Albert Henry Krehbiel, one of seven children, was born in Denmark, Iowa, on November 25th, 1873, to John Jacob and Anna Leisy Krehbiel. He moved with his family to Newton, Kansas, in 1879, where his father was a prominent Mennonite layman, prosperous carriage and buggy maker, and later a co-founder of Bethel College. At a very young age, Krehbiel expressed a desire to pursue drawing and painting – as a child he had taken to painting the sides and wheels of the buggies. Krehbiel attended Bethel College in Newton for two years at the insistence of his practical-minded father and, in 1895, he entered the School of Design and Painting in Topeka, Kansas. The art school was conducted by European trained George Stone, assisted by his capable French wife, who inspired Krehbiel’s love of the French language and people. Upon visiting the school on a lecture tour, Art Institute of Chicago Director, William Merchant Richardson French, discovered Krehbiel's talents and encouraged him to further pursue a career in art by enrolling at The Art Institute. In a letter written May 14, 1896, to his friend Sude (Herman Suderman, later his brother-in-law), Krehbiel wrote: "I suppose you knew that I had returned (to the family home in Newton) and was serving my sentence in the shop. I am bound for Chicago in the fall. I am now turning out the necessary funds." In the summer of 1898, Krehbiel made his way from Newton to Chicago by bicycle with his brother, Fred, and enrolled at The Art Institute for the fall semester. He labored for the next five years at The Art Institute as a student (three of them with Frederick Richardson, instructor of drawing and head of the Art Department at the Chicago Daily News) and, in the fifth year, as a drawing instructor. In 1902, Krehbiel was granted an American Traveling Scholarship by The Art Institute to study abroad. By 1903, impressionism in Europe had run it’s course and, although it was not yet fully understood in America, French impressionist paintings had been entering American private collections and museums. Despite this, Krehbiel sought the rigorous training of a traditional art academy rather than joining the many American artists who continued the French tradition of studying Impressionistic painting in the French countryside. He headed for Paris to study for three years at the Academie Julian under muralist and neoclassicist Jean-Paul Laurens. Krehbiel sailed for Europe on a steamer and landed on July 23rd, 1903. His classes in Paris would not begin until October, so he settled in Laren, Holland, with the Dutch relatives of one of his fellow passengers. As he would do in the following two years on summer vacations traveling throughout France and Holland (often with his friend Joseph Raphael), Krehbiel spent the next two months sketching the local citizens in their daily routine of work and at rest. He would reproduce his sketches as oils on canvas when in Paris (see Woman Knitting, circa 1905). Krehbiel wrote long personal letters during two periods of his life. The first occurred during his stay in Europe when he wrote to Dulah Marie Evans, his former classmate at The Art Institute and later his wife. These letters read much like a diary, recording his thoughts both about the progress of his work and his impressions of Europe. On September 14, 1903, he wrote from Holland: "Last week I thought that I would have a painting to send you with Perret (a traveling companion) when he went over, but it is out of the question now. I’d worked for a week on an old man standing by a door looking at a couple of children . . . . Just about noon the sun came out and made the canvas look so dingy that I took the pallet knife and scraped the whole blumin’ lot out." Arriving in Paris at the end of September, Krehbiel began his studies at the Academie Julian on October 2nd. The curriculum at Academie Julian was centered around principles that had been espoused by Jacques Louis David (1748-1825). David’s presence dominated French art from the age of Louis XVI through the periods of Jacobin and Napoleon, and his works epitomized the ideas of neoclassicism. Classical and biblical subjects became the only ones suitable for grand painting in France and, into the twentieth century, were the ones most likely to be accepted by the jury for the annual exhibitions at the prestigious Salon Des Artistes Francais (also known as the Paris Salon). In 1905, Krehbiel received the honor of having two of his neoclassical entries accepted for the exhibition. Also in 1905, two of his Dutch paintings were shown in the autumn exhibition at The American Art Association in Paris and one of them was sold for 100 francs (the other work is Woman Sweeping, dated 1905, which is held in a private collection). Though Krehbiel had displayed a notable talent to paint under the rigid guidelines of neoclassicism, he pursued it without enthusiasm. Writing of a visit to the Louvre and a viewing of the Tennis Court Oath by David, he states: ". . . .