John Whorf

John Whorf (American, 1903-1959)

The Milch Galleries in New York wrote of John Whorf that "there is very little that {he} cannot do with his watercolors". In 1940 the Boston Herald said of the artist: "Whorf is a leader in the modern realist school; he is admittedly its arch prophet of technique; a virtuoso in watercolor". Clearly watercolor was considered the artist’s best medium, one to which he gravitated early on in his career.

After the abundant dose of academic training he had at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School (alongside Charles Hawthorne and Max Bohm) Whorf went to Paris like so many fellow American artists, where he attended the Calarossi Academy. Though his schooling was on the whole traditional, Whorf became a Modernist, albeit always employing a figurative, representational style. Around 1940 Whorf moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he became an important artistic influence in the local community.

John Whorf exhibited in numerous significant American institutions including: American Watercolor Society, New York; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Milch Galleries, New York; Art Institute of Chicago (prize awarded in 1939 and 1943); The Brooklyn Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Amherst College; Toledo Museum of Fine Arts; Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts; Montclair Museum of Fine Arts; Rhode Island School of Design and Museum; New Britain Museum of Art; W. Nelson Gallery, Kansas City.

[Taken from the internet web site of Comenos Fine Arts, Boston, www.comenosfinearts.com, 2/7/2000 --jag]