Roswell Weidner

Roswell Weidner (September 18, 1911 – September 22, 1999) was an American artist known for his paintings, charcoal and pastel drawings, and prints. His subject matter included still life, landscapes, and portraits. He was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) city school and country school in Chester Springs, and the Barnes Foundation.

Weidner worked in the Works Progress Administration Arts Project during the Great Depression and in a shipyard as an expediter during World War II. Weidner began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1938. He was associated with the academy for 66 years, first as a student and later as a teacher, until his retirement in 1996. who later became the Art Director, then President of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania from 1959-1967. De Francesco was instrumental in Weidner's admission to the Reading Museum drawing classes while he was still in high school.

In 1930, Weidner received a scholarship from Reading Senior High School in Reading, Pennsylvania to attend the country school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Chester Springs. Weidner got odd jobs at the school including working for the English gardener mowing lawns, weeding, cleaning out the swimming pool, and doing dishes. Weidner said that he created drawings in the margins of the booklets that the children could color in. He was later assigned to the Museum Project in West Philadelphia and created animals for dioramas for museums. He requested a transfer to the Painting Section where he had to create one oil painting per month. The paintings were given to Federal Buildings including schools. Much of this art has been lost. Finally, he worked in the WPA Graphics Arts Workshop (Print Section) in Philadelphia with Dox Thrash, Michael J. Gallagher and Hugh Mesibov. Weidner created a Portrait of Dox Thrash (lithograph) while they worked together. Prints of most of the 21 etchings, lithographs or carborundum prints created by Roswell Weidner while on WPA are in the Philadelphia Free Library print collection. He left the WPA at this time and was not part of WPA when it was liquidated in 1943. His early successes in art exhibitions at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Corcoran Biennial in Washington, D.C., and PAFA Annual Exhibitions in Philadelphia resulted in his inclusion in the 1939 New York World’s Fair representing Pennsylvania.

During his career as an instructor at PAFA, Weidner taught various art media (graphics arts, lithography, painting, and drawing) and levels of students but he was also involved with decisions regarding the school. As a faculty member he worked with the administration on a number of issues most notably the use of the Belgravia Hotel (which was later named the Peale House) as studios for advanced students and faculty. Weidner took over management of the PAFA evening school and boosted attendance from 28 to over 200 per semester in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Weidner also served as president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Fellowship (alumni association) from 1955-1967.

Growth of artistic style

Until the mid-1950s, Weidner was content to paint in the style of his early teachers at the Academy that included Henry McCarter, George Matthews Harding, Daniel Garber, Francis Wayland Speight, and Joseph Pearson Jr.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Art Critic from 1962 to 2012 was Victoria Donohoe, who wrote the following about Weidner's 1981 show at the Marian Locks Gallery in Philadelphia:

"Weidner's talent was nurtured on Renoir and apparently on Monet's paintings of his famed garden at Giverny. Weidner hasn't attained the extraordinary refinement of their observation of momentary effects of light and color, but there's a robust directness in Weidner's work and fidelity of record as he zeroes in on the ground plane without looking skyward at all. To a larger extent than before, the quality of the artist's own reactions is now felt, as he goes about finding his inspiration in the outer aspects of nature. Weidner takes the colors of nature and heightens them considerably. He has shown increasing curiosity about color. Now he sometimes gets combinations to work that shouldn't. In this show, particularly in the pastels with the softer, quieter range of hues, Roswell Weidner can be appreciated as the fine landscapist he is. It's through a display such as this that artists may hope to regain appreciation of the fact that a natural source of art's interest, and one of its major functions, is to give expression to one's own locality and to living life naturally." Corcoran Gallery of Art Sixteenth Biennial in Washington, D.C., 1939 "Directions in American Painting" Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, 1941 "Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art : Paintings, Sculpture, prints" sponsored by Artists for Victory, Inc. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 1942 National Academy of Design 116th Annual Exhibition of contemporary American painting and sculpture, New York City, New York, 1942 The Biennial at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1943 National Academy of Design 120th Annual Exhibition of contemporary American painting and sculpture, New York City, New York, 1946 "Roswell Weidner", Philadelphia Artist's Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 1948 "Paintings by Roswell Weidner" at the Beryl Lush Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1953 "The Peale House Galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts present and Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Roswell Weidner", Philadelphia, PA, 1966 "Paintings and Drawings by Roswell Weidner" at the William Penn Memorial Museum (aka, State Museum of Pennsylvania), Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1966 "Roswell Weidner Paintings & Drawings Exhibition Selected from 1938 to the present" at the McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1970 "The New Deal and the Artist: An Exhibition of the 40th Anniversary of the Founding of WPA", Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 1975 "Paintings and Drawings of the Out-of-Doors by Roswell Weidner" Newman Galleries, Philadelphia, PA, February 1978 "Summer of 1978" New Paintings and Pastels by Roswell Weidner, Woodmere Art Gallery (aka, Woodmere Art Museum), Philadelphia, PA, Nov-Dec 1978 "Southern New Jersey Landscape" Long Beach Island, Foundation of The Arts and Sciences, July 1980 "The Pine Barrens by Roswell Weidner" Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, May 1981 "Roswell Weidner" Peale House Galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 1985 "Roswell Weidner Paintings & Pastels of the '80's" Newman Galleries, Philadelphia, PA, April 1987 "WPA - A Philadelphia Retrospective", Philadelphia, PA 1988 "Living Treasures" University City Science Center, Philadelphia, PA, February 1998 "A Tribute to Roswell Weidner" Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, August 2001 "Ode to the Jersey Pine Barrens" The Noyes Museum of Art, Loveladies, New Jersey, July 2002 "A retrospective of the work of Roswell Weidner, 1911-1999" at The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lawrence Township, New Jersey, 2004

Selected collections

Chester County History Center Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Artifact Collection, National Archives Free Library of Philadelphia WPA Collection Frick Art Reference Library Library of Congress Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) Pennsylvania Convention Center Picker Art Gallery, Dr. Luther W. Brady Collection, Colgate University Philadelphia Museum of Art Reading Public Museum Smithsonian American Art Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art University of Pennsylvania U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

Recognition

1935 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art (PAFA) 140th Annual, Cresson Traveling Scholarship 1936 PAFA 141st Annual, Toppan Drawing Prize

1965 PAFA 160th Annual, Philadelphia Watercolor Club Dawson Memorial Award 1972 Philadelphia Watercolor Club Dawson Memorial Award 1975 Philadelphia Watercolor Club Dawson Memorial Award 1975 PAFA Fellowship at the Woodmere Gallery The Percy Owens Award for a Distinguished Pennsylvania Artist 1985 Who Was Who in America 1985-present 1996 PAFA Dean's Award for Distinguished Service to the School 1998 "A Philadelphia Treasure" Liberty Bell Award, presented by Mayor Edward G. Rendell, City of Philadelphia, PA

Gallery

Personal life Weidner's personal life could be divided into two parts based on his marriages. The first part of his life continued up to the divorce from his first wife, Doris ("Dorcas") Kunzie Weidner, in 1956. Doris and Roswell went to art school together at Chester Springs and PAFA. judged art shows, and worked on the farm together. Doris Kunzie Weidner continued to paint and live on the farm after their divorce until her death in 2000.

The second part of his personal life started in 1957 when Weidner married his second wife, Marilyn Kemp Weidner. Marilyn and Roswell Weidner lived in Center City, Philadelphia. Marilyn also painted with Roswell but their true partnership was their interest in conservation of art both on paper and canvas.