Vase Blanc Avec Fleurs, Late 1930s
36 x 27 inches | oil on canvas
Leon Dabo (1864-1960) was a vigorously productive and successful artist who began his career in the early 1890's as a master muralist working on large commissions in public institutions, churches and synagogues in New York, Brooklyn, Long Island and Philadelphia. During that period, he worked under the direction of John La Farge (1835-1910), then one of New York's most respected artistic innovators and technicians. His first successful submissions into juried art competitions were made in 1901 to the 39th Annual Exhibition at the Bridgeport Public Library and the 76th Annual Exhibition at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York. In the next few years, Dabo may have submitted to major annual exhibitions around the country, but was apparently rejected, a rejection he would recount for years.
Still, recognition was close at hand. In May of 1905, he had five paintings accepted for the Winter Exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York. This began an unbroken sixteen year string of one hundred and one public exhibitions that extended into the first years of World War I. In this period, he exhibited more than seven hundred canvases in sixty-four venues, including thirty-five solo exhibitions. Few American artists could boast of careers with such success. In this phase of his life, Dabo participated in two exhibitions that would change the course of American art forever: the 1910 Exhibition of Independent Artists organized by 'The Eight' and the storied 1913 'Armory Show' in New York, for which he was an organizer.
Early in 1918, Dabo joined the war effort, eventually serving on General Hersey's staff. In March of 1919, he returned home and once again took up the brush. For More on Dabo's Service in WWI, click here. At fifty-five years old, he was no longer as phenomenally productive as he was in his earlier years. Between March of 1920 and June of 1939, Dabo participated in forty-two exhibits, showing nearly two hundred canvases in thirty-three venues. Prominent galleries like Knoedler & Co. showed his work and he was made a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor for his contribution to the arts. He was also elected as an Associate Member of the National Academy.
When World War II broke out in Europe, he and his wife were living in Paris, where he exhibited regularly in several galleries. He was unable to get his wife and his life's work out of the city before the Germans marched into Paris in June of 1940.
There were a number of formidable problems for all Americans trapped in Paris without exit visas, but the seventy-five-year-old Dabo had additional complications. He was a distinguished veteran of the First World War, decorated for his participation in Verdun and the offensive at Sonne. He also had his life's work - over three hundred canvases - that he wanted to save and bring back to the States. And, his wife, Stephanie Ofenthal, was Jewish.
It took four months, but he got himself, his wife and the three hundred canvases across the border through Spain, to Portugal, and eventually back to New York. In 1941, Feragil Galleries of New York helped him publicize the struggle of the French people living under Nazi occupation and his own heroic escape with an exhibition entitled "When I Last Saw France." Many of the major U.S. newspapers reviewed the exhibition.
In the final twenty years of his life, a time for complete retirement, Dabo still managed to enter twenty-two exhibitions, where he showed more than fifty canvases, and was made a full signatory member of the National Academy. Though his health declined considerably in the last five years of his life, he managed to paint into his ninety-first year.
By the end of his life, he had exhibited over a thousand canvases. Solo exhibitions of his work in the United States were held in Los Angeles, Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston, New York and Washington, DC. Internationally, he had one-man shows in Montreal, London, Dresden, Berlin and Paris. Though Dabo was upset by early rejections, his lifetime record would be the envy of most artists. At the time of his death, his work was held in the permanent collections of fifty of the finest museums in the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Mus'e d'Orsay and the Louvre.
“Leon Dabo: En France Encore,” a show timed to coincide with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s major Van Gogh-themed exhibition, is on view through March 28 at Sullivan Goss Gallery, 11 E. Anapamu St.
“Leon Dabo was a French-born American artist who became well known before the first World War as a tonalist painter,” said Nathan Vonk, owner of the Sullivan Goss Gallery. “As one of the organizers of the 1913 Armory show in New York City, Mr. Dabo played a key role in introducing impressionism, post-impressionism and modernism to an American audience.
“After his time spent in Europe as an intelligence officer during the first World War, his work took a dramatic turn toward post-impressionism with pieces that show the obvious influence of Van Gogh’s work, an aesthetic lineage that only became stronger after the second World War.”
