Carl Sprinchorn (1887–1971) was a Swedish-born American artist who studied under Robert Henri and who adopted a style of realist modernism that admiring critics saw as both abstract and revolutionary. His oil paintings and works on paper showed a wide range of subjects. He made cityscapes and street scenes, seascapes and beach scenes, bucolic landscapes and farm scenes. He drew famous dancers, society figures, and both urban and rural men at work. As one critic put the matter, "He has the rare quality of making whatever subject he essays interesting and unusual, be it bouquets of flowers, riders in six-day bicycle races, Spanish dancers or straight American landscape."[1] He achieved acclaim for pictures he made while living in New York and during extensive travels. In 1918, a critic said his drawings showed the kind of "bold pen outline" and gift for "incisive statement" that could be seen in work by British caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson.[2] Another critic noted a "sensuous, aristocratic nostalgia" in Sprinchorn's urban scenes, describing them as "delicate, suggestive impressions."[3]: 7 Throughout much of his career Sprinchorn's floral paintings in oil, pastel, and watercolor also attracted critical attention. Reviewing watercolors exhibited in 1928, a critic praised a "subtle relation of colors" in a floral work and said that "if colors could sing," these would "chant melodiously."[4] Sprinchorn made extensive visits to camps and hamlets in the North Maine Woods and the paintings and drawings he made there came to be his most celebrated works. Regarding a cluster of posthumous exhibitions held in 2002, a critic wrote, "In Sprinchorn's hands, the Maine woods come alive through the actions of men who are most comfortable among the trees: hunters, trappers, lumberjacks and river drivers, mostly. These large, rugged images are full of earthy colors that recall the blue-chill of winter, the blaze-orange glow of autumn and the shadowy scenes that accompany nighttime campfires..."[5]
Writing in 2002, a biographer wrote of a contrast between the sophisticated urban focus of much of Sprinchorn's work and the unsophisticated rural focus of his output from the forests of Maine. Calling him a "composite of opposites," she said he was as much at home in the New York art world with its sophisticated artists and wealthy patrons as he was in rural boarding houses and lumber camps.[6]: 122
Early life and education
In a 1974 letter to a friend Sprinchorn said he had determined to emigrate from Sweden after reading about an inspiring teacher named Robert Henri.[6]: 123 [note 1] Although he was just fifteen when he set off for New York and although he spoke only Swedish, he knew that one of his older sisters—then working as a maid to a family in Manhattan—would help him make the difficult transition after he arrived.[6]: 123 He landed in New York on October 30, 1903, and enrolled in the New York School of Art eight days later.[7][8] Sprinchorn later said that his study under Robert Henri was the most important factor in the development of his career.[6]: 122 Although Henri knew no Swedish, Sprinchorn advanced quickly in his studies by means of gestures and eye contact to understand Henri's critiques of his work.[6]: 123 For his part, Henri considered Sprinchorn to be one of his best students. In 1909 he said that Sprinchorn knew virtually nothing about art when he began but he quickly learned to paint with "virility and character."[9]
Career in art
Sprinchorn's career began while he was still a student. After a little more than two years of study, he was awarded two honorable mentions for a drawing and paintings that were shown in an exhibition of school work at the New York School of Art.[10] Early in 1907 a painting of his called "A Winter Scene on the East Side, New York," was accepted by jurors for the National Academy of Design annual exhibition, but, following a protest from Henri regarding other paintings that had been rejected, the academy decided not to hang Sprinchorn's, giving lack of space as the reason.[9] Angered by the decision Henri said the academy should not rebuff innovative young artists like Sprinchorn. He praised Sprinchorn for catching "a big new note" and placing it upon canvas "with haunting effect" and added that he knew of "few more promising painters."[11] A few months later a critic for the New York Sun discussed Sprinchorn's paintings that were hung in another of the New York School's student shows. He praised a Sprinchorn painting called "Ferryboat in Snowstorm," saying that it violated "every canon of academic art" in showing "things as they are."[12] Another critic said Sprinchorn was a promising artist whose work was "painted with a feeling of largeness."[13] Early in 1908 he contributed paintings to an exhibition of work by Henri and his students at the National Arts Club. Of a Sprinchorn painting called "Winter Day," a critic wrote, "It is realism pushed to the eleventh degree. No mercy is shown to optical sentimentalists."[14]
Sprinchorn followed Henri when, in January 1909, he founded a school of his own and then left the following year to pursue a career as a professional artist.[15][16] Between 1907 and 1909 Sprinchorn had served as manager of the New York School of Art and he continued to serve that function during his time in the new Henri school.[17][18]
At this time a critic saw Sprinchorn as "one of the younger members of the new 'revolutionary' school of artists, who, as a body, have met with so little encouragement from the juries of the National Academy of Design."[19] Early in 1910 Sprinchorn had a painting accepted for the 105th annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a little later he exhibited at the Rand School in New York along with Henri and men who had studied under Henri. The list of participants included George Bellows, George Luks, and John Sloan.[20][21]