( the work is done) with no artistic expression whatsoever, merely mechanical and intellectual, . . . . the Louvre is full of this sort of thing and lots of it. One wonders how the artist had the nerve to call it painting." Krehbiel won four gold medals at the Academie Julian (the only American to have done so) as well as several other prizes and honors, including permanent placement on the school walls of a painting on a biblical subject taken from the Book of David. On February 9th, 1904, he wrote to Dulah from his studio at No. 9 Rue Champagne, Paris, regarding his being awarded a gold medal: "My winning of the prize at Julian’s last week seems to have given me some reputation. I am still receiving congratulations and everyone seems to think it such a feat that I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m not something after all." In 1905, Krehbiel won the coveted Prix de Rome, which was given annually to the young painter who (in the eyes of the Academie) could produce the best composition, in the prescribed manner of a Biblical or Classical subject. Krehbiel’s classmates seem to have been more impressed with his awards than he was. When one of them sought his advice on how to go about winning a gold medal, he admonished the man to concentrate on the development of his work, and not on winning prizes. His final attitude in speaking of the awards seems to be one of indifference, expressing that too much self-admiration would hamper his development as an artist. Regarding a medal awarded him in 1906, Krehbiel wrote in a letter home: "It looks like the one from last year, with the exception of the date . . . . the students crowded around me to handle the trophy, after which I dropped it into my pocket and went to work." In the summer of 1906, his last year abroad, Krehbiel made a walking and painting tour of Spain. Upon receiving special permission from Museo Del Prado in Madrid, he spent three weeks making several studies first hand of works done by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (nine of the studies were later shown at The Art Institute of Chicago's Exhibition of Artists’ Copies of Old Masters in 1910). He wrote to Dulah of his encounter with Velazquez: ". . . . They seem so easily done . . . . almost painting by accident . . . . (each figure) seems to be breathing the air around him . . . .the whole reveals itself as a good picture should, without any effort on the part of the beholder." Returning to the United States, Krehbiel rejoined the faculty of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1906 at the urging of Mr. French. That same year, he married his beloved Dulah, also a highly talented artist. (After graduating from The Art Institute, Dulah was a resident of the Tree Studios in Chicago from 1903 through 1905. Continuing her education, she studied in New York at the Art Students League and at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase. Dulah went on to have an extremely accomplished career as a painter, printmaker, and commercial artist.) While maintaining a full-time teaching schedule at The Art Institute in 1906, Krehbiel received the commission to design and paint the murals for the walls of the Juvenile Court Room in Chicago. In 1907, having completed the Juvenile Court murals, Krehbiel also entered works in the competition to design and paint the eleven wall and two ceiling murals for the Supreme and Appellate Court Rooms at the Illinois Supreme Court Building in Springfield, the state’s capitol. A total of twenty-two designs were submitted from some of the best artists throughout the United States. Krehbiel’s original design proposal for the murals included six themes: "Origins of Law", "The Continuity of Law", "Function of Law", "Attributes of Law", "The Return of the Golden Age", and "Law and Equity". The work was classically inspired and consisted of allegorical portrayals of men and woman. The Jury of Awards was unanimous in granting the commission to Albert H. Krehbiel. Reducing his teaching schedule to summer sessions only, Krehbiel, with the help of his wife, spent several years on the research, preparation, and composition of the Illinois Supreme Court murals. Having purchased a home in Park Ridge (a suburb north of Chicago), they bought an adjacent vacant lot, had a barn moved onto the property, and converted it into a studio. Large canvases were ordered from Paris and pulleys and scaffolds were constructed for the hanging and rolling of the canvases. Dulah created Grecian gowns and robes, posing in them so that the drapings would appear authentic. When completed in 1911, the canvases were transported to Springfield and installed. Mr. W. Carby Zimmerman, architect of the Supreme Court Building, considered the work done by Krehbiel to be "an example