LEON DABO (1864-1960) was a French-born American painter who had an extraordinarily long career, from the early 1890s through 1954. His father, Igance Schott de Dabo was a mural painter and stained-glass artist who emigrated with his family to escape political unrest in France, settling in Detroit. Leon Dabo became a muralist, too, working on ecclesiastical and other public commissions under the direction of John La Farge in New York. In the first years of the 20th century, Dabo gained recognition as a painter, primarily of landscapes in the Tonalist style.
REGULAR SULLIVAN GOSS GALLERY OBSERVERS and art-watchers will know something of the Frenchman-in-New-York artist Leon Dabo. The gallery, having acquired the artist's estate eleven years ago under the aegis of original owner Frank Goss, has presented the quietly majestic art of Dabo (1864-1960) in group shows and a few solo exhibitions with catalogues in tow.
In the July 1913 edition of Art and Progress, a painter and writer called L Birge Harrison discussed “the ‘mood’ in modern painting”. Artists, he said, have “learned that the veiled and half-seen things make a stronger appeal to the human imagination than the commonplace and obvious facts of nature”. Painters, thought Harrison, now sought “mood” and had found that even banal landscapes could be “transformed and glorified” when they were painted in the “mysterious half-lights between day and darkness”.
What Harrison was describing was tonalism, a style that showed the world leeched of colour as though receding into mist. If motifs deliquesced under washes of neutral, pearly colour then a dreamy emotionalism took shape instead. James McNeill Whistler was the best-known exponent but almost as celebrated at the time was an acolyte, Leon Dabo.
To inaugurate the fall art season, Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery will present an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and pastels from the Estate of French-born American artist Leon Dabo (1864-1960).
Sullivan Goss Shows Early-20th-Century Drawings through March
AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK
Leon Dabo was a pivotal American artist in helping to push the Romantic sensibilities in late 18th and early 19th century painting into new territory with the infusion of ideas from the Aesthetic Movement and its Asian art forebears, Symbolist painting, and Tonalism. In practice, Aestheticism, Symbolism and Tonalism overlapped to a significant degree, and artists like James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and Leon Dabo are often talked about as having belonged to more than one of these schools.
Dabo studied with the great Tonalist and Aesthete Whistler and with Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the French Symbolist. He also studied with John La Farge, from whom the younger artist learned about technique and the innate value of beautiful environments. Dabo's art stayed true to the philosophy of "Art for art's sake," an expression so often ascribed to the Aesthetic Movement that also signaled the late nineteenth century shift in art's function from one of moral instruction towards one of poetic evocation and sensuous pleasure.
Gradually, Dabo's ability to ground his progressive ideas about art in the rigor of traditional Academic craftsmanship made him one of the more sought after artists in the early 20th century. His facility with both French and English and his strong cross-Atlantic ties made him an ideal choice to help organize the International Exhibition of Modern Art (also known as the Armory Show) in 1913, an exhibition that would change the course of art on both sides of the Atlantic forever more.
AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS
1946 - Member, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
1938 - Silver Medal, Societe de Amis des Arts, Versailles, France
1938 - Gold Medal, Societe National des Beaux Arts, Paris, France
1934 - Associate Member, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
1934 - Legion of Honour - Chevalier, Paris, France
1909 - William T. Evans Prize, National Arts Club, New York, NY
1909 - 1st Prize, Muncie Art Association, Muncie, IN for "Dawn"
Allied Artists of London, London England
American Painters and Sculptors, founding member
Association of American Painters and Sculptors
Brooklyn Society of Artists, Brooklyn, NY
Hopkin Club of Detroit, Detroit, MI
Independents (through involvement with Exhibition of Independent Artists)
Les Amis des Arts, Arles, France
Les Mireilles, Avignon, France
Legion of Honor, Paris, France
National Society of Mural Painters
National Arts Club, New York, NY
National Academy of Design, New York, NY
National Arts Club, Life Member
New York Historical Society, New York, NY
Pastelists, New York, NY (Inaugural President)
Poetry Society of America, New York, NY
Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, London, England
Salon d'Automne, Paris, France
Salon Nationale des Beaux Arts, Paris, France
School of Arts League, New York, NY
Societie des Amis du Louvre, Paris France
COLLECTIONS
Arbuckle Institute, Brooklyn, NY