Although he usually lived in New York, Sprinchorn traveled widely throughout his career. During late 1912 and early 1913 he lived in Los Angeles, California. During 1914 and 1915 he lived in Paris where he attended sketch classes at the Académie Colarossi.[18] He often spent summer months in artists' colonies near the water: in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in Ogunquit, Maine, and on Monhegan Island, Maine.[16][22] He returned to Scandinavia from time to time to paint and visit with his family.[18]
In 1910 he made his first visit to a location in north-central Maine that would soon become a favorite. He was invited by a family friend to visit Monson, a town where there was a small community of Swedish immigrants.[23] During the winter months Monson was home to the camps of loggers who took advantage of swollen streams and rivers to transport wood to lumber mills further south and east.[24] Having previously become known for scenes of blizzards and heavy snowfall in the slums of Manhattan, Sprinchorn seems to have felt comfortable depicting the work of these loggers and the environment in which they spent the cold months of the year.[13][25][note 2] As his career matured Sprinchorn would re-visit Monson and other locales in the North Maine Woods over the next three decades and would spend most of his time there in the years between 1942 and 1952.[25] At the time of his death, Sprinchorn's paintings, drawings, and watercolors from the Maine forests would come to be seen as his dominant subjects and most popular works.[26]
While in southern California between 1912 and 1914, Sprinchorn taught at the Art Students League and served for a time as its director.[18][7]
In 1915 he was one of eleven "representative American painters" selected for an exhibition in the main gallery of the fine arts building at the Panama–California Exposition in San Diego, California.[27][note 3] Later that year he participated in a group exhibition at the New York MacDowell Club and the following year showed drawings in a solo exhibition sponsored by George S. Hellman.[28][29][note 4] In reviewing the latter, a critic for the New York Sun said he drew with spirit and grace, with a youthful quality that the critic found refreshing.[29] In 1918 he showed drawings again in an exhibition at the Scandinavian Art Shop. On this occasion a critic recognized an affinity to English artist Thomas Rowlandson but noted that Sprinchorn saw things in a more fragmentary manner, in angles rather than curves, and with more biting humor. The critic concluded by saying Sprinchorn was "amazingly skillful in obtaining the richest and most splendid results by holding back the full force of his pigment, and suggesting reserves of color behind the surface painting."[2]
Sprinchorn showed three times in 1920, once with other Swedish-American artists at the American-Scandinavian Foundation, once with a group that included Anne Rector at the National Arts Club, and once in an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists.[32][33][34] In reviewing the first of the three, a Times critic said Sprinchorn contributed "two large paintings of great distinction" and drawings that were even stronger.[34] The year 1922 was a fruitful one for Sprinchorn. In January Hamilton Easter Field's journal, The Arts, printed an article by the literary theorist Kenneth Burke called "The Art of Carl Sprinchorn." Burke analyzed Sprinchorn's technique in detail. Drawing attention to his use of visual metaphor, Burke said he used abstraction to make his subjects serve multiple purposes in his paintings. As an example, he said "Carl Sprinchorn begins with snow, and adds something else, while the snow remains. He manages to put on his canvas both the object and his interpretation of it."[35] In that month and the next Sprinchorn showed watercolors and drawings in the Junior Art Painters gallery[note 5] and paintings and works on paper in Mrs. Sterner's gallery.[35]: 192, 230 [note 6] In later months the Worcester Art Museum gave a solo exhibition of his recent work.[38] At the end of the year he participated in a group show at the New Gallery that he had himself assembled.[39] The show at the Sterner Gallery drew extensive critical examination from The Arts magazine, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Herald newspapers. In The Arts, literary theorist Kenneth Burke said that in eliminating detail Sprinchorn achieved a "truer interpretation" of his subjects.[35] In the Brooklyn Daily EagleHamilton Easter Field wrote that he shared the enthusiasm of Sprinchorn's "most ardent admirers."[40] The New York Herald's critic said of Sprinchorn's work, "It's abstract, but it's healthy and fine."[41] In his introduction to the catalog of the exhibition, the art critic, curator, and collector, Christian Brinton, described what he saw as Sprinchorn's "eager, ceaseless odyssey in quest of fresh plastic and chromatic stimulus."[3]: 7 [note 7]
Between 1922 and 1925 Sprinchorn was art director of the New Gallery which exhibited and sold works by little-known American artists and avant-garde European ones.[39][43][note 8] His works were frequently shown in group exhibitions during the 1920s and early 1930s: at the New Gallery in 1923 and 1924; at the Whitney Studio Club in 1924; at the Brooklyn Museum in 1925, 1926, 1928, and 1929; at the Marie Sterner Gallery in 1928, 1930, and 1933; at the Roerich Museum in 1929; and at the Fifty-Sixth Street Galleries in 1930.[1][45][46][47][48][49] He held solo exhibitions during these years at his own studio (1924 and 1933), the Rhen Galleries (1927), the Ainslie Gallery in 1928, the Penthouse Gallery (1930), and the Sullivan Gallery (1936).[50][46][48][51][52] The American Swedish Historical Museum gave him a solo exhibition in 1942. In 1930 the owner of the Sullivan Gallery, Mrs. Cornelius Sullivan, organized a tour of his work in three museums.[6] In the decade following 1920 The Dial magazine published many of his drawings and he also earned income for illustrations he produced for the Ford Motor Company.