of the best mural painting ever executed in the West". Shortly after completing the Illinois Supreme Court Murals, Krehbiel’s work changed direction. Instead of painting entirely in his studio, he began to seek the outdoors and to paint the atmospheric effects of sun, fog, and snow, with broad visible brush strokes. It was at this time that Krehbiel began to incorporate the principles of impressionism into his work. One of Krehbiel’s few remaining transitional works is Two Ladies in the Grape Arbor, circa 1913. Here, Krehbiel painted a casual color scene with a naturalistic approach that, at the same time, had sharp contours and shading of drapery folds recalling the principles of a more classical 19th century academic manner of representation. However, the heightened color tone levels along with the subdued quality of the trees in the background suggest that he was experimenting with some of the techniques established by the impressionists of France and their followers in America. Krehbiel returned to full time instruction at the Art Institute in 1911, teaching young students about the use of color, design, and space. In 1913, he also joined the faculty of the Armour Institute of Technology (later named the Illinois Institute of Technology) as an instructor of architectural drawing. It is here that Krehbiel later, in 1939, developed a close friendship with Armour Institute Director, fellow Cliff Dwellers member, and famous architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who had arrived in Chicago from Germany the previous year. Speaking in German, at which Krehbiel was fluent, they would frequently discuss their work and world events over martinis at the Cliff Dwellers, with Ludwig puffing away at a cigar and Krehbiel smoking his pipe. In 1918 and 1919, Krehbiel summered at an art colony in Santa Monica, California, with Dulah, Evans (their son and only child), and Dulah's sister, Mayetta, where he painted impressionistic high-keyed shore-line views and landscapes while Dulah painted her son and sister in various settings. The continuing shift in Krehbiel’s approach becomes more pronounced in his California works. The light-flooded scenes conveyed by thick impasto brush work emphasize the play of juxtaposed contrasting colors. There is a reduced concentration on the modeling of three-dimensional shapes, and the boundaries between individual objects softens. In the early 1920s, Krehbiel, again traveling with Dulah, Evans, and Mayetta, spent summers in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as a member of the Santa Fe Art Colony. There, he persevered in his impressionistic interpretations as revealed in his many brightly hued pastels, watercolors, and oil paintings of the surrounding landscape and local culture. Krehbiel was well–known and highly regarded as an artist in Santa Fe, as well as in Chicago, during these years -- so much so, that the Museum of New Mexico provided him with a studio in the historic Palace of the Governors next door to his contemporary, famed Ashcan realist Robert Henri. He had associations and exhibitions with other artists of the Santa Fe Art Colony and the Taos Society of Artists such as Victor Higgins, Earnest Blumenschein, John Sloan, Gustave Baumann, Raymond Johnson, and Stuart Davis. In his Santa Fe works, Krehbiel seemed to have delighted in the free use of color. In two paintings from this period, Santa Fe Overlooking the Square, ca. 1923, and Tethered Mules, ca.1922, vibrant rhythmic brush strokes radiate from the canvas. Color is used with the same strength in areas of light as it is in areas of shadow. The unnatural colors lend themselves to the dramatic sun-drenched landscapes of the Southwest. In 1926, Krehbiel helped pioneer the Chicago Art Institute Summer School of Painting (later named Ox-Bow School) in Saugatuck, Michigan. The school was founded as the Saugatuck School of Summer Painting in 1910 by a group of Chicago artists led by his friend, Frederick Fuhrsman. The summer migration of artists to Saugatuck began in 1900 when the daughter of the owner of one of the resort hotels invited some of her classmates from The Art Institute of Chicago to vacation there. Among them were Albert Krehbiel and Dulah Evans. By the mid-1920s. the Saugatuck School had become the summer art Mecca for commercial artists and architects from cities throughout the Midwest, as well as students and alumni of The Art Institute. Beginning in 1926, Saugatuck became an ever-increasing weekend and holiday retreat for Krehbiel and he spent the rest of his summers teaching and painting there. In 1934, he opened his own summer school of art in Saugatuck called the AK Studio. When able to free himself from his students in Saugatuck, Krehbiel painted many scenes overlooking the Kalamazoo River and the neighboring rolling hills using different mediums. He also had several occasions in the winters to visit and portray the area in its’ vast and billowing cover of snow. In 1933, Krehbiel began a series of synchromistic figure compositions, first in watercolor and in oil on small unstretched pieces of canvas and, later in pastel and in oil on larger canvases. The figures in this series reproduce the postures of models in his art classes and, while naturalistic at first, they gradually become geometric, even somewhat cubist. In 1942, Krehbiel wrote in a letter to Evans: ". . . .