Paul Rohland

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Paul Herman Rohland (March 11, 1884 – September 29, 1949) was an American artist, muralist, and engraver. He exhibited in the legendary Armory Show of 1913 in New York City along with many independent artists who rejected the artistic dominance and juried shows of the National Academy of Design. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Barnes Foundation, National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian, the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, and the Woodstock Artists Association Museum. He painted three United States post office murals for the Section of Painting and Sculpture[1].

Paul Herman Rohland
[[File:Paul Herman Rohland American Artist.jpg|frameless|alt=Paul Herman Rohland Woodstock Artist]]
Paul Herman Rohland
Born March 11, 1884
Richmond, Virgina, U.S.A.
Died September 29, 1949(1949-09-29) (aged 65)
Los Angeles, CA U.S.A.
Nationality American
Known for Artist, Muralist, Engraver, Woodstock Art Colony
Style Representationalism, Regionalism
Spouse Caroline Speare Rohland


Early Life and Career

Born March 11, 1884, in Richmond, Virginia, Rohland was the fourth of seven sons of Clara Marie (née Thilow) and Otto Friedrich Rohland[2]. At the age of 14 he went to work as a photo engraver for the Christopher Engraving Company in Richmond and studied in evening art classes at the Virginia Mechanics Institute under sculptor and illustrator Wm. L. Sheppard. In 1900 his family moved to Philadelphia where he worked as a copper etcher for Beck’s Engraving. In January 1902 he went to New York and continued his evening art studies at the Art Students League under Robert Henri. Then, with the help of a paternal aunt, he was able to complete several years of formal art studies in France[3]. Returning to New York in 1910, he studied under Edward Dufner at the League[4], and in 1911 with Henri at the left-wing Ferrer school[5]. By this time he had also joined the Woodstock Art Colony in Woodstock, NY, founded in 1903 by Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Hervey White, and Bolton Brown. Twenty-four members of the colony exhibited in the legendary Armory Show of 1913[6], which featured 1,300 works of art. Rohland entered three paintings and sold one[7]. That year he also showed his work in the MacDowell Club of New York Exhibition[8] and the Carnegie Institute International Exhibition[9]. In 1919 he married Caroline Speare, a Woodstock colleague[10] and fellow participant in the colony’s bawdy Maverick Festivals.

To find subjects for their artwork, the couple often traveled to Europe, Puerto Rico, and southern and western states. They lived in New York City for short periods, but Woodstock remained their permanent residence for many years. There, Peter A. Juley and Paul Juley included both of them in their photographic documentation of early 20th -century American painters[11]. The Rohlands’ careers would be linked until their marriage ended with his death in 1949[12].

Style

Like other art colonies, Woodstock fostered artistic collaboration. Throughout Rohland’s life, the colony’s artists and artist couples, Andrew Dasburg and his wife, [Grace Mott Johnson, Florence and Konrad Cramer, Henry Lee McFee, Emil Ganso, Peggy Bacon|Peggy Bacon, Eugene Speicher, and many others remained close and instructive friends. By 1923, a distinct Woodstock style[13] had emerged, depicting the local landscape, people, and flowers in heavy brushstrokes and earthy tones. Despite these influences, Rohland’s watercolors remained bright and fluid. He often used as subjects the flowers he grew in his Woodstock garden. A contemporary art critic, John Slusser, wrote of Rohland’s floral oils and watercolors, “only a temperament as native to the sun and the soil as the flowers themselves could have produced them.”[14] Printmaking was also one of Woodstock’s signature art forms. Rohland is known for his colorful monotypes, engravings, and strong black and white woodcuts.

Later Career and Legacy

Rohland exhibited regularly with the Society of Independent Artists, Salons of America, the Carnegie Institute, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art]. He also had one-man shows, notably in 1939 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. When Rohland traveled for his work, Juliana Force, the director of the new Whitney Museum of American Art, handled many of his exhibitions and sales as well as those of his wife. Rohland first exhibited in the Whitney Club and Whitney Gallery exhibitions starting in 1927 and exhibited in the Whitney Museum’s first Biennial in 1932. He continued to participate in Whitney Museum exhibitions[15] through 1942.