Sprinchorn used his earnings from his job at the New Gallery and other sources to fund a year and a half of travel in Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo in 1926 and 1927. Afterward, he returned to Sweden late in 1930 and early in 1931. He stayed in New York most of the time between 1931 and 1937. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.[53] His work also appeared at the Whitney Museum in the second biennial exhibition in 1936 and in the annual exhibition of contemporary art in 1938.[54][55] Using the money he received from sales of his art, he spent part or all of the year in Maine between 1937 and 1943, mostly living either in Patten or Shin Pond.[18][25] In January 1943 Sprinchorn wrote the collector and museum director, Duncan Phillips, asking him to see the Macbeth Gallery exhibition of his works. Phillips subsequently purchased one of the paintings, "Snow Winged Horses" (1920) thus helping to fund subsequent winters in the Maine woods.[18] During these years he showed infrequently, notably in solo exhibitions at the Macbeth Gallery (1943, 1947, and 1950), the Bertha Schaeffer Gallery (1944).[56][57][58][59] As his health declined after 1950, he continued to show work from earlier decades, but painted less frequently.[60] He lived in Manhattan from 1950 until 1956 when he moved to a farm in Selkirk, New York. The galleries in which he showed during that period include the Bertha Schaefer, Passedoit, Zabriske, and Knoedler galleries in New York.[6] He stopped exhibiting in 1963 and died eight years later.[17]
In 1984 the art museum at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, mounted a retrospective called "Carl Sprinchorn: Realist Impulse and Romantic Vision."[17] In 1994 the Veilleux Gallery in Farmington, Maine, showed 60 paintings and works on paper from the Maine woods. A news account said that 44 of the 60 found buyers making this the most successful exhibition his work ever received.[25] The gallery, which represented Sprinchorn's estate, held a second retrospective in 1996.[60] An exhibition called "The Art of Carl Sprinchorn: The Katahdin Collection" appeared in the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in 1998.[61] Three exhibitions were held in Maine during the summer of 2002: "Carl Sprinchohn: King of the Woods" at the Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, "Carl Sprinchorn: The Maine Woods and Beyond" at the Veilleux Gallery in Farmington, and "The Four Seasons: Carl Sprinchorn in Maine" at the New O'Farrell Gallery, Brunswick.[5]
Despite his affection for snowy landscapes and pictures of winter occupations, Sprinchorn was never completely at home in rural Maine. One local resident, Caleb Scribner, became a friend, but Scribner was an exception. They met one another in 1937 when Sprinchorn stayed as a boarder in the home of Scribner's family in Patten, near Shin Pond. An amateur artist, Scribner could converse with Sprinchorn on topics that held no interest for other locals.[62] In a 1946 letter to a friend Sprinchorn admitted that he had little in common "with these people who after all are not important in my life over and above the accident of sharing a roof tree and board—with them; in no sense or manner able to share my interests, problems or what not."[23] Writing in 1988, Sprinchorn's biographer, Mary Towley Swanson, called him a "composite of opposites."[6]: 122 He enjoyed city life and developed enduring friendships with artists and patrons in the New York art world. Throughout most of his career critics gave most of their attention to his still lifes and other indoor subjects and the few existing records of his art sales show greatest interest in this work. Yet throughout his career, he spent long periods in rural settings, and after his death critics and curators showed a strong preference for his rural paintings.[18] Toward the end of his career Sprinchorn addressed this dual aspect of his work. In a letter to his friend Richard Sprague he wrote, "Well, I'm a city boy. I mean I'm country-born, but I am city-minded."[6]: 122 In 1953 he wrote a friend: "I have been called a mystic. I think that I have a pantheistic spirit towards nature that prevents mere copying of nature. I have never been successful in copying nature, however sincerely, I soon got tired. I like to select and interpret nature after living close to the sources of nature—but conversely, I have been interested in the life of critics, in the sophisticated aspects of life in general—in a word, I have tried to encompass a great deal."[6]: 135
Artistic style
Carl Sprinchorn, After a Storm, 1906, oil on canvas, 22 x 28 inchesCarl Sprinchorn, Lady With a Fan, 1909, watercolor, 9.75 x 7.5 inches