Ball State University Museum of Art, Mucie, IN
Beloit College, Wright Museum of Art, Beloit, WI*
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (Silver Light, Hudson River, 1911)
Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, NY
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Federal Reserve Board, Fine Arts Program
Florence Griswold Museum, Lyme, CT
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA*
Harvard University Fogg Art Museum, Boston, MA
The Frick Collection, New York, NY
Cornell University, Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN (Rondout, New York, 1907)
John H. Vanderpoel Art Association, Chicago, IL
Long Island Museum of American Art, Stony Brook, NY
Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (Marine, ND, The Cloud, 1907, Landscape, 1920, New York Harbor from the Jersey Shore, 1907
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Mn
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX
Montclair Art Museum Montclair, NJ
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA
Musée Avignon, Avignon, France
Musée de Louvre, Paris, France
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France (Moore Park, 1909)
Museum of Art, Oran, Algeria
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY
Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI
National Academy of Design Museum, New York, NY
National Arts Club, New York, NY
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada (Marigolds Cove, Late Evening, 1902)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, NJ
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, TX
Poland Springs Museum of Art, ME
Poland Springs, ME
Portland Town Club, Portland, OR
Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA
Riverside Museum, Riverside, NY
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Saginaw Art AssociatIon, Saginaw, MI
Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA
Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, IN
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH
Tokyo Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan
University of Minnesota, Tweed Museum of Art, Deluth, MI
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MN
MURAL COMMISSIONS
St. John's Seminary, Brooklyn, NY
Chapel at St. John's Seminary, Brooklyn, NY
Church of St. Mary, Long Island City, NY
Temple Israel, Brooklyn, NY
Sacred Heart, Bloomfield, NJ
Church of the Nativity, Manhattan, NY
St. John the Baptist Church, Brooklyn, NY
St. Benedict Joseph Labre, Richmond Hill, NY
St. Pauls, Brooklyn, NY
Holy Cross Church, Brooklyn, NY
St. John's Church, Utica, NY
St. Stephen's Church, Brooklyn, NY
State Capitol Building , Harrisburg, PA
Flower Memorial Library, Watertown, NY
Chapel of Jesuit Retreat House, Monroe, NY
St. Paul the Apostle, New York, NY
CHRONOLOGY
1864 Dabo is born on July 9th.
1870 Dabo's family emigrates to the US, where his father begins to train his son in painting for architectural decoration.
1883 Dabo takes a job with architectural design firm, J&R Lamb, through whom he meets his first major mentor, John La Farge (1834-1910). In his off hours, Dabo studies at the Art Students League of New York.
1885-92 Dabo goes abroad to study, setting up in Paris at the École des Arts Decoratifs, the École des Beaux Arts and the Academie Julian under Daniel Vierge and Pierre Galland. He also studies privately with the Symbolist painter, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898). While in Florence, he studies mosaic technique at the Medici Palace, and while in Rome, he studies mural design and executes murals with Pietro Gagliardi. In London, Dabo is a frequent visitor to Whistler's studio, where he admitted “being Whistler’s pupil meant sweeping his studio, going out for vermillion and paying for a tube without being reimbursed.”
1892-1904 Dabo returns to New York, where he takes up his association again with J&R Lamb and with John La Farge. He executes important commissions for the murals for St. John the Baptist Church in Brooklyn, the Capitol Building in Harrisburg, PA, the Holy Cross Church in Flatbush, NY, and he Roswell P. Flower Library in Watertown, NY.
1892-1904 Dabo returns to New York, where he takes up his association again with J&R Lamb and with John La Farge. He executes important commissions for the murals for St. John the Baptist Church in Brooklyn, the Capitol Building in Harrisburg, PA, the Holy Cross Church in Flatbush, NY, and he Roswell P. Flower Library in Watertown, NY.
1892-1904 Dabo has solo exhibits in New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles before traveling to England with Alvin Langdon Coburn and George Bernard Shaw. As a guest at the estate of Lord Ebury, Dabo painted Moore Park, which was later purchased by the Luxembourg, Museum in Paris, now in the collection of the Musee D’Orsay, Paris. More exhibitions followed at the Goupil Gallery in London and again at the National Arts Club in New York.
1908 Dabo shows three paintings in the Contemporary Art exhibit at the National Arts Club in New York where he is awarded the William T. Evans Prize.