(I) never thought of them as nudes, but simply as a power in organization. . . . it became a problem of thrusts and counter thrusts, much like a chess game." Krehbiel developed these experiments into a method of teaching figure by having students compose while drawing. Sketches of a three-figure model group, observed from various points in the room, would be rendered on a single sheet of paper – or a series of quick poses by one model would be composed on a single sheet. In regard to this teaching method, Krehbiel writes: "The student should create at the same time he is learning to draw. . . . He has to have ideas to make his drawing count." As for the results of his own efforts along these lines, he later speculated that: ". . . .I may be able to peddle them for five or ten a piece when I get out of a job." Throughout the years when at home in Illinois, Krehbiel painted continuously. From his historic Chicago street and river scenes to his rural and wooded presentations of Midwest forests and the hills and valleys of Galena to his synchromistic figure compositions, he painted incessantly and in all seasons without regard for the elements. Like most American impressionists, Krehbiel did not subscribe to scientific color theories of the original French impressionists. Rather, he adopted other lessons of impressionism. He was committed to painting outdoors in natural light and to capturing with a very personal vision the constantly changing character of the Midwestern landscape, mostly done along the Chicago North Branch and Des Plaines Rivers in winter. Krehbiel was known to leave his Park Ridge home on a freezing cold morning and not return until the end of the day with two or three freshly painted canvas landscapes of the surrounding country. Wonders of Winter Color, ca. 1932, Wonders of the Woods at Winter’s End, ca. 1927, Wet Snow, dated 1929, February Sunshine, ca. 1923, and Yesterday, ca. 1934, are characteristic of the hundreds of such works. Occasionally, on weekends and holidays he would visit the northern Illinois town of Galena and paint large canvases of the tree covered hills with their spattering of homes (see Galena Hillside, ca. 1935). When teaching and residing (at the Cliff Dwellers) in downtown Chicago, Krehbiel turned to recreating the urban landscapes, most of them within walking distance to his classrooms at The Art Institute of Chicago. These familiar scenes were painted between classes from the banks of the Chicago River. Most were painted during rush hour when automobiles and pedestrians populated the bridges and streets. He was often recognized, which motivated him to write some years later: "I see many things about Chicago that I would like to paint but don’t dare to. I’m soon found out and joined by a former student with a paint box, and if I keep it up for any length of time I soon have a class and no tuition." Krehbiel painted the Michigan Avenue Bridge and the Chicago River numerous times, each from a different perspective. The images of the bridge were executed in 1920, the year of its’ Grand Opening, with the bridge towers wrapped in rows of American flags and blue ribbons. Grand Festival At the Michigan Avenue Bridge was done on May 14th, the day of the opening. In this painting, as well as in Looking South Across the Michigan Avenue Bridge (the largest of these canvases) and "El" Train Over the Chicago River Bridge, ca. 1922, the colors used to depict the buildings in the background – pink, lavender, and pale blue – take into account the effects of diffused light. With Lower Deck Along the River, ca. 1923, and Workmen by the Chicago River Bend, ca. 1922, solid forms are composed of thick wedges of unblended color laid side-by-side. Urban cityscapes such as these had become icons of European Impressionism. Beginning in 1938, Krehbiel wrote his second series of long detailed letters, this time to his son, Evans, who was living in Park Ridge with his mother, Dulah. On January 4, 1939, Krehbiel wrote: "Got back the second but found the institute closed. Had expected night class. It was good to have a day of rest. Like a reactionist who comes back to rest up. I had a good workout, 45 small and large canvases in 15 days. But I’m not telling this to anyone but you. Working from dawn to dark one learns a lot not being interrupted. And at sixty-five one has always to produce something new to show that one’s still