Having accepted Robert Henri as teacher and mentor, Sprinchorn adopted a realist style that was then considered to be revolutionary.[63] In defiance of decorous academic art and escapist impressionist art, the painters who studied under Henri chose subjects from the gritty urban world around them, painted with bold freedom and rapid brushwork, and strove for an immediacy of emotional expression.[64][note 9] In reviewing an exhibition in which his first paintings were shown, a critic said Sprinchorn's "Ferryboat in Snowstorm" offended art authorities by violating "every canon of academic art."[12] Another said a painting of his offended "sentimentalists" by pushing realism "to the eleventh degree."[14][note 10] The 1906 painting, "After a Storm" also called "After a Snow Storm" (at right), shows Sprinchorn's style at this time.[note 11] Early in his career, Sprinchorn's works on paper attracted at least as much attention as his oil paintings.[29] As already mentioned, he received honorable mention for a drawing in 1906, showed drawings in a 1908 group exhibition, and in 1916 had his first solo exhibition devoted to drawings. Some years later, he recalled how favorably the New York press responded to this work and said that the solo exhibition produced a large number of purchases.[18] Sprinchorn followed Henri in his style of drawing as much as in his oil paintings. Henri told his students to make drawings not as dispassionate draftsmen but expressively and with a deep consciousness of the whole of the subject.[64]: 110 In 1916 a critic for the New York Sun called attention to Sprinchorn's abbreviated lines and use of simplification and noted the "spirit and grace" of his drawings.[29] Noting in Sprinchorn's drawings "a keen vision and a witty analysis," a critic for The New York Times said in 1918 that the artist was "amazingly skillful in obtaining the richest and most splendid results by holding back the full force of his pigment, and suggesting reserves of color behind the surface painting."[2] In the early 1920s critics continued to stress his simplicity, directness, and intensity of feeling.[3][67] They recognized a rejection of strictly representational presentation in favor of the compositional elements of his work.[35] One saw in his technique a "genuine aesthetic sensibility" and another cited his ability to transform subjects into meaningful symbols.[3]: 7
In 1920 a critic for the Times wrote that Sprinchorn showed his talent most clearly in his drawings. The critic called them "vivid, syncopated sketches," that told "within their narrow boundaries more truths about color and form that most artists find it possible to say upon their biggest canvases."[34] In 1922 a critic said the drawings were "expressed in spirited line and subtly modulated passages of blue, purple, pale yellow, and green. Full of genuine aesthetic sensibility, as well as a certain sensuous, aristocratic nostalgia."[3]: 7 The same year, writing in The Arts magazine, a critic wrote that he prized "composition for its own sake," and had "almost a disdain for subject matter. He cited as an example Sprinchorn's treatment of human figures as "hardly more than theses, men without destiny or destination."[35] Sprinchorn's "Lady with a Fan" (shown at left), shows his technique of line drawing with watercolor wash.
Carl Sprinchorn, Hunter's Luck, about 1937, oil on canvas, 26 1/8 x 34 1/8 inchesCarl Sprinchorn, Gloria October 1946, oil on canvas, 26 x 34 inchesCarl Sprinchorn, Sunflowers and Tritoma, 1935, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches
Sprinchorn's style changed little during the rest of his career, so little that critics writing in 2002 could echo what critics had written in the early 1920s. Both sets of critics saw freedom and boldness in his artistic sensibility and an approach that was expressive and abstract rather than objective and representational. They used terms like "free and bold" or "free and responsive" to describe his style.[3][5] Both early and late in his career he was seen as imparting what one critic called "symbolic emphasis" in his work.[17] Early and late, he was seen as a subtle colorist and was frequently cited for a forcefulness what one critic called "vigor and drive."[2][59] In all periods, critics saw an emotional content in his work which one called "expressionism with abstract elements."[59] In a post-career summation of his work a critic said what distinguished Sprinchorn's style was his "ability to set down an image with brutal personal honesty, as if he could do nothing else."[60] Another wrote that while he "was committed to the authenticity of his subject matter, he used means similar to those employed by an abstract artist, including figure and ground relationships that diverge from normal perspective; expressive use of color; and a painterly application of paint that demonstrates relish for the act of painting."[7] Sprinchorn's paintings, "Hunter's Luck II" (shown at right) and "Gloria October" (shown at left, illustrate these aspects of his style.
