28 Facts About Emlen Etting

Emlen Etting attended schools in Lausanne, Switzerland, and St George's School in Middletown, Rhode Island.

Emlen Etting was present at the liberation of Paris and he collaborated with Orson Welles to record the event.

An earlier son was born to the Ettings on August 15,1903, and given the name Emlen Pope Etting Jr.

On October 23,1905, when young Emlen Etting was only two months old, his father died of a heart attack.

Emlen Etting was reared in a European fashion as much as he was American.

Emlen Etting lived with his mother in Europe for much of his childhood.

Emlen Etting traveled to Munich but was drawn to life in Paris and into the tutelage of the artist Andre Lhote.

Emlen Etting remained influenced by Lhote, his teacher and mentor, for the rest of his life.

Emlen Etting frequented the most exclusive art shows and enjoyed the avant-garde films screened in Paris Studio 28.

Emlen Etting uses very literal images of women, modes of travel, and his own body parts.

Emlen Etting made his mark in early film but as times changed, and he stopped working with the medium.

Emlen Etting was present at the liberation of Paris and made many sketches of the event that were featured in periodicals of the time.

Emlen Etting's duty was to disseminate the news of the progress of the D-Day invasion and, more importantly, to reassure the devastated villagers he encountered that they could rely on the assistance of US forces in rebuilding their war-torn lives.

Emlen Etting wrote, presented, and recorded a series of daily news programs for the American Broadcasting Station in Europe in the towns he visited to accomplish this.

Emlen Etting's responsibilities included recording the experiences of the newly liberated French townspeople he met in the wake of the military sweep of their occupied country for the US Army and reporting on what he observed in the field.

Emlen Etting felt it was his duty to make a record of the moment, separating the fact from the fiction of war.

Emlen Etting felt ashamed that there was such an outpouring of gratitude for him and his party when the appreciation, in his opinion, should be offered instead to the men who fought and died there.

Emlen Etting was attached to the Second French Armored Division.

Emlen Etting documented these historical events in The Liberation of Paris, a recording collaboration with Orson Welles, directed by Pierre Schaeffer.

The painter wrote in his journal that once the Allies had secured the city and he had fulfilled his military obligations, including requisitioning a jeep to confirm the welfare of Pablo Picasso, Emlen Etting made his way to Lhote's studio on the Rue l'Odessa.

Emlen Etting was aware that as a Jew, Lhote had had to move from place to place, sleeping where and when he could in fear of the Gestapo, and Emlen Etting wondered whether his old teacher had survived the Nazis' four-year occupation of the city.

When Emlen Etting arrived again at the Rue l'Odessa, Lhote was there and seemed unchanged.

Emlen Etting created a large catalogue of paintings and drawings and worked most every day, believing that an artist should work whether they felt the call of the muse or not.

Emlen Etting artworks included "a lot of male nudes and paintings of sailors" and, today, his work is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Allentown Art Museum, and the Museum of American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Emlen Etting taught at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia College of Art, Temple University's Tyler School of Art, and Florida Southern College.

In 1938, Emlen Etting was married to Gloria Braggiotti, the daughter of an Italian aristocrat and a Boston Brahmin mother, at the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City.

Emlen Etting was a great cook and hostess who can be credited to elevating the modern salon to its highest expression.

Emlen Etting died of Parkinson's disease on July 20,1993, at his home in Philadelphia at the age of 88.