WOODSTOCK ARTISTS COLONY
By Jeanette Hendler
Woodstock, New York, is world renowned as one of the most active artists colonies in existence. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and Hervey White founded Woodstock in 1902 as a settlement school and also as a community of artists and craftspeople. Whitehead was a student of John Ruskin and Ruskin was an advocate of the ideas of the William Morris Arts and Crafts Movement. Whitehead purchased fifteen hundred acres of land below the face of Mount Overlook. He constructed houses and studios for artists and facilities for furniture making, pottery weaving and painting. The original facility was called Byrdcliffe, a combination of the middle name of Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and his wife, Jane Byrd McCaw. Many artists lived year round and some just summered there. The Arts Student League established a summer school in Woodstock from 1906 to 1922 and then again after World War Two, from 1947 until 1970. In 1919, the Woodstock Artists Association was formed by traditionalists and modernists in order to have exhibits. They were well received and the favorable comments of the reviewers put Woodstock on the map.
Among the more prominent modernist artists, Konrad Cramer founded and directed the Woodstock, N. Y. Art Association. Cramer also founded and directed the Woodstock School of Painting and was a teacher at the Woodstock School of Miniature Photography. He died in Woodstock in 1963. This ink and watercolor abstraction was done while he was in Woodstock and the picture remained in the area for many decades. Emil Ganso's work "Parnassus-Woodstock" is one of the many ink drawings that he painted in Woodstock. After he had won the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled around Europe for a year in 1933-34, he moved to Woodstock and joined the community of artists.
Among the many other artists who worked in Woodstock during this period were Adolph Dehn and Milton Avery and works by all four artists (including Cramer and Ganso) and many others are available at JEANETTE HENDLER, FINE ART New York City, NY.
copyright Jeanette Hendler, 2007
Cramer, Konrad Ganso, Emil
“Abstract Drawing” “Parnassus Woodstock”
Ink and water color wash on paper Ink Drawing
161/2”X12” 10”X14”
Signed and dated Signed