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for WALDO PEIRCE
WALDO PEIRCE
1884-1970
Waldo Peirce, one of the most colorful personalities in American art, was born in Bangor, Maine in 1884. He is a burly Rabelaisian figure with a huge gusto for life, about whom legends gather. These legends began even in his Harvard days, legends of prowess in football and other sports, the caricatures in the "Harvard Lampoon". Later legends of exploits with Jack Reed, exploits with bohemians of the "lost generation," adventures with Hemingway and Jack Johnson in Spain. Rumors of robustuous unprintable epics in verse. Legends, too, of painting a $1000 portrait in a day on a bottle of Pernod, of our-Zulcaga-ing Zulcaga in Segovia. Hemingway remembers hearing Zulcaga telling Peirce what a great Spanish painter he would have been. "The only trouble," added Hemingway, "was that Waldo couldn't take painting Zulcagas seriously and Zulcaga could." All this, and more, is to be found in Harry Salpeter's amusing pen portrait of Waldo Peirce in the July, 1936, Esquire.
Waldo Peirce is a yea-sayer to life. He is a painter, draughtsman, lithographer, a poet, a legend, a gourmand, a playboy, above all, a man. Peirce's art has the full flavor of his robust personality. It is breezy, full-blooded and brimming with energy and gusto. It is exuberant, not meticulous. His drawings and paintings have a vitality that is rare in contemporary art. Typical of this prodigious élan for life is his lithograph, "Circus on the Move". The spirited drawing, the breadth of treatment, the sense of mood and atmosphere, all combine to recreate the thrill of the actual scene. At first glance his drawing is so free that it seems the merest sketch, but pull away as you would in contemplating an oil painting, and animals and men, tents and wagons become three-dimensional; they spring into magnificent life - you can almost smell the circus. And the movement! At first glance you may wonder just what is the center of interest, but inevitably the eye is swept from right to left, and then in a swirl from left to right with quickening pace and excitement; the circus is on the move! Peirce mad ea painting of the same scene which is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 1930 he was the proud father of twins, and they have figured largely in his painting ever since. His lithograph, "On the Beach" is a picture of the twins and their mother. Out of his lusty drawing there somehow emerges a mood and atmosphere - 'joie de vivre' and whiff of ocean air.
From Unknown Source (in Curatorial Binder)
Person TypeIndividual
