Louise Upton Brumback (January 17, 1867 – February 22, 1929) was an American artist and art activist known principally for her landscapes and marine scenes. Her paintings won praise from the critics and art collectors of her time. Writing at the height of her career, a newspaper critic praised her "firmness of character, quick vision, and directness of purpose." She said these traits "proved a solid rock upon which to build up an independent art expression which soon showed to men painters that they had a formidable rival." As art activist, she supported and led organizations devoted to supporting the work of under-appreciated painters, particularly women.
Early life
On finishing high school in the late 1880s, Louise Upton Brumback first looked to a career in music, but soon turned her attention to painting. Her desire to become a professional artist may have been influenced by stories she had heard about her great uncle, William Page, a highly regarded artist who had held the office of president of the National Academy of Design in the early 1870s. She undertook formal study at the age of 33 when she attended William Merritt Chase's school for plein air painting held in the summer months at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island.
She subsequently studied for a short time at Chase's New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but principally developed her personal style through close study of the work of other artists both in New York and during travels within the United States. In 1923 she told an interviewer that she sought formal instruction only to learn good technique, believing that the best art showed the artist's individuality and skill of self-expression. She said painting such art cannot be learned in schools. "The great ones," she said, "won't teach their secrets, and the little ones have none to teach".
In pursuing her career, she obtained the unswerving support of her husband, whose success in the law permitted him to retire at an early age. This support gave her freedom to develop her talent unimpeded by financial need. Her own "firmness of character, quick vision, and directness of purpose" assured that she would apply herself intensely, with courage and originality in making paintings that would quickly be recognized for their "clear, forceful rendering, good drawing, and fine color work".
Mature style
Having no need for the money that art sales would provide, Brumback rarely exhibited her paintings in private galleries and never competed for prizes. She preferred group shows to solo ones, and chose for the most part to participate in exhibitions held by clubs, societies, and other institutions of which she was a member, or exhibitions held by museums and other public institutions.
The first show of her professional career was a group exhibition held in 1902 at the Art Club in Kansas City, Missouri, where she and her husband made their home. The two landscapes she contributed displayed her skill in creating atmospheric effects. The subject of the first, a peach orchard, was described as "rich with the hues of blossom time and bathed in a bright spring atmosphere", while the other, a forest scene called The Beeches, was seen to possess "the same luminous atmospheric effects". In the early years of the twentieth century, she traveled frequently to New York City, and in 1905 she provided a painting called Moonrise to a group exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Over the next fifteen years, she would exhibit another ten times at the National Academy.
About 1909 Brumback began spending most cooler months of the year in Manhattan and the warmer months in the seaside resort and artists' colony in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Brumback at first rented studio space in both locations but, while continuing to rent in New York, in 1912 she and her husband bought land and built a house in East Gloucester which they called the "House on the Hill". That year, she showed three landscapes at the Twenty-third Annual Exhibition of the New York Watercolor Club. She also contributed a picture, called Little Red Boat, to a group show of contemporary American painting at the Corcoran Gallery. The critic for a local paper called her work "sincere, frank and sympathetic", and said Brumback, although "by no means well known", was "rapidly gaining recognition". The following year, her work appeared in one of her few solo appearances in a New York gallery when she contributed 29 landscapes and marines to a show at the Folsom Galleries.