36 Facts About Harold Weston

Harold Weston was an American modernist painter, based for many years in the Adirondack Mountains, whose work moved from expressionism to realism to abstraction.

Harold Weston was collected by Duncan Phillips, widely exhibited in the 1920s and 1930s, and painted murals under the Treasury Relief Art Project for the General Services Administration.

At the age of 15, Harold Weston spent a year traveling in Europe and attending school in Switzerland and Germany, continuing to paint and draw in his sketchbooks while in Europe.

Harold Weston's left leg was paralyzed, and doctors said that he would never walk again.

Harold Weston served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon, contributing a large number of cartoons and artworks to the magazine.

Harold Weston was appointed Official Painter for the British Army in 1918.

Harold Weston witnessed the horror of famine and disease while in the Middle East.

Harold Weston saw men, women, and children die of heat exhaustion and starvation.

Harold Weston wrote about some of his experiences for the National Geographic Magazine in April 1921, which included his photographs that he color tinted.

In late 1919 Harold Weston returned to the United States via a caravan east to India, and then by ship with a layover in Japan.

In May 1920 Harold Weston left the city for the Adirondack Mountains to take nature as his teacher.

Harold Weston showed over one hundred oil sketches from Persia and the Adirondacks and 63 oil paintings, each of which rested in one of Weston's hand-carved and gilded frames.

Harold Weston met Faith Borton while giving a slide lecture about his experiences in Persia at Vassar College.

Harold Weston was impressed, and invited her along with his sister and friends to his cabin for a mid-winter party.

Hundreds of persuasive letters from Harold Weston followed, until eight months later she relented.

Harold Weston exhibited his work in Paris, and rolled-up canvases to ship back to New York City to be shown at the Montross Gallery.

Harold Weston turned out prodigious amounts of artwork in the 1930s.

Harold Weston's work was shown frequently in solo and group shows at galleries and museums, including the Phillips Memorial Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Harold Weston's painting Green Hat won third prize in painting at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939.

Duncan Phillips invited Harold Weston to speak at his gallery several times.

In 1935 Harold Weston competed for a Treasury Relief Art Project mural commission to paint murals depicting the government's efforts to speed the end of the Great Depression.

For two-and-a-half years Harold Weston worked 11 hours a day creating 840 square feet of 22 panels on canvas that were hung in the General Services Administration building in Washington, DC, in 1938.

Humanitarian concerns at the advent of World War II compelled Harold Weston to give up painting.

Harold Weston outlined a plan that he called the Reconstruction Service Committee, for which he obtained the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, and which eventually evolved into the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

Harold Weston became an expert on food policy and the politics of farm policy in the US Weston wrote a manuscript about his experiences, "Battle of Bread," that is housed in the Library of Congress.

Harold Weston worked on the painting series, "Building the United Nations," from 1949 to 1952, further refining his hyper-realistic style.

Harold Weston was elected president of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, and launched the museum gift plan, a scheme by which donors paid artists for their work and then subsequently donated it to museums.

Harold Weston joined the International Association of Plastic Arts and, as a delegate, vice president, or president, attended all of the group's international meetings between 1954 in Venice and 1966 in Tokyo.

Harold Weston served many years as its vice president and president.

Harold Weston was excited by the new direction of his work, for which he had more time after the passage of the National Endowment for the Arts legislation in 1965.

Harold Weston painted his last significant body of work, the "Stone Series," from 1968 until his death in 1972, inspired by stones found on the Gaspe Peninsula in Canada.

In 1971, Harold Weston published Freedom in the Wilds: A Saga of the Adirondacks, which is out of print, but a third, expanded edition was published in 2008 under the title Freedom in the Wilds: An Artist in the Adirondacks.

Harold Weston died on April 10,1972, in New York City.

Major posthumous museum exhibitions of Harold Weston's work have been held at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Adirondack Museum, and the Shelburne Museum.

Galleries showing Weston work have included Gerald Peters Gallery, D Wigmore Fine Art, and Salander-O'Reilly Galleries.

Harold Weston received an award from the American Society of Contemporary Artists, and in 1963 Harold Weston was appointed a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science for his humanitarian work during World War II.