The Picture Hat, 1946
Oil on masonite
30 x 24 inches
Biography
Henry Varnum Poor, a graduate of Stanford University, student of British painter Walter Sickert, and one of the founders of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (along with William W. Cummings, Sidney Simon and Charles Cutler), was a ceramicist, architect, and remarkable painter. His style is representative of a powerful philosophical commitment to directness and simplicity in art, seen in his enigmatic portraits and elegant, matter-of-fact still lifes. A dear friend of Edward Hopper, Poor's career as an artist and teacher had a lasting impact on many. One of his students at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Alex Katz, very perceptively calls his work highly civilized, not belonging to modern art or provincial regional paintings, but rather relating to the taste and tradition of Edwin Dickinson or Walter Murch.
Download Biography (PDF 71 K)