Throughout his career Sprinchorn's media were oil paintings on canvas and works on paper in watercolor, pencil, pen, wash, crayon, and charcoal.[68]
His subjects varied widely: cityscapes of New York and landscapes of the Maine woods and tropical settings; human figures, including city laborers and rural woodsmen, as well as urban sophisticates; Scandinavian farm scenes; floral still lifes.[1][59][69] Although his pictures of the Maine woods drew most attention after his death, he was better known for his still lifes and drawings during most of his career.[6] Sprinchorn's "Sunflowers and Tritoma" (shown at right) illustrates is handling of a floral still life. In 1936 a critic said this painting was the liveliest of the "vivid flower paintings" he showed at the Sullivan gallery.[52]
Personal life and family
Sprinchorn was born in the village of Broby, near Kristianstad, Sweden, on May 13, 1887.[3]: 7 His father was Claes Sprinchorn (1845–1907), a cabinetmaker who did carpentry and restored furniture.[6]: 122 His mother was Johanna Rudolphsson (Andreasdotter) Sprinchorn (1844–1932).[70] He was the youngest of seven children.[6]: 122 As a child he liked to draw and, as already noted, determined to emigrate to New York so as to study under Robert Henri.
In 1956, as ill-health restricted his ability to paint and draw, he moved to the home of his sister, Mrs. Anna Johnson, in Selkirk, New York. At his death in 1971 his only known survivors were Mrs. Johnson and a niece, Mrs. Ruth Olson, also of Selkirk.[26]
Notes
^He also reportedly said he was "the first person ever to come to America for the purpose of studying art."[7]
^In addition to the ones already named, Sprinchorn's pictures of New York winters include "After a Snowstorm," and "The Blizzard," both painted before 1908.[13]
^George S. Hellman (1878-1958) was born into the Seligman banking family of New York. He was a well-known author and editor as well as art critic and collector. He was a member of the New Gallery Art Club. He was also a rare book, manuscript, and art dealer who sold through New York galleries and auction rooms.[30][31]
^In May 1921, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt and other art patrons organized the Junior Art Patrons group to provide financial support for young, impecunious artists and show their work in rented gallery space. The group aimed to encourage young city residents to appreciate and buy pictures from living artists.[36]
^Marie Sterner ran the gallery that bore her name from 1920 to 1950. Her gallery was successful in introducing talented American and European artists to collectors. Born Marie Walther, she first married a man named Albert Sterner and, having divorced him, married again to a man named Edward Lintott.[37]
^Christian Brinton (1870-1942) was an art critic from a prominent Quaker family who championed modern art in exhibition catalogs, articles, and books.[42]
^In 1942 Sprinchorn wrote that this job gave him "the means but not the time to work." He said he arranged exhibitions of works by American artists of his generation as well as by Europeans with "established reputations," such as Matisse, Modigliani, Cézanne, and others.[18] The New Gallery was founded in November 1922 by James N. Rosenberg, a lawyer, painter, and philanthropist.[43] It aimed to present "pictures which are something more than slick and servile patterns of the past."[44] It was financed in part by an innovative scheme, the New Gallery Club, begun in February 1923. The club supported the gallery through its membership fees and it raised funds and publicized exhibitions by means of entertainments, teas, and receptions. Many club members were amateur artists whose work the gallery showed in special exhibitions.[44]
^In 1923 Henri wrote: "When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better understanding."[64]: 5 And again: "The art student that should be, and is so rare, is the one whose life is spent in the love and the culture of his personal sensations, the cherishing of his emotions, never undervaluing them, the pleasure of exclaiming them to others, and an eager search for their clearest expression. He never studies drawing because it will come in useful later when he is an artist. He has not time for that. He is an artist in the beginning and is busy finding the lines and forms to express the pleasures and emotions with which nature has already charged him."[64]: 74
^In Freemasonry, the phrase "eleventh degree" connotes a pinnacle.[65]
^In 1907 Henri wrote that this painting showed its subjects faithfully: "New York white-wings cleaning east side streets after a snowstorm – not an idealized study but just as we have seen them."[9] New York City's sanitation workers were then called White Wings after the white uniforms they wore.[66]
References
^ abc"Carl Sprinchorn Holds One Man Show at Marie Sterner Galleries". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. 1930-03-09. p. E7. He has the rare quality of making whatever subject he essays interesting and unusual, be it bouquets of flowers, riders in six-day bicycle races, Spanish dancers or straight American landscape. Furthermore, he does this without taking on a single one of the fashionable mannerisms which today are regarded as almost essential to recognition. Especially noted were the impressions of personalities, some of them portrait sketches of well-known people, others portraits of generalized types. In all of them he has brought some essential characteristic of pose or gesture and set it down with the fresh exactness of a sketch.
