Anne Poor

Anne Poor (January 4, 1918 – January 12, 2002) was an American artist most known for her paintings and sketches created during World War II, while serving as an official art correspondent in the United States Army. However, Poor's complete oeuvre also consists of still lifes and landscapes created in a range of mediums, including oil, pastel, ink, pencil, and watercolor.

Overview Poor grew up with accomplished parents. Her mother, Bessie Breuer, was an American journalist, novelist, and playwright, while her stepfather, Henry Varnum Poor, was a successful artist and architect, most involved in murals and sculptures. A third marriage for both Henry Varnum Poor and Bessie Breuer, Poor was subsequently adopted by Henry, while also having a son of their own named Peter, Poor's only sibling.

While in high school, Anne studied at the Arts Students League with well-known artists such as Alexander Brook, William Zorach, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.

Once back in the United States, she assisted her father with many mural projects commissioned through New Deal art programs. Assignments included Washington, D.C.'s Department of Justice and Department of Interior buildings, Pennsylvania State University, and the Gleason, Tennessee and Depew, New York post offices. Starting as a photo-technician, it was only after much convincing of war department officials that she took an overseas assignment to the Pacific Theater, where it appears most of her time was spent in Manila, Philippines. Her work continued to be awarded and honored through different exhibitions. At the WAC showroom in Rockefeller Center, New York City, Poor exhibited 33 paintings and drawings of bomber crews in action entitled "Men in Flight." Accompanying her drawings was text written by Henry Miller based on memories of his own journey in 1939. It appears they made each other's acquaintance in Paris during Poor's study abroad and continued to keep in touch through the years. Membership to this academy is limited to 250 Americans who have made notable achievements in art, literature, and music. Although members rotate in and out with their subsequent deaths, past members are continually remembered and kept alive through their records. and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Artistic career Murals In the 1930s, Poor aided her stepfather, Henry Varnum Poor, in painting murals for the United States Justice Department and the Conservation of American Wildlife for the Department of the Interior, located in Washington, D.C.

Poor's skills were recognized independently from her father when she received her own Section of Painting and Sculpture mural commission for the Depew, New York, post office in 1941, and the Gleason, Tennessee, post office in 1942. The mural over the Depew post office is titled Beginning the Day and features a scene of mostly men interacting and conducting business. It has been described by scholar Sylvia Moore that this particular mural showcases Piero della Francesca's influence on Poor with the figures clustered together in small carefully balanced groups.

Due to her success in these murals, in 1948 Poor won the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Fellowship, which included a grant that enabled her to study in Italy and Greece. Bessie Breuer's literary agent, Bernice Baumgarten, happened to be married to James Gould Cozzens, first employed under the U.S. Army Air Forces and then by the USAAF Office of Information Services. In her journal, she described the experience of watching the wounded unloaded by forklift, transferred to ambulances headed to the Field Hospital, before finally being transferred to hospitals across the country for more specialized medical treatment. Regardless, the Army Art Program ended in 1943 to eliminate what was deemed an unnecessary war expenditure. Instead, Poor's dream of sketching the war abroad was made possible by Fortune magazine and their request for her to illustrate a feature article for the Air Transport Command. It appears that Poor's and Miller's relationship began in Paris, France. In 1937 she studied under painter Abraham Rattner, who happened to be close friends with Miller.

Styles and influences The time of Poor's mural creations overlapped with her studies at the Art Students League, the Académie Julian, and the École Fernand Léger. It was in these institutions that she was taught classical art techniques and the works of the masters. It appears that Poor used these studies in her ongoing work as seen in the Depew mural— figures clustered in small, carefully balanced groups mimic the work of Piero della Francesca. This blending of knowledge with new subjects continued in her renderings of Pacific air evacuations. As scholar Sylvia Moore points out, the study Restraining Psychotic at Holding Station, completed in a Guam station, resembles a scene from a classical crucifixion cycle.

In consideration of Poor's choice of materials, her life work was rendered through pastels, ink, watercolor, and oil. However, while serving in the army abroad, it appears Poor opted for ink and pencil sketches and pastel images. These materials were easily transported and quick to use. Working in the fast-paced environment of military stations, Poor had little time to depict these fleeting moments; therefore, her works contain fine and sketchy lines with simplified backgrounds. The example of Green Figure in Hull, completed in oil on masonite board, perhaps shows an infrequent moment of rest, thus allowing her to work with a slow-drying material. The compositions of men and planes also highlight her ability to merge human figures with the machines they control.

After the war years, Poor returned to creating landscapes, starting with a trip across Greece and Italy, in which her sketches later turned into a book titled Greece with text by Henry Miller. He describes her work as one that conveys "intimate, first-hand knowledge of her subject" and showcases her exact and simple use of lines.

Poor's landscapes shifted from her travels to familiar scenes from her home in Rockland County and New York in general. One seemingly favorite subject matter included the Hudson River. In further explanation of these works, Poor quotes, "I'm not really interested in realistic particulars of a scene... I'm trying to get a sense of big spaces and a larger whole." During the last years of her life, Poor's artwork turned more inward and intimate as it described her day-to-day routine; paintings filled with pet cats and floral bouquets. Although perhaps not deemed as exciting compared to her work in the 1940s, Poor delicately renders her environment with both a sense of interest, acceptance, and honor.

Survey of criticism In all of the publications that mention Anne Poor's name, only high compliments are paid regarding her work. For starters, Henry Miller raved about her sketches as his only incentive to write more regarding his travels to Greece. He is also quoted as if mystified by her talents.Critic Edward Alden Jewell of the New York Times also reviewed her one-person show, "Men in Flight," at the American-British Art Center, saying "she sees with her own eyes and thinks for herself... Anne Poor is still very young and already she has accomplished a great deal."

Yet again, for the same show, the praise only continued.At the same center in 1946, Poor showed wartime wash and ink drawings such as Blood Transfusion, undated and Walking Wounded, undated. An unknown New York Times reviewer labeled the work as "powerful and moving studies."

After the war, Poor experienced an intensified interest in landscapes and still-life's and, regardless of the missing action compared to her wartime work, received great acclaim. Alan Gussow, an artist and author, expressed that one experiences "whole worlds of feeling revealed in simple flowers" in her work.

Arguably one of the most significant awards bestowed on Poor was the induction as a distinguished artist to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In an article describing this event, Michael Hitzig quoted Gertrude Dahlberg, widow of Edwin Dahlberg—a great painter also hailing from Rockland—saying "Since the death of Edward Hopper in 1966, the only nationally renowned painter whose earliest roots are in Rockland is Anne Poor."

Hitzig did not hold back when offering his own compliments :