Douglas Volk

American, 1856 - 1935

Birth-PlacePittsfield, MA

BiographyDouglas Volk, named Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk (23 February 1856 - 1935)[1] was an American portrait and landscape painter. He helped establish the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. After 1904 he and his wife Marion created an artists' retreat at their family home, Hewnoaks, in Maine. She became active in the production of woolen textiles and rugs by traditional processes, and formed a group called Sabatos. Douglas was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,[2] to Emily Clarissa King (Barlow) Volk and the sculptor Leonard Wells Volk. He was named after his mother's maternal cousin Stephen A. Douglas.

After studying in the United States, Douglas Volk went to Paris, where he was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme. He exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1875.[3] He also studied in Rome. In 1881 Volk married the artist Marion Larrabee, the first instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts, now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. It originally served mostly women students.

Their children were the following:

Wendell (1888–1953), printmaker and woodcarver, who married Jessie J. McCoig, also an artist (b. ?-2004)
Marion, who married Mr. Bridges.
Lawrence
Volk was a working artist and teacher. He taught at Cooper Union (1879–94; 1908–12),[3] the New York Art Students League, and the National Academy of Design in New York City. He also taught at the Society for Ethical Culture established by Felix Adler.

He was a founder of the Minneapolis School of Fine Art, now known as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He participated in the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and won his first major award there. Volk became noted for his figure and portrait paintings. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1899.[2] Examples of Volk's work are found in most American collections, for example in the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, D.C.; in the Pittsfield Museum; in the Minnesota Capitol; in the National Museum at Washington; in the Montclair, New Jersey, Art Museum; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; in the National Arts Club; in the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery; in the Muskegon, Michigan, Art Museum; in the Omaha Art Museum and in the Portland, Maine, Art Society; and other places.[3]

Having a lifelong interest in Abraham Lincoln (who, as President-elect, had sat for Volk's sculptor father), Volk also painted several portraits of the President, one of which now adorns the Lincoln bedroom at the White House; another, now at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., was used as model for the three-cent Lincoln postage stamp issued in the 1950s.

REFERENCES'
"Stephen A. Douglas Volk and Leonard Wells Volk", Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, accessed 4 April 2011
^ Jump up to: a b c Wikisource-logo.svg "Volk, Douglas". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
^ Jump up to: a b c Wikisource-logo.svg Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Volk, Douglas". Encyclopedia Americana.
Jump up ^ "Art Notes", New York Times, 7 March 1902, accessed 4 April 2011
^ Jump up to: a b Mark Sisco, "Treasures from Hewnoaks", Maine Antiques Digest, October 2006, accessed 4 April 2011
Jump up ^ "Rydingsvard Divorce Case", New York Times, 30 September 1897
Jump up ^ "Karl von Rydingsgard", Art & Decoration, Vol. 5, Artspur Publications, 1914, p. 109

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