^ abcd"French Engravings and Various Exhibitions: Art at Home and Abroad; Drawings by Carl Sprinchorn". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1918-04-14. p. SM8. He is amazingly skillful in obtaining the richest and most splendid results by holding back the full force of his pigment, and suggesting reserves of color behind the surface painting.
^"Other Shows". New York Post. New York, New York. 1928-12-08. Carl Sprinchorn seldom appears in local galleries these days so that it is a pleasant surprise to come upon a group of water colors which are not only rich in color, but show a firmer web of pattern than earlier work. Mr.Sprinchorn's individual palette and his subtle relation of colors give a piquant flavor of the unexpected to these flower pieces, which, if colors can sing, seem to chant melodiously.
^ abcBob Keyes (2002-06-30). "Wild Sprinchorn; Two Galleries and a Museum Put the Late Artist'S Maine Stuff on Display". Portland Press Herald. Portland, Maine. p. E1.
^"Carl Sprinchorn, 1924". "New York, County Naturalization Records, 1791-1980," database with images, FamilySearch; citing Naturalization, New York, United States, citing multiple County Clerk offices of New York; FHL microfilm 005411825. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
^ abc"The Eight". Whitney Museum of American Art News. 2 (1). New York, New York: 4–6. 1983-03-20. Retrieved 2020-04-26. Here is the work of a boy named Sprinchorn... Truthful isn't it? Well, a couple of years ago that boy came to me with a study in still-life to show as a specimen of his work – fruit, 1 think it was, or a glove and a water pitcher – you know the kind. It was one of the worst I ever saw, and I told him so. He stopped studying bananas and water pitchers and went out to look at life – plain New York life, as he could find it anywhere. Now he paints that kind, and his work has more virility and character to it than years of academic puttering over mush could give it.
^"In the Art Schools". American Art News. 4 (17). New York: American Art News, Inc.: 2 1906-02-03. JSTOR25590168.
^"Robert Henri — "Revolutionary"". The Independent. 64 (3108). New York: American Art News, Inc.: 1430 1908-06-25.
^ ab"Around the Galleries". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1907-04-25. p. 8. Retrieved 2020-04-27. Carl Sprinchorn is a still younger man [than Rockwell Kent], a Swede by birth. He too was a storm centre at the recent Academy. You may now see why the authorities did not like his "Ferryboat in Snowstorm." It is because it is a ferryboat in a snowstorm, and not a Venetian sunset; ugly, biting cold, dismal, the waves muddy, the deck awash, the old boat tilting up. In this canvas every canon of academic art is violated by a youth who happened to see things as they are; no wonder the picture got on people's nerves.
^ abc"Exhibitions Now On". American Art News. 5 (28). New York: American Art News, Inc.: 6 1907-04-27. JSTOR25590272.
^ ab"Around the Galleries". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1908-01-14. p. 6. Retrieved 2020-04-27. Carl Sprinchorn, whose ferryboat on the East River we shall never forget—the dreariest, wettest canvas we ever saw, and therein is its power—has hung his "Winter Day." It is realism pushed to the eleventh degree. No mercy is shown to optical sentimentalists.
^"R. Henri to Head a School". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1909-01-06. p. 7.
^"The Lounger". Putnam's Magazine. 5. New Rochelle, New York: G. Putnam's Sons: 376–378. March 1909. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
^"The Pennsylvania Academy". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1910-02-05. p. 6. Carl Sprinchorn is very promising; if only his paint quality were more plangent.
^"Art Works Exhibits". The New York Call. New York, New York. 1910-03-02. p. 2.