1909 William Evans subsequently donates Evening on the Hudson to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
1910 Dabo participates in the “Independents” exhibit organized by “The Eight” in New York City. He also exhibits at the Allied Artists Association in London and at the Berlin Academy of Art to enthusiastic reviews.
1911-1913 Dabo becomes a founding member of the American Painters and Sculptors and helps organize "the Armory Show" of 1913, going so far as to host many of the preliminary meetings at his studio on 23rd street. He exhibits four paintings in the Show, one of which is purchased by Mrs. Payne Whitney. In Richfield Springs, NY, he directs the transformation of an old sawmill into art studios for the Richard Montgomery Art Colony. He is also accepted into the permanent collections of the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, the National Gallery of Ontario, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
1914 Dabo's painting, The Cloud, is purchased by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
1917-1920 Dabo travels abroad as a member of the American Financial Mission to the allies. His linguistic abilities lead to service in the French, British and American armies as Captain during the First World War. When he gets home, he lectures extensively on art at Columbia University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
1921-1932 Dabo paints extensively along the East Coast, from Long Island sound to Maine, making many plein air études of still-lifes, works on paper, oil studies of clouds, rock formations, mountains, and the sea. Starting in the late 1920s, he joins the artist colonies of Connecticut, teaching and painting in the Litchfield Hills from 1928 – 1932.
1933-36 Dabo exhibits his flower paintings and pastels at M. Knoedler & Company inNew York. Many of these floral works show the influence of his early mentor John La Farge, his admiration of the symbolist Odilon Redon, his love of the Oriental Masters, and his contact abroad with the French Impressionists.
1934 Dabo is elected associate member of the National Academy of Design and is awarded the Cross of Knight of the French Legion of Honor for his contribution to art.
1937-1940 Dabo returns to France and establishes a studio is Paris. While in France, he paints the Normandy coast, the French Alps, Tallories, Lac Annecy. As the Nazi's hold growsw more restrictive, Dabo traveled to the south of France were he paints St. Tropez and Cagnes-sur-mer. He is awarded the Gold Medal at the Societé National des beaux Arts, Paris, and a Silver Medal at the Societe des Amis de Art, Versailles. Before leaving occupied France in 1940, Dabo aids in smuggling art works by Walter Sickert and Fernand Léger out of France and saving them from probable confiscation.
1941-43 Dabo returns to New York to paint the Hudson.
1944 Dabo is a elected an Academician of the National Academy of Design.
1948-51 Dabo returns to France for the last time. While there, he paints the French countryside, including a sizable number of canvases of Mont Sainte Victoire and its environs, a subject studied extensively by his old friend Cézanne. In 1951, he shows some of these works at Painters of Mont Ste. Victoire: Tribute to Cézanne, held at the Musée Garnet in Aix-en Provence.
1960 At the age of 95, Dabo sees his work included in the fiftieth anniversary of the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910 held at the Delaware Art Center Wilmington and the Graham Gallery, New York. Dabo died in New York City on November 7th.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. A substantial portion of the research herein was provided by the owners of Stillwell House, an Antique & Fine Art Gallery. Manalapan, NJ, 2011.
2. Hartmann, Sadakichi Harmann. The Whistler Book. Boston: L.C. Page & Co., 1910.
3. Narodny, Ivan. American Artists. New York: Roerich Museum Press, 1930.
4. Gimpel, Rene. Diary of an Art Dealer. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1966.
5. Sweeney, J. Gary. Artists of Michigan From the Nineteenth Century. Muskegon:Muskegon Museum of Art, 1987.
6. Weber, Bruce and William Gerdts. In Nature's Way: American Landscape Painting of the Late Nineteenth Century. West Palm Beach, FL: Norton Gallery of Art, 1987.
7. Tottis, James W. Forging a Modern Identity: Masters of American Painting Born after 1847; American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Vol. III. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2006.
