Boardman Robinson was born in Somerset, Nova Scotia, in 1876. He came to the United States in 1894 and lived in Boston where he studied at the Masachusetts Normal Art School, as it was then called. In 1898 he went to Paris and remained there for two years. During that time he studied at the Academie Colarossi and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After a year in the United States, he returned to Paris in 1901 and stayed for three years.
In 1906 Robinson began his work for newspapers and magazines—for Vogue, Morning Telegraph, Tribune, Colliers, Puck, Judge, Leslie’s Weekly, Scribner’s, The Century Weekly, Harper’s, and others. In 1915 he went to the Balkans and Russia with John Reed, for Metropolitan Magazine. He returned to New York in 1916 and was at various times on the Baltimore Sun, The Tribune, Harvey’s Weekly, and The Masses, interrupted by a year in England for the London Outlook during 1922 and 1923. He was an instructor at the Art Students’ League from 1919 to 1930. In 1930 he went to Colorado Springs to teach first at the Fountain Valley School for Boys and then at the Broadmoor Art Academy, now a part of the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. He has been director of the Art School there since 1936.
Robinson’s illustrations include Rhymes of If and Why by Betty Sage, published by Duffield, The War in Eastern Europe by John Reed and Boardman Robinson published in 1916 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, The Brothers Karamozov by Feodor Dostoevskii published in 1933 by Random House, The Idiot by Dostoevskii published in 1935 by Random House,* King Lear* by William Shakespeare published in 1939 by Limited Editions Club, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters published in 1942 by Limited Editions Club, Moby Dick by Herman Melville published in 1943 by Limited Editions Club, and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman published in 1944 by Random House.
Robinson has done murals and frescos for the Kauffman Department Store, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928 and 1929; at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, completed in 1931; for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, completed in 1936; for the Department of Justice Building in Washington D.C., completed in 1937; for the Englewood Post Office, Englewood, Colorado, completed in 1940.
His biography by Albert Christ-Janer has just been published by the University of Chicago Press.
This exhibition was assembled by Miss Antoinette Kraushaar of the Kraushaar Galleries, New York.
