ROBERT HALE IVES GAMMELL (American, 1893-1981). Landscape with Branches, 1952. Oil on masonite panel. 11-3/4 x 15-1/4 in...

Description

ROBERT HALE IVES GAMMELL (American, 1893-1981)
Landscape with Branches, 1952
Oil on masonite panel
11-3/4 x 15-1/4 inches (29.8 x 38.7 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: R. H. Ives Gammell 1952

THE JEAN AND GRAHAM DEVOE WILLIFORD CHARITABLE TRUST

This is a later-career work by American muralist, portrait painter, art teacher, and writer on art, Robert Hale Ives Gammell. Born in Providence, Rhode Island he trained at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with Paxton, Tarbell, DeCamp and Philip Hale, where he acquired a solid education in classical art. Later, he studied at the Académie Julian and the Atelier Baschet in Paris.
After serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, he returned to Boston and began his painting career in earnest in 1920, executing commissions for decorations and portraits and pursuing his passion for travel in Europe and North Africa. In 1930, he began painting large canvasses on mythological and Biblical themes but soon realized that he was completely out of step with the times and under the stress of this oppressive realization as well as the stress of the impending war in Europe, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1939. He made a slow recovery, and was aided in this process by the writings of Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung. In 1950, he founded the Gammell Studios to ensure that the traditions of painting as he knew them would be preserved and perpetuated. For the next two and a half decades, he continued to devote his life to teaching and painting.


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