The Great Depression severely affected art sales, but Rohland managed to secure three commissions for post office murals from the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts, as did his wife. He executed the following US Post Office murals[16]: The Union of the Mountains, Mount Union, PA, (1937) Dogwood and Azalea, Decatur, GA (1938) and Louisiana Bayou, [Ville Platte, LA (1939).


In 1942, Rohland’s chronic asthma worsened, and the couple packed up their Ford Model T and left Woodstock, traveling south to Washington, DC, with their final destination Santa Fe, New Mexico, where other Woodstock friends, among them, Andrew Dasburg and John Sloan, painted during the winter. From 1942 to 1945, Rohland exhibited yearly in the Annual Exhibition of Painters and Sculptors of the Southwest[17]; hence, he is often labeled as a “western” artist. In El Palacio, August 1943, Edgar Lee Hewett said of Rohland’s watercolor, Southern Mansion, that it “possesses solidity beneath the flickering splashes of color. The drawing is in accord with the short-hand nature of this most difficult of mediums.” [18]


In 1945, finding Santa Fe too cold, Rohland and his wife moved to Sierra Nevada, CA, where he painted mountain landscapes and worked on his beloved engravings[19]. Rohland died in Los Angeless, September 29, 1949[20]. Many references erroneously give his death date as 1953.

References

  1. ↑ "askART 2020". https://www.askart.com/. 
  2. ↑ 1900 United States Federal Census, Ancestry.com, Paul H. Roland [sic]
  3. ↑ Virginia Artists Series No. 5 PAUL ROHLAND, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, January 21-February 4, 1939. Originally located in the Rohland Papers in the Valentine Museum archives, Richmond, VA. Also an article in Richmond Times-Dispatch, Friday, January 20, 1939, p. 16. Also, oral history contributed by Frank O. Rohland, nephew.
  4. ↑ Art Students League transcript #590, dated November 11, 1910, Art Students League Archives, 215 West 57th St. New York, NY 10019.
  5. ↑ Homer, William Innes (1969). Robert Henri and His Circle. Cornell University Press. pp. 150. 
  6. ↑ Wolf, Tom (1987). "Historical Survey," Woodstock's Art Heritage. Overlook Press. pp. 20. 
  7. ↑ Brown, Milton (1963). The Story of the Armory Show. The Hirschhorn Foundation. pp. 285. 
  8. ↑ Art Notes, New York Times, Wednesday November 19, 1913, P. 9 Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ Record of the Carnegie Institute’s International Exhibitions 1896-1996, Sound View Press 1998 p. 286.
  10. ↑ New York State Marriage Index 1881-1967, Certificate # 2083 November 1, 1918 [database on-line] Lehi, UT USA: 2017. Ancestry.com
  11. ↑ Peter A. Juley and Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
  12. ↑ Peter A. Juley and Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
  13. ↑ Evers, Alf (1987). Woodstock, History of An American Town. The Overlook Press. pp. 513, 514. 
  14. ↑ Jean Paul Slusser, Essay on Paul Rohland published in The Arts June 1928, p.357.
  15. ↑ Peter Hastings Falk, Annual and Biennial Exhibition Record of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1918 – 1989, Sound View Press, Madison, CT 1991 p. 339, and Whitney Museum of American Art digital archives.
  16. ↑ Marlene Park and Gerald Markowitz, Democratic Vistas, PO and Public Art in the New Deal, Temple University Press, 1984, pp. 206, 212, 226.
  17. ↑ El Palacio catalogues 1942-1945.
  18. ↑ [1] El Palacio, August 1943, Vol. I p. 173.
  19. ↑ Letter from Caroline Rohland to Florence and Konrad Cramer dated March 25, 1947, Archives of American Art.
  20. ↑ Obituary in Santa Fe New Mexican Thursday, September 29, P. 1 gives death date as September 28.  California Death Index 1940-1997 Ancestry.com, gives date as September 29, 1949.

