Biography

Guy Pene du Bois (1884-1958) was a noted American painter, art critic, and educator whose works provided a distinctively original lens through which to view early 20th century American culture and society.

Born in Brooklyn, Pene du Bois acquired an early admiration for French language and culture from his father, Henri, a journalist and writer of Louisiana Creole heritage. Pene du Bois began his artistic training at an early age by enrolling in the New York School of Art in 1899, where he first studied with the famed American Impressionist painter, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), and then under Robert Henri (1865-1929), the pioneer of the “Ash Can School of American Realism,” who encouraged his students to focus more on everyday life in their artwork, instructing them to venture out of the studio and into the city to glean a better understanding of the subjects they were painting; this approach had a profound effect on Pene du Bois, with an emphasis on the underlying social interaction between his subjects later becoming a recurring theme in his work.

Pene du Bois’ classmates at the New York School of Art included several aspiring artists whose work would also go on to have a consequential impact on the world of 20th century American art, including Gifford Beal (1879-1956), George Bellows (1882-1925), Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), and legendary American painter and printmaker Edward Hopper (1862-1967), the latter becoming Pene du Bois’ lifelong friend, with Pene du Bois serving as best man at Hopper’s 1924 wedding to artist Josephine Hopper.

In 1905 Pene du Bois and his father travelled to Paris, with Pene du Bois spending time at the Academy Colarossi, where he took private lessons from the Swiss-born, art nouveau painter Theophile Steinlen (1859-1923). Pene du Bois’ work from this early period reflects a close observation of Parisian life, particularly men and women interacting in public spaces such as cafes, gardens, and opera houses. The thinly-lined pen and ink drawings he produced during this time drew inspiration from contemporary French artists such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Henri Toulouse-Latrec (1864-1901), and the talent and promise reflected in these creations earned Pene du Bois an invitation to debut his work at the Paris Salon in 1905.

In May 1906 Pene du Bois’ father fell ill, and did not survive the return trip home by ship to New York. In order to support himself following his father’s death, Pene du Bois took a job with the New York American newspaper, first serving as the paper’s crime reporter, and later becoming an art and music critic. In 1913 he became the assistant to Royal Cortissoz, the art critic of the New York Tribune, and was appointed editor of the magazine Arts and Decoration, a post he held for seven years. His marriage in 1911 to Florence Sherman Duncan — with whom he would father two children, the author and illustrator William Pene du Bois and the artist Yvonne Pene du Bois — provided a measure of financial stability through her clothing design business.

The year 1913 would prove to be a seminal year in Pene du Bois’ artistic career. He joined the Society of Independent Artists and the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, and it was as a member of the Association that he became one of the organizers of New York’s Armory Show (also handling the show’s publicity), the first large-scale exhibition of Modern Art in America and a show that is now regarded as one of the most important events in the history of American art. Six of Pene du Bois’ paintings were accepted for inclusion in the exhibition, and that same year he would develop a longstanding relationship with the venerable Kraushaar Galleries in New York City. Over the next several years, Pene du Bois’ work would be shown in exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, and the Whitney Studio Club in New York City. It was at the Whitney Studio Club in 1918 that Pene du Bois had his first solo exhibition, and the gallery’s owner, sculptor and wealthy art patron and collector Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (the founder of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art) began to collect his work. American banker and art collector Chester Dale (1883-1962) also became a collector, ultimately owning 25 paintings by the artist.

In 1924, in part supported by Kraushaar Galleries, Pene du Bois moved to Garnes, a French town north of Paris. There, he devoted himself to refining the style that he had begun progressively exploring in the late 1910s, which featured several unique characteristics, including highly abstracted human figures, often composed with eccentrically-angled faces and elongated limbs. This particular period in Pene Du Bois’ career, for which he is arguably most noted, has been described thusly by art historian Robert Torchia: “Pene du Bois drew on the fin de siecle tradition exemplified by painters such as Jean-Louis Forain, creating satirical works of bourgeois life during the American Jazz Age and its aftermath. He was a social observer, drawing his subjects from all classes of society. Many of his images seem like quiet pauses in unfolding dramas, lending them an air of tension and mystery.”

Pene du Bois remained in France until 1930, then moved back to New York. With the art world now trending toward Modernism, he returned to writing to help make ends meet, publishing monographs on Edward Hopper, John Sloan (1871-1951), and William Glackens (1870-1938) for the Whitney Museum’s American Artists Series. He also became a studio painter of portraits, as well as producing still lifes and nudes. Additionally, he began teaching, opening his own art school in1932, as well as instructing at the Art Students League and at a summer arts program in Amagansett, New York.

During the late 1930s, Pene du Bois executed several art murals that were commissioned by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration, including Saratoga in the Racing Season, displayed at the Saratoga Springs New York Post Office, and John Jay at his Home, installed in the post office in Rye, New York. In 1940, his autobiography, Artists Say the Silliest Things, was published, and he was also elected a life member of the Lotos Club and Full Academician to the National Academy of Design.

In his later years, Pene du Bois remained a perceptive critic and writer who continued to publish articles in various art periodicals. Though the death of his wife in 1950 deeply affected him, he was drawn back into activity by his lifelong friend Edward Hopper and American artist Isabel Bishop (1902-1988), who convinced him to become a contributor to Reality: A Journal of Artist’s Opinions, a periodical co-founded in 1953 by Russian-born, American Scene painter Raphael Soyer, published as a response by figurative artists to the prevailing influence of non-objective art.

Accompanied by his daughter, Pene du Bois was able to make one final trip to Paris in 1956 before passing away at his daughter’s home in Boston in 1958.

Some of the most important exhibitions occurring during Pene du Bois’ lifetime, along with awards won, include: Paris Salon (1905); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1906, 1917-1949); The Armory Show (1913); Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915); Corcoran Gallery (1914-1957, winner, Clark Prize, 1937); Whitney Studio Club (solo exhibition, 1918); Newport Art Association (solo exhibition, 1919); National Academy of Design (1917-1950; First Altman Prize, 1945; Second Altman Prize, 1936) Art Institute of Chicago (Norman Wait Harris Prize, 1930); Carnegie Institute (1930); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Maynard Prize, 1942).

Pene Du Bois’ work is today represented in many of the country’s most prestigious collections, including: The Art Institute of Chicago; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; The Brooklyn Museum; Carnegie Institute; Dallas Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.Written October 2016 by Brian Flon, author of "Hell's Kitchen Requiem" (2014), available as an e-book at Amazon, ITunes, and Barnes & Noble.