Waldo Peirce

Waldo Peirce (December 17, 1884 – March 8, 1970) was an American painter, who for many years reveled in living the life of a bohemian expatriate. and was sometimes called "the American Renoir." Peirce once said he never worked a day in his life. He did, however, spend many hours every day for 50 years of his life painting still lifes, figures, and landscapes as well as hundreds of pictures of his beloved families (he was married four times and had numerous children). With a mustache and full beard and a large cigar jammed perpetually into his mouth he looked every inch of a cartoonist's notion of an artist. Peirce himself was adamant about one thing: "I'm a painter," he insisted, "not an artist."

Biography Waldo Peirce was born December 17, 1884, in Bangor, Maine, to Mellen Chamberlain Peirce and Anna Hayford. His father was a Bangor lumber baron. Peirce had three siblings, an older brother and a younger sister and brother. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1903. He then attended Harvard University and, by his own account, barely graduated due to copious amounts of time spent in the local pool hall and other trivial pursuits. Although Peirce always identified with the Class of 1907, the exact year of his graduation is not clear, and he may have received his diploma in either 1908 or 1909. Peirce was a large man for his time, and he was drafted onto the Harvard football team, solely, he said, because of his size. He played the center position. After Harvard, Peirce studied art at the Art Students League in New York City, and later, traveled to Europe where he studied at both the Académie Julian in Paris and with the Spanish artist Ignacio Zuloaga. He initially focused on Impressionism.

In 1915, two years before the entry of the United States into World War I, he joined the American Field Service, an ambulance corps that served on the French battlefields. He was later decorated with the Croix de Guerre by the French government for bravery at Verdun. For 10 years, between 1910 and 1920, Peirce lived the expatriate life in France and Paris, before returning to the United States for a couple of years. He then returned to Europe for several more years, and only returned to the U.S. permanently with the advent of World War II.

In 1938, he was commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts to paint two murals, Legends of the Hudson and Rip van Winkle, for the U.S. Post Office in Troy, New York.

In 1960 Lehigh University exhibited his paintings along with ceramics by Raymond Gallucci and paintings by Charles Ward in an exhibition curated by Francis Quirk.

John Reed prank In 1910, Peirce enjoyed a bit of local notoriety when his prank on friend John Reed, the American communist who is buried in the Kremlin walls, became known and circulated. The duo had booked passage on a cattle freighter from Boston to England, but as the ship was leaving Boston Harbor, Peirce apparently decided that the accommodations were not to his taste. Without a word to anyone, he jumped off the back of the ship and swam several miles back to shore. Reed was then arrested by the ship's captain for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of his traveling companion and thrown into the brig. When the freighter eventually arrived in England, Peirce was at the dock waiting to greet his friend Reed. After his swim back to shore, or, by another account, being picked up by a lobster boat, he had then taken a faster ship to England. In later accounts, Peirce's John Reed story seemed to evolve and shift, to the extent its veracity may never be truly known. One further embellishment to the story is that Peirce had swum in a multi-mile swimming contest at Harvard a few days prior.

Peirce's older brother, Hayford, was a noted authority on Byzantine art and his third wife, Alzira Peirce (1908–2010), also enjoyed a modest reputation as a painter. His nephew, Hayford Peirce (1942–2020), was a science-fiction and mystery writer. Prominent British solicitor Gareth Peirce married his son Bill.

Death and legacy A resident of Searsport, Maine, Peirce died on March 8, 1970, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, of a cerebral thrombosis. He was 85 years old. He was survived by his fourth wife, Ellen Antoinette Larsen, and his three sons and two daughters. He is interred in Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor, Penobscot County, Maine.

Peirce's paintings have been acquired and exhibited by several prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others.