Sources

  • Archives of American Art, Konrad and Florence Ballin Cramer Papers 1897-1968, Series 2 Correspondence 1900-1964.
  • Arts, The, June, 1928, Paul Rohland by Jean Paul Slusser, Woodstock Artists Association Archives, Woodstock, NY.
  • American Paintings and works on Paper in the Barnes Foundation. Barnes Foundation, 2010, Merion, PA. ISBN: 978-0-300-15877-9.
  • Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
  • Berman, Avis. The Rebels on Eighth Street, Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Atheneum, 1990, New York. ISBN: 0-689-12086-9.
  • Brown, Milton W. The Story of the Armory Show. Joseph Hirschhorn Foundation, 1988, New York. LCCN: 63-13496.
  • California Death Index, 1940-1997, Ancestry.com
  • El Palacio Catalogues, (1941-1945) School of American Research, Museum of New Mexico.
  • Evers, Alf. Woodstock, History of an American Town. Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York, 1987. ISBN: 0-87951-983-5.
  • Falk, Peter Hastings, Annual and Biennial Exhibition Record of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1918—1989 Sound View Press, Madison, Connecticut, 1991.
  • Hewett, Edgar L. “Background of the Exhibition,” El Palacio, Vol. I, No. 8, August 1943.
  • Homer, William Innes. Robert Henri and His Circle. Cornell University Press, Inc., Ithaca and London, 1969. LCCN: 75-81594.
  • Juley, Peter A., and Son Collection Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.( https://siris-juleyphoto.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1J82240815SD6.466&menu=search&aspect=basic_search&npp=50&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=julall&ri=&term=Paul+Rohland&index=.GW&x=16&y=12&aspect=basic_search&term=&index=.AW&term=&index=.TW&term=&index=.SW
  • The Armory Show at 100, Modernism and Revolution. New York Historical Society, New York, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-9161141-26-4. Rohland listed on P. 457.
  • Marling, Karal A. Woodstock, an American Art Colony. Vassar College Art Gallery, January 23 – March 4, 1977, Hamilton Reproductions, Poughkeepsie, NY, LCCN: 76-54371.
  • Marlor, Clark S. The Salons of America, 1922-1936. Sound View Press, 1985.
  • Marlor, Clark S. The Society of Independent Artists: The Exhibition Record, 1917-1944, Noyes Press, Park Ridge, NJ, 1984. ISBN: 10:081555063.
  • New York Times, “Art Notes” Wednesday, November 19, 1913, p. 9, Newspapers.com. Retrieved March 26, 2020
  • Park, Marlene, and Gerald Markowitz. New Deal for Art. Gallery Association of New York State, Inc., New York, 1977. LCCN: 76-531-59.
  • Park, Marlene and Gerald Markowitz. Democratic Vistas, PO and Public Art in the New Deal. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1984. ISBN: O-87722-348-3.
  • Perlman, Bennard. Robert Henri, His Life and his Art. Dover Publications, New York, 1991 ISBN: O-486-26722-9.
  • Richmond Times Dispatch, “The Arts,” “Museum to hold preview of Rohland’s One-Man Show,” Friday, January 20, 1939. Newspapers.com. Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  • Santa Fe New Mexican, “Santa Fe Artist Dies on West Coast,” Thursday, September 29, 1949. Newspapers.com. Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  • Schack, William. Art and Argyrol. A.S. Barnes and Co., New York, 1969. LCCN: 60-6835.
  • United States Census, 1900, Ancestry.com
  • Woodstock Artists Association. Woodstock’s Art Heritage, The Permanent Collection of the Woodstock Artists Association. Historical Survey by Tom Wolf. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1987. ISBN: 0-87951-294-6.
  • Oral History contributed by Frank O. Rohland, nephew of the artist.
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