, the couple moved to Syracuse, New York, where their house was designed by architect Katharine Budd. Robineau later built a ceramic studio next to the house. She taught china painting and pottery at her Four Winds Pottery School and sold her painted china, watercolors, and ceramics.[4]
Robineau began seriously making ceramics around 1901, by which time she already had a reputation as a china painter.[4] She became convinced that painting over the glaze — then a common technique — was the wrong approach and began to experiment with other procedures.[4] She worked primarily in porcelain, experimenting with American clays to create a true high-fire porcelain.[4] She also experimented with a wide range of forms, decorations, and glazes, with frequent use of multicolored, opalescent, and iridescent glazes.[4] Her mature work shows Art Nouveau and Japonisme influences in the use of stylized botanical and animal elements.[4] At a time when many noted china painters worked with blanks made by other people, she handled all phases of the process herself, from forming the pots to incising and painting them.[5] Some of the detail work on her pieces was so fine that she employed crochet needles and dental tools to get the desired effect.[2]
Many of Robineau's works are containers, including her most famous work, the Scarab Vase, a tall, incised porcelain vase that took over 1000 hours to make.[5] In 2000, Art & Antiquities magazine named it the most important piece of American ceramics of the last hundred years.[1]
Robineau taught at both Syracuse University (1920-29) and the Art Academy of People's University, an institution founded by Edward Gardner Lewis in Missouri.[5]
Before her death in 1929, she designed a cinerary urn that now holds the ashes of both Robineau and her husband.[2]
Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, New York), and other institutions.
References
- 1 2 Tapp, Barbara S., ed. "Top Treasures of the Century." Art & Antiques special issue, March 2000.
- 1 2 3 Kirst, Sean. "Adelaide Robineau, Syracuse Ceramist: In Her Prime, 'Best in the Western World'". Syracuse.com, May 12, 2006.
- ↑ "Adelaide Alsop Robineau". Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Shrimpton, Louise. "An Art Potter and Her Home". Good Housekeeping 50:1 (January 1910), pp. 57-63.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bell, Barbara Nicholson. "Adelaide Alsop Robineau: Master Ceramist". Syracuse Then and Now. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
Further reading
- Weiss, Peg, ed. Adelaide Alsop Robineau: Glory in Porcelain. Syracuse University Press, 1981.