Paulette Van Roekens

Paulette Van Roekens was a French-born American painter and educator, who lived most of her life in the Philadelphia area. She had a long career as an artist, and is considered one of the Pennsylvania Impressionists.

Early life and education She was born on New Year's Eve 1895, in a farmhouse outside of Château-Thierry, France. Her Belgian parents, Victor and Jeanne van Roekens, emigrated to the United States when she was an infant. The family settled just outside Philadelphia, in Glenside, Pennsylvania, where her father operated a tree farm and nursery.

Van Roekens enrolled in the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) in 1915, intending to study sculpture. At the end of her first year she was awarded the 1916 John Sartain Fellowship. The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, and with many of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts's male students enlisting or being drafted, she attended classes at PAFA, 1917-18. She also led a student effort to knit socks and sweaters for American soldiers being shipped overseas. While a student, she was invited to participate in PAFA's 116th Annual Exhibition (January 1918), showing City Hall and The New Boulevard. Among her teachers were Samuel Murray, Henry B. Snell, Leopold Seyffert, Joseph Thurman Pearson Jr., and Charles Grafly.

Career Van Roekens's first teaching job was at the Graphic Sketch Club in South Philadelphia, 1920 – 1927. "Unlike other institutions and museums at the time, the Graphic Sketch Club was open in the evening, with working people in mind. Classes were offered to people of all ages in mediums ranging from drawing and painting to sculpture ..."

In 1923, Van Roekens was hired as an assistant professor of drawing and painting at her alma mater, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, a position she held for thirty-seven years. The school was renamed the Moore College of Art and Design in the late 1950s, and presented her with an honorary doctorate upon her retirement in 1961. She was a member of the Art Alliance of America, and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. Treat 'Em Rough, oil on canvas, 1918, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Acquired by PAFA, 1919. 117th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (January 1919), no. 70 "Paulette Van Roekens has two paintings in the summer exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, including Victory, a colorful view of the corner of Broad and Chestnut streets during the Victory Loan drive, a painting which won much favorable comment here during Artists' Week." Girard Trust Building: Third Liberty Loan, oil on canvas, 1919, private collection Auctioned at Freeman's | Hindman, 29 April 2018, Lot 35. Realized $46,875, an auction record for a painting by Van Roekens. Calico Row, Newport, Rhode Island, oil on canvas, 1920, private collection Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, 1922, no. 15 Twenty-Ninth Annual Exhibition of American Art, Cincinnati Museum, 1922, no. 120. Auctioned at Rago, 10 November 2018, Lot 135 15th Street from Broad Street Station, oil on canvas, 1920, Philadelphia Sketch Club Independence Hall, Philadelphia, oil on canvas, 1923 First Honorable Mention, 1923 Annual Exhibition of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, Fine Arts Building, New York City. 122nd Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (January 1924), no. 5 Auctioned at Freeman's | Hindman, 3 December 2023, Lot 85, Unsold. Towers in the Mist, oil on canvas, 1925, Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania 125th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (January 1927), no. 192 Gray Towers

Landscapes and outdoor scenes On the Beach at Bass Rocks, oil on canvas, 1920 1921 Fellowship of the Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition, Philadelphia. "n admirable bit of direct painting, true in notation of sunlight on figures and sand ..." Gray Day in Newport, Rhode Island, oil on canvas, n.d. Twenty-First Annual International Exhibition of Paintings, 1922, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, no. 154 Floating Logs, oil on canvas, 1922 Exhibited at the 1923 Philadelphia Art Alliance Exhibition at the Academy of Music Auctioned at Rago, 10 November 2022, Lot 204 At the Horse Show, oil on canvas, 1923, private collection 117th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1923, no. 432 Midsummer Dreams, oil on canvas, n.d., private collection 124th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1939, no. 122 Sawdust and Spangles, oil on canvas, n.d., Woodmere Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Holiday on the Beach, oil on canvas, n.d. Cape May Beach, oil on canvas, n.d.

