Walter Stuempfig

Stuempfig's long association with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts began in 1931 when at 17 he enrolled as a student and continued from 1948 until his death in 1970 as a faculty member. Like his predecessors Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912), he was devoted to his students. Like them, he often painted the people and places of Philadelphia which he knew intimately. He was brutally objective, which negates any suggestion of nostalgia in his work.

EXTENDED BIO

Walter Stuempfig (January 26, 1914 – November 29, 1970) was an American artist and teacher.

He was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania to a moderately wealthy family. After graduation from the Germantown Academy, he enrolled as an architecture student in the University of Pennsylvania. In October 1931 he transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where his instructors included Henry McCarter, Daniel Garber, and Francis Speight.[1] From 1932–1966 he exhibited regularly at the Pennsylvania Academy's Annual Exhibitions.

In 1935 he married Lila Hill, a sculptor who had also studied at the Academy.[1]

Stuempfig was a prolific painter whose works number over 1500.[1] His paintings sold steadily; purchasers from his first solo show in New York in 1943 included the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.[2] He painted figure compositions, landscapes and architectural subjects, still lifes, and portraits; all in a style of romantic realism that fell outside the artistic mainstream of his time. R. Sturgis Ingersoll has written of him:

A layman's chat with him would constitute a lesson in late 16th century and early 17th century Italian art. His heroes were Caravaggio, Degas and Eakins. One would risk acrimonious rebuttal if making a disparaging remark with respect to any one of them and earn a more violent rebuttal to a remark in praise of American Expressionism.[1]

From 1948–1970 he taught composition and drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art.[1] He died in Ocean City, New Jersey on November 29, 1970.

REFERENCES

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 1972. Walter Stuempfig memorial exhibition. OCLC 303577

Salpeter, Harry. "Stuempfig". American Artist, November 1948: 52–55, 74.

Soby, James Thrall. 1948. Contemporary Painters. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 0-405-01508-9