Name/Title
Harley Perkins, ArtistDescription
From: https://www.meibohmfinearts.com/artists/details/654
HARLEY MANLIUS PERKINS (1883-1964), American (painter, writer, administrator, lecturer, radio commentator)
Harley Manlius Perkins was a member of 'The Boston Five' - a group of modernist painters who created expressive landscapes with an emphasis on a fauvist palette.Other members of this group were: Charles Sidney Hopkinson, Charles Hovey Pepper, Marion Monks Chase, and Carl Gordon Cutler. Beginning in 1920 and over the next 25 years, the group exhibited their works together at the Boston Art Club, Vose Galleries and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.
Harley Perkins was born on April 23, 1883 in Bakersfield, Vermont and lived his adult life in the Brookline, Magnolia, and Boston, Massachusetts studying at the Brigham Academy and the Boston Museum School. He was known to have traveled in Europe in 1928 and 1929 for 9 months and spent much of the time particularly in Norway.
Perkins exhibited at the Society for Independent Artists in 1918, the Whitney Museum of American Art 1926-50, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, Vose Galleries ("Five Boston Artists" 1930), Doll & Richards Gallery, Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, among others. He occupied a studio at the Fenway Gallery at 30 Ipswich Street in Boston, and later moved into his own gallery, The Harley Perkins Gallery, at 104 Revere Street in Boston in the mid-1930s.
Harley Perkins held positions as Arts Editor of the Boston Transcript (1922-1928), a art critic who wrote articles for the Boston Evening Traveler, and as Director of Exhibitions at the Boston Art Club (1923-28). A kindhearted individual, he cared deeply about opportunities for fledgling artists, at one time, in 1923 he petitioned the Director of the Brooklyn Museum to hold a exhibition of negro art at the Boston Art Club. He was the Massachusetts State Director of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (1936-39), the president of the Boston Society of Independent Artists from 1940 to 1954, and a technical advisor to the National Art Program, Washington D.C. 1940-1941. And among other contributions, Harley Perkins was a Radio Art Commentator and a contributor to The Arts: Pictures on Exhibit.
Works by Perkins can be found in permanent collections including the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as a WPA mural in the Alabama State Building in Montgomery, Alabama.
Harley Manlius Perkins died on September 29, 1964 in Boston, Massachusetts.
(Source with permission from AskArt.com, prior submission: Submitted in September of 2006 by art historian and collector Michael Perez)
For additional information on this artist or for other examples of his works, please visit the AskArt link