^Elizabeth Luther Cary (1920). "An Exhibition of Work by American Painters of Swedish Descent". Scandinavian Review. 8. New York, New York: American Scandinavian Foundation: 602. Retrieved 2020-04-26. Mr. Sprinchorn's genius lies chiefly in his power to suggest energy. His wood choppers are working with a force beyond nature. Their swift, light motions speak of irresistible power and say nothing of the violent muscular reactions of which older masters would have made so much.
^ abcdGail Scott (1994-08-09). "Down-to-Earth Works of Art Maine's Woods, Lumbermen Subject for Artist Sprinchorn". Bangor Daily News. Bangor, Maine.
^ ab"Well-Known Painter for 40 Years: Carl Sprinchorn". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. 1971-09-08. p. C6.
^ abHill Tolerton (Mar 1915). "Panama-California Exhibition, San Diego". Arts & Decoration. 5 (5). New York, New York: Adam Bunge: 198. JSTOR43806102.
^"Ten Artists Show Works". The New York Press. New York, New York. 1915-10-21. p. 6.
^ abcd"Current News of Art and the Exhibitions". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1916-04-09. p. 8. He abbreviates his lines very much, but his simplifications are founded it can be readily seen, upon plenty of knowledge. His work has a youthful, early Greek quality that makes it refreshing. He has participated in a number of group exhibitions at the Macdowell Club, always with success. He has exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy and at both the recent exhibitions in California, but has not yet been received by our National Academy. However, at his age (he is only 29) he is much better off out of it.
^"George Hellman". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1958-07-18. p. 21.
^"Notes on Current Art: Drawings at the National Arts Club". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1920-03-20. p. BR9.
^Henry McBride (1920-03-28). "Independent Exhibition". New York Sun. New York, New York. p. 4. An amusingly clever person. Too clever, of course. But I like his flower picture better than his 'Diver.'
^ abc"Art: A Wide Variety of Spring Exhibitions". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1920-05-06. p. X5. Carl Sprinchorn is represented by two large paintings of great distinction, that representing a group of men chopping wood achieving the rare classic union between energy and style. In the smaller, vivid, syncopated sketches he is at his strongest, however, telling within his narrow boundaries more truths about color and form than most artists find it possible to say upon their biggest canvases. In one little head which he calls "Natt Ansikte," his brush cutting clean as a knife blade manages to envelop the forms with tenderest atmosphere and produce a plastic quality that Carriere might have praised.
^ abcdeKenneth Burke (1922-01-20). "The Art of Carl Sprinchorn". The Arts. 2 (3). Brooklyn, New York: Hamilton Easter Field: 158–159. Retrieved 2020-04-26. Carl Sprinchorn is an abstract painter—with one important difference, however... He manages to put on his canvas both the object and his interpretation of it. The thorough-going abstractor would have given us the interpretation alone... [I]t is evident from one glance at Carl Sprinchorn's canvases that he has almost a disdain of subject-matter... If he begins with composition for the sake of the picture he ends with composition for its own sake... [I]t is this going beyond the requirements of his subject which is the characteristic quality of Sprinchorn's art.
^"To Aid Living Artists; Junior Art Patrons Is Formed". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1921-05-02. p. 13.
^"Mrs. E.B. Lihtott, Art Dealer Here; Owner of the Marie Sterner Gallery Dies". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1953-07-02. p. 23.
^ abHelen Appleton Read (1922-12-17). "Random Impressions of the Galleries". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. p. 26.
^Hamilton Easter Field (1922-02-12). "The Art of Carl Sprinchorn". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. p. C4. I share the enthusiasm of his most ardent admirers and quite agree with what Christian Brinton has said of him in his introduction to the catalog and with Kenneth Burke's recently published article.
^"Art News and Reviews; Charming Snow Pictures by Carl Sprinchorn". New York Herald. New York, New York. 1922-02-12. p. 39. Mr. Sprinchorn is plastic and abstract; not so abstract but that you know what is going on... He has a curious splashy way of painting, avoiding most of the edges, but putting some of them in with startling distinctiveness.
^ ab"James N. Rosenberg, a Lawyer-Painter, Is Dead: Philanthropist Aided Hoover in Relief Work". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1970-07-22. p. 40.
^ abNew Gallery, New York (1923). New Pictures and the New Gallery, 1923. privately printed for the New Gallery. This book, which contains reproductions of fifty-eight of the one hundred and twenty-two pictures sold from November 1922 to May 1923, at The New Gallery, is published, partly for the members of The New Gallery Art Club, partly to indicate the aims and characteristics of art of the present time. The New Gallery has been frankly an experiment to ascertain whether there is a public ready to take an interest in contemporary pictures which are something more than slick and servile patterns of the past... The New Gallery opened its doors at 600 Madison Avenue, New York City, on November 14, 1922.