8. Cleveland, David. A History of American Tonalism. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2011.
EXHIBITIONS
Solo Exhibitions (selected from list of 54 solo exhibitions)
2014 In Defense of Beauty: Leon Dabo's Floral Oils, Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
2013 Leon Dabo: Toutes Les Fleurs, Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CAGroup Exhibitions (selected from list of over 240 group exhibitions)
2013 The Life and Art of Leon Dabo: A Retrospective , Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
1999 Leon Dabo: A Retrospective D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc., New York, NY
1964 Leon Dabo Davis Galleries, New York, NY
1963 Retrospective University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
1962 Graham Gallery, New York, NY Retrospective
1941 Ferargil Galleries, New York, NY
1938 Galerie Zak, Paris, Francis
1933 Knoedler Galleries, New York, NY
1931 Ferargil Galleries, New York, NY
1920 Long Island Painters Plymouth Institute, New York
1918 An Exhibition of Oils by Leon Dabo Art Institute of Chicago
1917 Exhibition of Paintings by Leon Dabo Goupil Galleries
1917 Goupil Galleries, New York, NY
1913 Gougland Drimi Fisher & Co., London, England
1912 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1912 Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC
1912 Coffier Art Galleries, New York1906 Anderson Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
1912 Powell Art Gallery
1912 Folsom Galleries, New York, NY
1911 MacDowell Club, New York
1911 Walker Gallery, Montreal, Canada
1911 Exhibition of Recent Paintings Otto Fukushima, Elite Art Rooms, New York, NY
1910 Bruno Cassirer Gallery, Berlin, Germany
1911 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1910 Reinhardt Galleries, Chicago, IL
1909 Charleston Gallery, Saginaw, MI
1909 Muncie Art Association, Muncie, IN
1909 National Arts Club, New York, NY
1908 Gurlitt Gallery, Berlin, Germany
1908 Gouplil Gallery London, England
1908 Allied Artists Association Ltd., London, England
1907 Fritz Gurlitt Gallery, Berlin, Germany
1907 Poland Spring Art Gallery, ME
1907 A.R. Kohlman Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
1907 Academy of Fine Arts, Chicago, IL
1906 National Arts Club, New York, NY
1906 Blanchard Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1906 Rowlands Gallery, Boston, MA
Group Exhibitions (selected from list of over 240 group exhibitions)
2020 Wildling Museum, Solvang, CA
2020 New York State Museum, Albany, NY
2019 Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art of the State University of NY, New Paltz, NY
2013 The Armory Show at 100, 1913, New York Historical Society, New York, NY
2013 The New Spirit: Art in the Armory Show, 1913, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
2012 Modernizing America; Artists of the Armory Show, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY
2003 After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum Museum of Art, Altanta, GA
2002 L'Impressionisme Americain 1880-1915 Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne, Switzerland
1999 American Tonalism: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
1997 American Tonalism Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
1988 75th Anniversary Armory Show, New York, NY
1982 Tonalism: An American Experience The Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, NY
1961 National Academy of Design
1960 Fiftieth Anniversary: Artists in 1910 Delaware Art Center, Wilmington, DE
1951 Painters of Mt. Ste. Victoires Tribute to Cezanne
1951 Painters of Mont Ste.-Victoire: Tribute to Cezanne Musee Graner, Aix-en-Provence, France
1939 Exhibition Celebrating Opening of Albert Canal, Liege, Belgium
1939 London Group Show with French Artists, London, England
1939 Societe Nationale de Beaux Arts, Paris, France
1939 Salon des Tuileries, Paris France
1939 Jeunes Artistes Francais "Jeunes Artistes Francais," London Fourth Fidac Salon, American Section, London, England
1938 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
1938 Societe des Artistes Independents, Paris, France
1938 Societe Nationale de Beaux Arts, Paris, France
1938 Salon d'Automme, Paris, France
1925 Annual Exhibition Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
1923 Annual Exhibition Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
1920 Knoedler Gallery, New York, NY
1919 Ardsley Studios, Brooklyn, NY
1913 Armory Show, New York, NY
1912 Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC
1912 Powell Art Gallery
1912 Worcester Art Museum, MA
1912 Association of Italian Artists, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
1911 Art Institute of Chicago
1911 MacDowell Club, New York, NY
1911 Worcester Art Museum, MA
1911 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
1910 Exhibtion of Independent Artists, New York, NY
1910 Royal Academy, Berlin, Germany
1909 National Arts Club, New York, NY
1908 Applied Artists Association Ltd, London, England
1907 Annual Exbibition, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
1906 Annual Exhibition Art Institute of Chicago
1901 39th Annual Exhibition Bridgeport Public Library, Bridgeport, CT
1901 National Academy of Design
