John Whorf

American, 1903 - 1959

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One of the most accomplished and esteemed watercolorists of the first half of the twentieth century, John Whorf created realist depictions of urban and rural imagery, working in a luminous painterly style often compared with that of John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer. He was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and received his initial exposure to art from his father, Harry C. Whorf, a commercial artist and graphic designer. He went on to study in Boston at the St. Botolph Studio and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Philip Leslie Hale and William James. Whorf spent the summer of 1917 or 1918 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, attending classes with Charles W. Hawthorne and associating with such leading contemporary painters as Max Bohn and E. Ambrose Webster. About 1919 Whorf visited France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. In Paris he enrolled briefly at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Grande Chaumiere, and the Academie Colarossi. During his time abroad, Whorf turned increasingly away from oil painting and began to focus on watercolor, which he found suited his transient lifestyle and his expressive and aesthetic interests. After his return to Boston in the early 1920s, Whorf was commended in the press as Boston's leading watercolorist. After 1937 he lived in Provincetown, although he continued to travel in the United States and abroad in search of painting subjects. Throughout the rest of his career, Whorf's realistic, fluidly painted works were highly popular and sought-after.Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton
AFA Publishing's hardcover copies of John Whorf Rediscovered is available here.
John Whorf Paintings & Art