^"Art; Exhibitions of the Week". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1923-12-23. p. 9. Carl Sprinchorn works in the poetry of sensitive values, leading down to a still life in green and red from a high to a low key.
^ ab"Sprinchorn Exhibits". Art News. 22 (32). New York: American Art News, Inc.: 2 1924-05-17. JSTOR25591417. [T]he later Maine landscapes and the pastels of California, which are his final word in simplification, are the most personal in expression of all his work. A gift for organization is emphasized by the bare simplicity of these, and there is a sensitiveness about the pastels which gives them a hold over the imagination.
^Ruth Green Harris (1930-03-09). "A Round of Galleries: Sprinchorn, Stoenesco, Nisbet, Williams". The New York Times. New York, New York. p. 129.
^ ab"The Holiday Hiatus". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. 1930-12-28. p. 29.
^"A Round of Galleries". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1928-12-09. p. X13. Flower pieces by Carl Sprinchorn reveal this artist's unfailingly lively attack. "red, White and Blue" is a thoroughgoing deviation from the conventional character of most flower pieces in its complete absorption in a dynamic color relationship, which is in no sense limited by the subject matter. "Spotted Lilies" is very vigorously and freely painted without the sacrifice of formal integration.
^"Seen in New York Galleries: Carl Sprinchorn Paints Semi-Tropical Santo Domingo". The New York Times. New York, New York. 1927-05-08. p. X8. There is a certain clenched acridity, a tight hardness, in the contours of some of Mr. Sprinchorn's ripest fruits—but the finished painting is never forced or beautifully meaningless.
^ abCharles Z. Offin (1936-03-22). "Again: The Academy of Design's Annual Exhibit". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. p. 42.
^A.Z. Kruse (1943-01-17). "At the Art Galleries". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. p. 36. About 25 years ago in the now extinct Modern Art Galleries of James N. Rosenberg, a young art director, Carl Sprinchorn, was in charge. He was himself an artist emerging then from the Chase and Henri influences and making great headway with decorative flowers in brilliant color. After all these years his variety of human experiences has blossomed into a form of autobiographical painting, which tells us of his associations and whereabouts in recent years... His early modernist experimental background plus his previous thorough art training, applied to a series of actual experiences, have added up to a style of vigorous illustrative painting.
^"At the Art Galleries". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Brooklyn, New York. 1944-12-31. p. 22.
^"Attractions in the Galleries; Macbeth Galleries". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1947-01-31. p. 26.
^ abcdHoward Devree (1950-05-14). "By Contemporaries: A Water-Color Survey and Recent Work By Kingman and Sprinchorn A Modern Trend Kingman's Vitality Three Modernists in Abstract Vein". The New York Times. New York, New York. p. 118. Forceful, highly simplified water-colors supplement the oils in this outstanding show.
^"Sprinchorn: A Maine Artist". Maine Alumnus. 54 (2). Orono, Maine: General Alumni Association, University of Maine: 8–9. Fall 1972. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
^Izola Forrester (1906-04-10). "New York's Art Anarchists: Here Is the Revolutionary Creed of Robert Henri and His Followers". New York World. New York, New York. p. 6.
^ abcdRobert Henri (1923). The Art Spirit. J. B. Lippincott Company. p. 74.
^"Newcomers Among Moderns". Art News. 21 (10). New York: American Art News, Inc.: 3 1922-12-16. JSTOR25590041. Carl Sprinchorn shows a pastel in which mountains and trees are expressed with primitive simplicity and intensity of feeling.
^Howard Devree (1954-09-14). "About Art and Artists". The New York Times. New York, New York. p. 30. This is a rediscovery of a talent that has been too long absent from New York galleries, and is a very sprightly early season event.
^"Bonnard and a Few Others". New York Sun. New York, New York. 1930-10-10. p. 41. Mr. Sprinchorn has a thoroughly painter-like attitude and an easy command of his materials that are in themselves sufficient to command attention. His subjects range from his somewhat cryptic "Seascape With Flowers," in which a bouquet of gay nasturtiums is disclosed in an expanse of troubled blue for no discernible purpose unless for the sake of the color, to such themes as his lively "Brooklyn Bridge," with the river craft whipped about by a stirring breeze. His water colors, whether of tropical harbors and palms or New York penthouses, are particularly happy in their summary noting of the aspect of things.