young enough to grow . . . . I am in need of a twenty two-thirty (22X30) frame in silver or gold. Any thing that size you can pick up in the studio will do. Can you bring one in and leave it at my locker (at the Cliff Dwellers) within a week? . . . . I may wish to send something to the Chicago show . . . . I find that teaching is quite another matter from doing a thing oneself. Working alone one gets in the habit of doing it all oneself and it takes a different mind to tell one how to do a job which would be easier through a simple demonstration." These letters often describe the exhilaration felt by Krehbiel when he was able to spend a sequence of days painting out-of-doors. In a letter dated December 28th, 1938, in which he describes his Christmas break in Saugatuck, he wrote: "Came over the last night of school on the midnight bus and started work as soon as I landed. Have gotten my second wind now and can work all day in zero weather and not mind it. . . . Yesterday, worked all day in a blizzard and did three canvases. When I went to breakfast before dawn, I thought the trees were going to fall, so strong was the wind." In his later years, Krehbiel created a grouping of very large synchromistic drawings on soft-toned paper using colored chalk. In these works are throngs of hauntingly composed groups of figures of mystic quality, sure in line and merged in bold areas of brilliant color. Inspired by a major exhibition by Pablo Picasso at The Art Institute in 1940, Krehbiel also drew remarkable, large imitations of some of Picasso’s abstract works in this manner. These experimental compositions were largely done for the enjoyment of his fellow members at the Cliff Dwellers, where he was often found absorbed in chess. Relating his feelings about abstract art and the artist’s right and ability to successfully procure its’ formulation, Krehbiel writes: "Often I have been asked by my students to start a class outside and teach abstract art but I tell them it is no use, it cannot be taught. It is the sum of a classical education and comes only with the study of a motif when all is boiled down to its’ very essence." During his prolific career, Krehbiel’s works were shown in a multitude of exhibitions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (in 1923, 1928, and 1931), the Fiesta Exhibition of Paintings by Artists of New Mexico at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe (in 1923), the First Exhibition of the National Society of Mural Painters at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, (in 1925), and a total of thirty-two exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago from 1906 to 1939. In addition to those previously mentioned, Krehbiel had exhibitions with many other notable artists of his day such as George Bellows (McPherson, Kansas, in 1918) and B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Marsden Hartley, and Sheldon Parsons (El Paso, Texas, in 1920). Krehbiel was a member of the Cliff Dwellers, Chicago Painters and Sculptors, Mural Painters of New York, and the Chicago Galleries Association. In addition to his earlier awards for painting, he won the Clyde Carr Prize, the Martin B. Cahn Prize for Best Painting, the American Artists Exhibit of Landscapes Award, the Mrs. William H. Thompson Prize, and the Municipal Art League Prize for Landscapes. Many of Krehbiel's works are held in private collections throughout the world as well as in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. Krehbiel has work listed in the Smithsonian Institution Inventories of American Paintings and Sculpture, and selected archival material on his career is available at the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art in Washington, D. C. Albert Henry Krehbiel passed away suddenly on June 29, 1945, from a heart attack while preparing for a road trip with his son, Evans, to visit relatives in Kansas. His death occurred on the very day of his retirement from teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology, although he had agreed to stay on at The Art Institute of Chicago for one more year. Throughout his life, Krehbiel remained a quiet man who had "little time for the mechanism of commercialism". He had amassed an extensive and extremely diverse collection of work reflecting his contribution to, and interpretation of, the developmental stages of painting and drawing in the first half of the 20th century, leaving behind impressions that take one back to another time and era in history. "Happily, there isn’t going to be any laying off for me and as my future is still before me, and since things are bound to occur, I’m willing to wager, at this early day, that sometime in the years hence Ill have collected a batch of such sweet and wholesome recollections that can be rated second to none." Albert H. Krehbiel |
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