Ballet, opera, theater, circus In 1951, the Sadler Wells Theatre Ballet of London began a year-long tour of the United States, which included a month performing at Philadelphia's Academy of Music. Van Roekens obtained permission to sketch the troupe during rehearsals, which resulted in a series of ballet paintings: Dress Rehearsal (Sadler Wells) Red Curtains Light and Shadow Harlequinn Ladies The Music Room White Ballet Entering the Ballet The Swan Ballet She later obtained similar permission to sketch opera productions, theater productions, and other ballet troupes. “Paulette Van Roekens enjoys painting still life and in oils, but her favorites are the ballet and the circus.” Royal Danish Ballet, oil on canvas, 1978 Under the Spotlight, n.d.

Still lifes Poppies and Old China, oil on canvas, 1920 Exhibited at National Academy of Design, 1921, no. 142 Satsuma Rose Jar and Lilies, oil on canvas, n.d. Exhibited at the City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1921 118th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1923, no. 48 Ninth Exhibition of Oil Paintings, 1923, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., no. 289 Seventh Annual Exhibition, 1923, Concord [Massachusetts] Art Association, no. 40 Eighteenth Annual Exhibition, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1924, Buffalo, NY. Catalogue, p. 58 Arrangement with Citron, oil on canvas, 1936, Woodmere Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 132nd Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1937, no. 121

Other subjects Crystal Bar, Virginia City, Nevada, oil on canvas, 1946, ex coll. Gratz Gallery 142nd Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1947, no. 615

Awards and honors Gold medal, Plastic Club, 1920 – for Gold medal, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 1922 – for Treat 'Em Rough First Honorable Mention, National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, 33rd Annual Exhibition, New York City, October 1923 – for Independence Hall Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Prize, 1928 – for Exhibition prize, Woodmere Art Gallery, 1946 – for Exhibition prize, Woodmere Art Gallery, 1956 – for Mary T. Mason Prize, Woodmere Art Gallery, 1965 – for

Joint exhibition (with husband, Arthur Meltzer), Woodmere Art Gallery, 1944 Solo exhibition, McClees Gallery, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 1946 Honorary doctorate, Moore College of Art and Design, 1961 Lifetime retrospective exhibition, Woodmere Art Gallery, 1966 Joint exhibition (with Elizabeth S. Conseur), Hazelton (Pennsylvania) Art League, September 1969 Joint exhibition (with husband, Arthur Meltzer), Allentown Art Museum, October 5 – November 14, 1980 Solo exhibition, Woodmere Art Gallery, 1987

Personal Van Roekens married Arthur Meltzer (1893 – 1989) in 1927, a fellow faculty member at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and a respected artist in his own right. The following year, they bought and restored a farmhouse in Trevose, Pennsylvania, where they raised their two children. "They also served as the model of a modern couple: van Roekens used her maiden name professionally, and they taught on separate days so they could share childrearing duties."

In 1949, Meltzer and Van Roekens were notified that their property would be condemned to build an extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. They salvaged doors, windows, mantels and other architectural elements prior to the farmhouse's demolition. Architect John Bower incorporated these into the Colonial Revival house he designed for them at 1521 Old Welsh Road in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The new house was one-and-a-half-stories, faced with fieldstone, and featured twin artist's studios in an outbuilding they named "Northlight."

The new house was located about a mile from the fairgrounds of the June Fête—an annual carnival, midway, horse show, art show and auction—organized as a fund-raiser for nearby Abington Hospital. The tents of the June Fête appear in many of Van Roekens's carnival paintings.

Van Roekens and Meltzer painted mostly local scenes, but there were occasional subjects in New York City, New England and Nevada, and foreign scenes painted during trips to Europe. They would also spend part of their summers painting in Mystic, Connecticut. Children Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (April 1975), illustration for NASA by Davis Paul Meltzer. Son, Davis Paul Meltzer (1930 – 2017), became a freelance artist, who created stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, painted dozens of book covers, illustrated space flight for NASA, and worked as a scientific illustrator at National Geographic Magazine for 30 years. He married Ilse Aguirre, and they lived in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania.

Daughter, Joanne Fleure Meltzer Craul (1932 – 1999), graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and became a professor of nursing at the SUNY Upstate Medical Center, in Syracuse, New York. She married Dr. Phillip J. Craul, and they had a son and a daughter.