22 Facts About Douglas Volk

Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk was an American portrait and figure painter, muralist, and educator.

Douglas Volk taught at the Cooper Union, the Art Students League of New York, and was one of the founders of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts.

Douglas Volk was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Emily Clarissa King Volk and the sculptor Leonard Wells Volk.

Douglas Volk was named for his mother's maternal cousin, Stephen A Douglas, the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 1860, who lost to Republican presidential nominee Abraham Lincoln.

Douglas Volk spent his childhood in Chicago, but his family moved to Europe when he was fourteen.

Douglas Volk began studying art in Rome, and attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerome.

Douglas Volk returned to the United States, and was hired as an instructor at the Cooper Union in New York City, where he taught from 1879 to 1884 and from 1906 to 1912.

Douglas Volk helped to found the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts in 1886, and served as its director until 1893.

Douglas Volk taught at the Art Students League of New York, the National Academy of Design, and intermittently at the Society for Ethical Culture.

Douglas Volk was a working artist, noted for his figure and portrait paintings.

Douglas Volk exhibited three works at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where the group won a medal, his first major award.

Douglas Volk was one of eight American artists commissioned by the National Art Committee to depict major figures from the Great War.

Douglas Volk became the first instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts.

Douglas Volk died at Fryeburg, Maine on February 7,1935.

Wendell Douglas Volk created silkscreen prints for the wool designs, and printed a treatise on the Sabatos work on his hand presses.

The Douglas Volk family held the large property for 100 years.

Douglas Volk's students included artists Russell Cowles, Benjamin Orso Eggleston, Susan Ricker Knox, Ada Murphy, Ella Bennett Sherman, Adele Rogers Shrenk, and Helen Maria Turner.

Douglas Volk painted at least nine posthumous portraits of Lincoln, basing them on the plaster life-mask that his father had made in 1860.

Douglas Volk was an advocate for teaching drawing and art to children, and published a monograph, Art Instruction in the Public Schools.

Douglas Volk was elected to the Society of American Artists in 1880.

Douglas Volk was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1898, and became a full academician in 1899.

Douglas Volk was a member of the Architectural League of New York, the National Society of Portrait Painters, and the Society of Mural Painters.