Clifford Addams

Clifford Isaac Addams (May 25, 1876 – November 7, 1942) was an American painter and etcher, and a protégé of James McNeill Whistler.

Biography Addams was born in Woodbury, New Jersey, the son of Quaker wool merchant Wellington Isaac Addams and Sarah Neff Addams. Addams enrolled, and became a favored pupil of the celebrated artist. They helped to run the school and care for Whistler, who was in failing health. He returned to the United States, while she raised their children in Hendon, London. After meeting him, Sloan wrote: "Clifford Addams seems to be not at all the weird eccentric we have heard him described during the last six years. Either he has changed or Dame Rumor is a liar, the last most likely." His Odalisque, exhibited in 1913, is fully clothed and coolly appraises the viewer. His At Play, a scene of a young woman in a kimono playing with a pet bird, was a traditionalist subject, but Addams painted it with modernist brushwork. It was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1922, at PAFA in 1923, PAFA awarded him its 1925 Temple Gold Medal for Washington Square, New York.

The Clark Galleries in Manhattan hosted a one-man show of Addams's works in April 1910. The Arlington Galleries in Manhattan hosted a one-man show of his works in December 1923.

Addams exhibited five oil portraits (including a self-portrait), two war sketches, and a watercolor at the 1926 Sesqui-Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

His paintings are in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and private collections.

Etcher Addams was a superb draftsman, and became a master etcher, manipulating his copper plates with variated inkings and wipings. Etchings such as An Obscure Turning, Venice come in daylight and night time versions, depending upon how Addams chose to apply the inks. He visited Venice for the first time in 1913, and had a triumphant London exhibition of the resulting etchings in Spring 1914. The Baltimore Museum of Art hosted a one-man show of his paintings and etchings in 1923. He exhibited 50 etchings at the 1926 Sesqui-Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

His etchings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and other museums. A posthumous exhibition of his etchings and drypoints was held at a London art gallery in 1984.

Selected works Paintings

Cottage in Wales (1900), watercolor, Art Institute of Chicago Inez Eleanor Bate: Portrait of the Artist's Wife (1906), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts View in Surrey (1910), unlocated. Exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists Odalisque (1913), unlocated At Play (1922), unlocated Bohemienne (1922), unlocated. Awarded the Art Institute of Chicago's 1922 Harris Silver Medal Tranquility (1923), unlocated Washington Square, New York (1925), unlocated. Awarded PAFA's 1925 Temple Gold Medal Self-Portrait (1926), unlocated. Exhibited at the 1926 Sesqui-Centennial Exposition The Black Rosette (1926), unlocated. Exhibited at the 1926 Sesqui-Centennial Exposition Union Square (1928), unlocated

Etchings