 |   Arthur Prince Spear 1879-1959
He was a studied artist who attended the Washington Art Students League and then the Art Students League in New York. It was there that he studied with Howard Chandler Christie, Kenyon Cox, George Bridgeman and Putnam Brindly. In 1902, he went to Paris to study under Jean Paul Laurens at the Julien Academy. Most of the artwork that Spear created was of otherworldly sea dwellers, mermaids, satyrs and nymphs and intended as fine art and sold through the Vose Galleries in Boston. Other exhibitions include the Rosenbach Gallery, the Carnegie Institute, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the National Arts Club.
During the First World War, he did at least three posters including two large Liberty Bond canvases, which were displayed in department store windows. Due to the lean years of the Great Depression there was no market for impressionist painting and there was little income from investments. He gave up painting in 1944, giving away all of his art supplies and destroying many of his paintings on hand. These haunting original paintings are painfully rare examples of Spear's poetic imagery.  |                 |         | |||||||
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