User:WIndriver
Morris Henry Hobbs[edit]
Morris Henry Hobbs (January 1, 1892 – January 24, 1967) was an American printmaker and painter. He was born in Rockford, Illinois, and grew up in Chicago.
Hobbs studied briefly at the Chicago Art Institute but left home at age 17 to make his living as an architectural draftsman. Largely self-educated, he read widely all his life, traveled where he could, and learned his craft by studying with other artists.[1]
From 1918 to 1919, during World War I, Hobbs served as an Army engineer in Brest, France. While there, he contracted the Spanish flu (during the worldwide pandemic) and as a result, permanently lost his hearing.[2] After the War, he left the Army, married Jewel Clark, and moved to Toledo to work at an architectural firm. The couple had two children – Bette and Dorothy.
In 1926, artist J. Ernest Dean of Toledo taught Hobbs how to make an etching, and Hobbs exhibited his first work in 1927. Moving back to Chicago that year, he took a new position at an architectural firm and also shared rented space with artist Charles Rosenthal in the Tree Studios building, at 4 East Ohio Street.
Hobbs spent the summer of 1930 in France, studying with Chester C. Hayes and other artists. He had earned a distinguished reputation as an etcher by the early 1930s, exhibiting and selling his work from coast to coast along with other prominent artists including John Taylor Arms, Thomas Hart Benton, Gustaf Dalstrom, Gordon Grant, Edward T. Hurley, Bertha Jaques, Rockwell Kent, Alessandro Mastro-Valerio, Reinhold H. Palenske, Roi Partridge, and Leon Pescheret.
Jewel and Morris Henry Hobbs were divorced in the late 1930s.
Hobbs moved to New Orleans in 1939 and quickly established himself in the city’s art community.[3] He married Alice Seddon Hobbs in 1942, and the couple had one son, William J. Hobbs.
Hobbs created several bodies of work, including scenes of Chicago, the Midwest landscape, and France, as well as nudes. He invented the miniature Permo Press for making his tiny “Postage Stamp” prints. He is perhaps best known for his later etchings of the New Orleans French Quarter and Taxco, Mexico, and for his watercolors of tropical birds and bromeliads.
Morris and Alice Hobbs were offered fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, for the summers of 1944 and 1945.
After a long and distinguished career, Morris Henry Hobbs died in New Orleans in 1967, at age 75.
Major Solo Exhibitions[edit]
1936 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
1939 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
1942 Art Center of La Jolla, California
1946 Delgado Museum of Art (now the New Orleans Museum of Art)
1963 Gallery of Fine Arts (Hilliard Art Museum), University of Louisiana, Lafayette
1966 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1967 Reinike Gallery, New Orleans
1976 The Historic New Orleans Collection
1983 St. Tammany Art Association, Covington, Louisiana
1986 Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans
Selected Group Shows[edit]
Art Institute of Chicago
Toledo Museum of Art
Los Angeles Museum
Carnegie Institute
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Library of Congress
New Orleans Museum of Art
Louisiana State University Museum of Art
Museums and Library Collections[edit]
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Carnegie Museum of Art
Fine Art Museums of San Francisco ~ Achenbach Collection
Georgetown University Library ~ Special Collections
The Historic New Orleans Collection
Library of Congress
Louisiana State Museum
Mills College Art Museum
National Gallery of Art
National Museum of American History
New Orleans Museum of Art
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Smith College Museum of Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Toledo Museum of Art
Tulane University - Latin American Library
Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
The Papers of Morris Henry Hobbs[edit]
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Studio Addresses[edit]
1938-39 - Tree Studios, 4 East Ohio Street, Chicago
1938 - 740 Royal Street, New Orleans
1939 - 629 St. Ann Street, New Orleans, and Madame John’s Legacy, 632 Dumaine Street, New Orleans
1939-67 - New Orleans Art League, 628 Toulouse Street
1944-45 (Summers) - Adams and Alexander Studios, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, N.H.
Organizational Memberships[edit]
Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans
California Society of Etchers
Chicago Society of Etchers
Cleveland Printmakers
Illinois Society of Fine Arts
Louisiana Society of Etchers – founding president
Miniature Print Society, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
National Arts Club, New York
New Orleans Art League – president
Northwest Printmakers
Southern Printmakers Society
Southern States Art League
Toledo Tile Club
Bromeliad Associations[edit]
Hobbs was a prominent collector and cultivator of the tropical plants known as bromeliads (bromeliaceae). He was a member of the Greater New Orleans Bromeliad Society, the Louisiana Bromeliad Society (founding president), and the National Bromeliad Society (board of directors). The bromeliad hybrid cultivar Aechmea Morris Henry Hobbs (a.k.a. Aechmea Bill Hobbs) was named for him during his lifetime and an annual bromeliad prize is still awarded in his name.
Sources[edit]
- ^ Williams, Lynne Barstis (2007). Imprinting the South: Southern Printmakers and Their Images of the Region, 1920s to 1940s (First ed.). Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-1560-3.
- ^ Williams, Lynne Barstis (2007). Imprinting the South: Southern Printmakers and Their Images of the Region, 1920s to 1940s. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-1560-3.
- ^ Kheel, Claudia (2006). Printmaking in New Orleans (First ed.). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. pp. 205–218. ISBN 1-57806-768-5.