Fiske Boyd (1895 - 1975)

House in Abstract Landscape (Untitled), c. 1950s, oil on board, estate stamp verso, 18 x24 inches, presented in an older frame

$3,500

Fiske Boyd was a Philadelphia-born painter, printmaker, and arts educator. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Students League with Kenneth Hayes Miller. Early in his career, Boyd adopted a modernist approach and joined the Charles Daniel Galleries in 1923. His works from the 1920s were spare compositions usually in thinly applied pigments, often reminiscent of the work of Preston Dickinson. During this time, he exhibited at the Salons of America in New York and his practice included black and white block prints for which he became well known. Boyd was an early member of the Woodstock art colony, as well as the American Artists Congress, National Academy of Design, Audubon Artists, Society of Graphic Artists and the Boston Printmakers. While frequenting Woodstock, Boyd practiced a form of rural modernism during the Great Depression with images composed of an unconventional shimmering palette. In 1937, he completed a mural for the post office in Summit, New Jersey, a commission awarded by the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts.

During the 1950s, Boyd’s adopted a more expressionist style applying thick coats of impasto with a fully loaded brush, such as the present example. From the 1920s through the 1950s, he exhibited at many institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, National Academy of Design, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Boyd lived most of his life in New Jersey, New York and New Hampshire. His works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Delaware Museum of Art, as well as dozens of other museums. He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and all other standard references.