Charles Frederic Ramsey-Woman by a French River Landscape -1904 Oil Painting

Description

Charles Frederic Ramsey-Woman by a French River Landscape -1904 Oil painting

impressionist Oil painting on panel - Signed and dated … more Charles Frederic Ramsey-Woman by a French River Landscape -1904 Oil painting

impressionist Oil painting on panel - Signed and dated in verso
wood panel size14x11" - Frame size 22x19"

Artist Biography
Charles Frederic Ramsey, son of Annie Ruff and the Philadelphian painter Milne Ramsey (1846-1915), was born in Pont-Aven, Brittany, France on September 23, 1875. Though happy in France, the Ramsey family relocated back to Milnes native Philadelphia sometime in the early 1880s. Charles Ramsey began to formally train in painting like his father in 1893 when he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art for a year alongside his sister. Then, at the advice of his mother and family friend muralist Edwin Blashfield, Ramsey returned to France to continue his training at the Académie Julian in Paris. While a student there from 1896-1898, Ramsey studied under painters such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Jean-Paul Laurens, Gabriel Ferrier, and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and developed a focus on the allegorical nude.Upon finishing his training at the Académie Julian Ramsey returned to Philadelphia to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where his father had also trained. He studied under William Merritt Chase for his first year at PAFA in an advanced life class that served to deepen Ramseys interest in the nude but also affected his color palette. Chase's influence led Ramsey away from his previous affectation for dark colors to a more Impressionist, pastel range of colors. By 1904, Ramsey was awarded the prestigious Cresson Travelling Scholarship from PAFA and used it to return to France to observe Impressionist art in person and refine his own style. After a year of painting abroad, Ramsey returned to the United States, dividing his time between PAFA in Philadelphia and spending time with Pennsylvania landscape painter friends in New Hope. In 1908, he became the Curator of Schools at PAFA, a position he retained until 1912. During those years he corresponded with students, supervised artist models and props, aided the faculty, and traveled to Paris with PAFA students as a representative from the school responsible for student funds.After taking his last class at PAFA in 1911 and resigning from his job in 1912, Ramsey relocated to Pittsburgh, where he became a curator at the Carnegie Institute for four years. While still living in Pittsburgh, he met Ethel Anderson. The two married in 1914 and had a son, Charles Frederic Ramsey, Jr., in 1915. The family then moved to Minneapolis in 1916 where Ramsey was to serve as the Director of the Minneapolis School of Art. However, after a trustee's wife discovered that Ramsey was a self-described socialist, he was immediately dismissed from his new position, prompting the Ramseys to leave Minneapolis for the Philadelphia area. They settled in New Hope permanently in 1917, but not before Ramsey spent a year with modernist painter Arthur B. Carles at the Philadelphia Navy Yard camouflaging ships for use in World War I. In New Hope, Ramsey decided to paint full time in lieu of pursuing another permanent position and, as he painted in the family home on North Main Street, his work steadily became more abstract. However, in relying on thicker lines and a more expressive use of color, Ramsey never fully abandoned his focus on figure. Abstracted female forms appear in many of his paintings including The Modern Woman (1934) and Ladies in the Valley (1925), both of which are part of the James A. Michener Art Museum's permanent collection.In addition to his work as a painter, Ramsey also founded a number of New Hope arts institutions including the town's first art gallery, The Blue Mask, in the mid-twenties; The New Group, a secessionist exhibiting organization of painters, in 1930; and a summer art school in 1931. The New Group, later called The Independents, became somewhat famous for mounting an exhibit of modernist work to counter the Phillips' Mill Community Association Art Exhibition in protest of the jury's rejection of abstract, expressive, and otherwise modernist works. In 1938, Ramsey also became involved in the Cooperative Painting Project, a venture in which artists came together to join their singular identities and styles in jointly produced paintings and sculptures. The Cooperative Painting Project was influenced by improvisational jazz and collective political theories and was comprised of Ramsey along with an ever changing mix of painters Charles Evans, Louis Stone, and Lloyd Ney, journalist William Chapman, poet Stanley Kunitz, and carpenter Karl Roos.Ramsey's work has been exhibited at the Michener Art Museum in The New Hope Modernists, 1917 1950 (1991), Objects of Desire: Treasures from Private Collections (2005-2006), The Painterly Voice: Bucks County's Fertile Ground (2011- 2012), and The Brush is Mightier than the Sword: Twentieth Century Works from the Michener Art Museum Collection (2013).

A beautiful piece that will add to your décor! less