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Mountfort
Coolidge was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1888 and was a pupil
of Robert Henri's. In the early teens he travelled with his family
to Ogunquit, Maine, then already a thriving artist's community,
and became a student of Hamilton Faster Field's. He continued
to summer in Ogunquit for over 40 years, and was associated with
such artists as Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Niles Spencer, Marsden Hartley,
LIoyd Goodrich, Bernard Karfiol, and was often associated with
the flamboyant society painter Channing Hare, with whom he operated
a small antiques business.
The two men shared a home on Pine Hill North where among Hare's
household treasures was a not-so-housebroken but very handsome
black and white Belgian hare. OAA members Channing Hare and Mountfort
Coolidge, although respected and successful painters In their
own right, were identified more with the summer society life
than it's art colony by many artists and local residents. Close
friends, fellow artists and even business partners, the two men
were synonymous with glamour, flamboyance, and chic. Despite
Hare's seeming preoccupation with the gathering of interesting
people for elaborate cocktail parties, he was a brilliant society
portrait painter who reportedly commanded between $3,000 and
$10,000 for a painting, top prices in those times. His clients
Included such noted Palm Beach and New York socialites as Phyllis
Rhinelander and'Alexander Woolcott, comedienne Beatrice Lily,
actress Florence Nash, and authors Booth Tarkington and Kenneth
Roberts.More subdued than his partner, Coolidge spent most of
his time at work, either painting for shows at such prestigious
New York midtown galleries as the Kraushaar and Kleeman's or
in the antique shop.
Because of his association with some of the most progressive
modern painters of his day, the paintings of Mountfort Coolidge
are more than just representative paintings chronicling the landndscape
around him, they are expressions of the landscape as he experienced
it, as a series of geometric and organic shapes and forms, patterns
of color, and of images of the time in which he lived. Although
man is seldom depicted in the landscape, he has in many instances
left his mark upon it in the form of a dwelling, road, stonewall,
or sailboat on the horizon. In these paintings we find strong
European as well as American influences. 'I'he houses that are
simplified forms set in the landscape owe a debt to Cezanne,
and the coloring not onlv that of' the French impressionists
but often that of the Fauves. Mountfort Coolidge painted tirelessly
for several decades. He became a member of the Ogunquit Art Association,
exhibiting locally. He also had several successful exhibitions
in Paris, New York, (Kraushaar Gallery, Boston (Margaret Brown
Gallery), Palm Beach (Society of the Four Arts), and elsewhere.
He died in Ogunquit, Maine, in 1954.
Mountfort
Coolidge painted plein air (outdoor) small canvas boards as studies
for his larger paintings and pastels. Working outdoors, in winter
as well as summer, sometimes in uncomfortable conditions, was
an American as well as French tradition. All
Mountford Coolidge paintings & pastels are from the estate
of Steven Hensel.
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