John Carlton Atherton

John Carlton Atherton (January 7, 1900 - September 16, 1952) was an American painter and illustrator, born in Brainerd, Minnesota.[1][2]

Biography

Atherton was a successful artist;[3] a painter, magazine illustrator, writer and designer. His works are within numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art,[4] Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Early Years

Atherton moved to Washington State as an infant. He attended high school in Spokane, Washington. He didn't display an early aptitude for art; rather, his first love was nature and the activities he relished there, mainly fishing and hunting. He enlisted in 1917, serving briefly in the U.S. Navy for a year during World War I. At the end of the war, determined to get an education he worked various part-time jobs, as a sign painter and playing a banjo in a dance band to pay his enrolment fee at the College of the Pacific and The California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute).  Once there, he also worked in the surrounding studios developing his oil painting techniques.

Career

A first prize award of $500 at the annual exhibition of the Bohemian Club in 1929, financed his one way trip to New York, which helped to launch his career as an artist.[5]

Atherton had aspired to be a fine artist, however his first paid jobs were for commercial art firms designing advertisements for corporations such as General Motors, Shell Oil, Container Corporation of America, and Dole. However, by 1936, encouraged primarily by friends, such as Alexander Brook, an acclaimed New York realist painter, he returned to the fine arts.

Atherton continued to accept numerous commissions for magazine illustrations; such as Fortune magazine, and over the years he would paint more than forty covers for The Saturday Evening Post starting with his December 1942 design, “Patient Dog.” This picture is reminiscent of his friend Norman Rockwell ‘Americana style’ and captures a poignant moment of nostalgia, where a loyal dog looks toward a wall of hunting equipment and a framed picture of his owner in military uniform.

Selected One person Exhibitions

Atherton accomplished his first one-man show in Manhattan in 1936. His Painting, “The Black Horse” won the $3000 fourth prize from among a pool of 14,000 entries. This painting forms part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection in New York.

Atherton achieved recognition in New York City and elsewhere during the 1930s. Having exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, his paintings began to be collected by museums; including the Museum of Modern Art [6] and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

His reputation increased with his art deco stone lithograph poster for the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1941, his design won first place in the Museum of Modern Arts “National Defense Poster Competition”.

Selected Public Collections

The Famous Artists School

Founded in 1948 in Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A. The idea was conceived by members of the New York Society of Illustrators (SOI), but due to the Society's legal status, could not be operated by it. SOI member Albert Dorne led the initiative to set up a separate entity, and recruited the support of Norman Rockwell, who was also an SOI member. For the founding faculty, Dorne recruited Atherton, as well as accomplished artists such as Austin Briggs, Stevan Dohanos, Robert Fawcett, Peter Helck, Fred Ludekens, Al Parker, Norman Rockwell, Ben Stahl, Harold von Schmidt and Jon Whitcomb.

Society of Illustrators

Atherton as an active member from his arrival in New York. The society have owned many of his works. Ex-collection includes:

  • Rocking Horse (ca. 1949) [16]

Atherton, as his peers had many of his works framed by Henry Heydenryk Jr. [17]

Personal

On November 2, 1926, he married Maxine Breese.[18] They had one daughter, Mary.

Atherton's often chose industrial landscapes, however found himself spending considerable time in Westport, Connecticut, with an active artistic community, and it became home for him, and his family. He then moved to Arlington, Vermont.[19]

He was part of a group of artists including a Norman Rockwell, Mead Schaeffer and George Hughes who established residences in Arlington. Atherton and Mead Schaeffer were avid fly fishermen and they carefully chose the location for the group, [20] conveniently located near the legendary Battenkill River.

In his free time, Atherton continued to enjoy fly-fishing.[21] He brought his artistic talent into the field of fishing, when he wrote and illustrated the fishing classic, “The Fly and The Fish”.[22]

Death

He died in New Brunswick, Canada in 1952,[23] at the age of 52 in a drowning accident while fly-fishing. [24]

Biography

Falk, Peter H., ed. “Who Was Who in American Art”. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1999.

Berman, Greta/Wechsler, Jeffrey, “Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960,” The Gallery: New Brunswick, NJ, 1981.

Cohn, Jan, Covers of the Saturday Evening Post: Seventy Years of Outstanding Illustration, Studio (October 1, 1995).

Hughes, Edan, Artists in California, 1786–1940

References
  1. "Getty information on John C. Atherton".
  2. "Atherton One Name Study information on John C. Atherton".
  3. "Artnet entry for J C Atherton".
  4. "MoMA entry for John C. Atherton".
  5. "AskArt entry for John C. Atherton - detailed bio".
  6. "MoMA-John C. Atherton".
  7. "painting by J Atherton - villa rotunda".
  8. "Invasion: The Bivouac". The Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  9. "Wadsworth Atheneum Collection". argus.wadsworthatheneum.org. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  10. "MoMA info on John C. Atherton".
  11. "John Atherton". whitney.org. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  12. "John Atherton:The Magic Forest".
  13. "John C. Atherton". FAMSF Search the Collections. 2018-09-21. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  14. "Smithsonian entry for John C. Atherton".
  15. "Butler Institute of American Art".
  16. "Rocking Horse by J Atherton".
  17. "history of the House of Heydenryk".
  18. "She's steelin' flowers Mrs Atherton!!, painted by J Atherton's friend, Harold Von Schmidt".
  19. "Portrait of Artist Carl Ruggles by John Atherton, exhibited in Manchester,VT".
  20. "Stratton Magazine and why Arlington was chosen by the group of artists".
  21. The Fly and the Fish, by John Atherton. 2016.
  22. The Fly and the Fish, by John Atherton. 1951.
  23. "Getty information on John C. Atherton".
  24. "The Brattleboro Reformer reports on the death of John Atherton dying on a salmon fishing trip to New Brunswick, Canada and that his wife was with him at the time".
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