Draft:Aaron Henry Gorson

AARON HARRY GORSON A.H.GORSON American Artist 1872 - 1933

Reputation and Fame: Private and Public Collection. Retrospectives. Aaron Henry Gorson's paintings are in numerous private and public collections, including the Carnegie Museum of Art; the Andrew W. Mellon Collection; the Charles M. Schwab Collection; the Westmoreland County Museum of Art; New York University; Mellon Bank Corporation, Pittsburgh; PPG Industries, Inc.; the Duquesne Club, Pittsburgh; the Newark Museum; the Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum; the Heckscher Park Art Museum, Huntington, New York; and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. He is also represented in the One Hundred Friends of Pittsburgh Art collection, owned by the Pittsburgh School Board, and was included in the exhibition of the collection at the Carnegie Institute in November 1942. In 1967 a retrospective exhibition of Gorson's paintings was held at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute and at the Spanierman Gallery in New York the following year. He was included in the "Art in Nineteenth Century Pittsburgh" at the University of Pittsburgh Art Gallery in 1977. In 1989, the Spanierman Gallery and the University held an exhibition of thirty-six paintings in "The Power and the Glory: Pittsburgh Industrial Landscapes by Aaron Harry Gorson (1872-1933)."

Aaron Harry Gorson established his reputation by recording views of the Pittsburgh steel mills. Gorson asserted that the city was `bountifully endowed by nature with scenes of grandeur and enthralling picturesqueness.' He admired `the way in which the muddy river water catches the gleam of the dying light and becomes transformed into running gold'. Gorson's interest was in the dramatic dark and light in landscape, whether it be the reflection of the flames from a Bessemer converter on a river at night or the bright shower of sparks from a blast furnace in the dark interior of a mill. In 1921, Gorson moved to New York and shifted his attention from steel mills to the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson River, but his Pittsburgh scenes remain as the most remembered products of his career."

Youth: Aaron Harry Gorson was born June 2, 1872, in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. Kovno was a city with a thriving textile industry, and at age thirteen Gorson was apprenticed to a tailor. In 1888 he emigrated to the United States to join an older brother in Philadelphia. He soon found employment and worked as a machine operator in a clothing factory during the day, while at night he attended classes at the Spring Garden Institute to pursue his dream of becoming a painter.

Studies with Anshutz and Eakins. Paris Turn of the Century: Gorson married in 1894 and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Thomas Anshutz and being trained in the school of realism establish by Anshutz' teacher Thomas Eakins. He attended 1894-1896 and 1897-1898. He continued to work and obtained portrait commissions on the side. One of his major patrons at this time was the rabbi Leonard Levy, who arranged in 1899 for Gorson to go to Paris to study for a year. In 1900 he enrolled at the Académie Julian, a school that was popular with Americans at that time. There he received instruction from visiting lecturers from the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, such as J.J. Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. Gorson also attended evening classes at the Academie Colarossi, a school that was located near the studio of the one painter who probably had the most influence on the young artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). He was a member of the American Art Association of Paris and the Union International des Beaux Arts et des Lettres, Paris. Later, in the mid-1910s, Gorson was honored in Paris for his industrial landscapes.

Returns to Philadelphia: Returning to Philadelphia, Gorson worked to receive portrait commissions. He was accepted at the 1902 exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and had his portrait of a violinist hung in the Room of Honor. The same year he exhibited a life-size painting of a young girl at the Art Institute of Chicago, and also received an award from the American Art Society.

Pittsburgh Success: Gorson left the highly competitive portraiture market of Philadelphia in 1903, and moved to Pittsburgh with his patron, Rabbi Levy, who had been appointed rabbi of the Reformed congregation of Rodef Shalom. Gorson had hoped to find better opportunities in Pittsburgh, and soon was receiving commissions from socially prominent people like Mrs. W.S. King, the wife of a glass manufacturer, and the Mellon family. Gorson's clientele in Pittsburgh also included Charles Schwab, Judge Gary and Andrew Carnegie. He began painting the steel mills of Pittsburgh at this time, and in 1904 had two portraits and a landscape entitled Pittsburgh's Wealth accepted at the Carnegie International. Between 1908 and 1921 he would exhibit nine paintings at seven internationals, including the 14th Annual in 1921, where his Nocturne was prominently placed among works by George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and John Singer Sargent. Gorson was one of the first members of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and showed regularly with the group from their first exhibit in 1910 to the time he moved to New York in 1921. At the fourth annual in 1913, he served on a jury that included George Brill, Howard Hildebrandt, Leopold Seyffert, Alfred King, Elizabeth Robb and James Bonar, and was singled out for praise at the 5th exhibition of the Associated Artists in 1914. In 1913-1914, Gorson served as an instructor at the Stevenson Art School in Pittsburgh with Christian J. Walter. In 1917 he participated in the show "A Group of Pittsburgh Painters," held in March at the Carnegie Institute. The group included James Bonar, William Hyett, Arthur Sparks, Fred Demmler, Ralph Holmes, George Sooter, Charles J. Taylor and Christian Walter. That year he was also granted a solo exhibition at the Associated Artists exhibition at the Carnegie. When America entered the First World War, Gorson and his fellow members of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh donated works for a May 1918 auction to raise money for the Red Cross: Gorson's donation, Pittsburgh Mills at Night, sold for $240. At the tenth annual in 1919, Gorson received a jury award. During this time Gorson was exhibiting at the Corcoran Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, Rochester's University Art Gallery. He showed in fourteen exhibitions at the National Academy of Design between 1912 and 1933, at the Pan-American Exhibition in Los Angeles in 1915, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and also had his work shown in galleries in Boston, Detroit, New York.

New York City In 1921, Gorson moved to New York City and began painting scenes of the city and views of the Hudson River, and continued to produce paintings of the steel mills of Pittsburgh. He was a founding member of the Grand Central Art Galleries, and belonged to the American Federation of Arts, the Brooklyn Society of Artists, the Art Alliance of America, and the Salmagundi Club. His works were handled by the John Levy Galleries, Cronyn & Lowndes Galleries, and Knoedler & Co, in New York, and by the J.J. Gillespie Galleries and Wunderly's Gallery in Pittsburgh. He died in New York at age sixty-one on October 11, 1933.

Sources: Art in 19th Century Pittsburgh, Exhibition by the University Art Gallery, University of Pittsburgh, 1977. Brignano, Mary. The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, 1910-1985: The First Seventy-Five Years. Pittsburgh: Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, 1985. Chew, Paul. Southwestern Pennsylvania Painters. Greensburg: Westmoreland County Museum of Art, 1989. "Exhibition at Spanierman Gallery," Arts, vol. 42, April 1968, p. 57, and Art News, vol. 67, April 1968, p.13. Falk, Peter Hastings, ed. Who Was Who in American Art. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1985. "Finding Beauty in Pittsburgh, Exhibition at Cronyn & Lowndes Gallery" Art Digest, vol. 7, March 1, 1933, p. 15. "Gorson Painting Added to Mineral Industries Gallery," Mineral Industries, vol. 2, no. 7, April 1933, p. 4. "Gorson, Painter of Steel," Art Digest, vol. 8, November 1, 1933, p. 10. Keeble, Glendinning, "The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh," Art and Progress, vol. 5, pp. 46-50. O'Connor, John Jr., "One Hundred Friends Exhibition," Carnegie Magazine, vol. 16, pp. 168-170. Spanierman, Ira. A.H. Gorson, 1872-1933. New York: Ira Spanierman Gallery, 1968. Youngner, Rina. The Power and the Glory: Pittsburgh Industrial Landscapes by Aaron Harry Gorson (1872-1933). New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1989.