Talk:List of Hallgarten Prize-winning painters

Lots of confusion out there
There is a lot of published misinformation about Hallgarten winners. Some authors have mistaken NAD student prizes for Hallgartens awarded in NAD's annual exhibitions. There is also imprecision about specifying the class of Hallgarten won&mdash;First, Second or Third.

There shouldn't be any errors in the list for the paintings and painters up to 1923. NAD's exhibition catalogues, art magazines, and art annuals document them. More difficult to access are sources published after 1923, most of which are not available online.

If you add to the list or make corrections, please footnote your work. Thank you. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 19:23, 29 August 2019 (UTC)


 * In 1980, a volume was published listing all the works exhibited at NAD's annual exhibitions from 1900 to 1950. The list is now complete and accurate up to 1950. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 22:33, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Possible winners: what year? what painting?
Those names with a ✅ have been confirmed. Those names with a have been discredited. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 19:23, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ Charles Sperry Andrews III (b. 1917), First prize 1950
 * Samuel Burtis Baker (1882-1967) Did not win a 1923 Hallgarten.
 * Abraham J. Bogdanove - won a Hallgarten School Prize
 * James Brantley, 1970s?
 * Maurice Braun - won a Hallgarten School Prize.
 * ✅ George Byron Browne. NAD's website mistakenly lists George Elmer Browne as the winner of the 1928 Third Hallgarten Prize.
 * Paul Cadmus - won a Hallgarten School Prize
 * Charles H. Cecil, 1960s-70s
 * Gustavo Cenci, 1918 Hallgarten School Prize
 * ✅ Paul Lewis Clemens (1911-1992) Third Prize, 1944
 * Vincent de Gregorio - won a Hallgarten School Prize
 * ✅ Henry Finkelstein - won a 1988 prize. What painting?
 * Jan Gallione (1959-1994)
 * ✅ Henry Martin Gasser (1909-1981) - won 1943 Second Prize. What painting?
 * Arthur Ignatius Keller (1866-1924) 1892 prize for At Mass? - won a Hallgarten School Prize. No Hallgartens awarded in 1892.
 * ✅ Will Lamm - won 1951 Second prize. What painting?
 * ✅ David Levine (b. 1926) - won 1960. What painting?
 * Ernest Lee Major won the school's 1885 Hallgarten Traveling Scholarship
 * Leah Montalto (b. 1979)
 * ✅ Cathol O'Toole - won 1934 & 1935.
 * Helen Oh
 * ✅ John Pike (b. 1911), 1930s-40s? 1945 2nd Prize
 * Frederic Remington did not win an 1888 Hallgarten Prize
 * ✅ Eran Reshef - won 1996. What painting?
 * Samuel Rose (b. 1941), What year? What painting?
 * Gertrude C. Schmitt - won a Hallgarten Traveling Scholarship
 * ✅ Christian Vincent - won 1994. What painting?
 * ✅ Jerry Weiss, ASL instructor - won 1992. What painting?
 * ✅ Rachel Wren Rachael Wren - won 2006. What painting?
 * ✅ Alice Zinnes - won 1988 & 1990. What paintings?

1956 1st Hallgarten prize winner?
My family owns a painting with a plaque on the frame that says "1st Julius Hallgarten prize \\ 131st annual exhibition 1956\\ national academy of design". The signature on the painting is "Cornelis 1954". It's a figure painting with somewhat detailed furniture and a less detailed figure. There are various shades of brown, white and turquoise that dominate the painting. This style and use of color suggests to me-who-doesn't-know-anything-about-art that it is Cornelis Rhutenberg who is the artist. The times also line up since she was in the United States at this time. This isn't enough evidence for me to add it to the list, but I'm putting this on the talk page so that it might be a clue to anyone with the curiosity and the resource to follow up on it. Punished hippo (talk) 01:33, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Philip Butler White
Here's another source about Philip Butler White (currently a redlink) winning prizes in 1964, 1967, 1969: (  It doesn't provide 1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd place info, either, is perhaps not really independent of the current reference from an art dealer about White in this list-article already.  It has a lot of biographical info, though and could/should(?) be used to develop an article about this artist.  Also there is no mention of him in Philip White disambiguation/SIA page. --Doncram (talk) 01:44, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Samuel Rose
Samuel Rose (artist) (currently a redlink) (1941-2008) reportedly won a Hallgarten Prize at NAD, mentioned in Pierce Galleries bio about him. Year not specified. Maybe this could help in searching more specifically about him in not-publicly-accessible news databases? --Doncram (talk) 01:54, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Not mentioned in "Possible winners" section above. --Doncram (talk) 05:01, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Cynthia Sobel
Cynthia Sobel (currently a redlink) reportedly won a 2006 prize: "2006:  National Academy, Julius Hallgarten Prize for Abstract", per Cynthia Sobel biography page. Maybe this is enough to help out in offline newspaper searching? --Doncram (talk) 01:59, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Not mentioned in "Possible winners" section above. --Doncram (talk) 05:01, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Charles H. Cecil
Charles H. Cecil, of Charles H. Cecil Studios (an existing Wikipedia article), won some Hallgarten Prize for an oil painting, per this bio page at the Charles H. Cecil Studios website. The fourth external link at the studios article, to "A former student and professional painter's website glossary information about artist and atelier teacher Charles Harkless Cecil" might have more information, but brings up some security-type stuff (maybe benign, maybe just asking for approval to allow to see the website) when I click on it.--Doncram (talk) 02:25, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Mentioned already in "Possible winners" section above, without being judged either "confirmed" or "invalid". --Doncram (talk) 05:01, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Beau Chamberlain
Beau Chamberlain (currently a redlink) (born 1976), per his bio/resume at Winston Wachter gallery won one of the 2008 awards. --Doncram (talk) 03:23, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Not mentioned in "Possible winners" section above. --Doncram (talk) 05:05, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Robert Philipp
Robert Philipp is currently listed as having won the 2nd Hallgarten prize in 1922. This source says he won the 3rd, instead. I am not trying to evaluate the quality of the references involved, just pointing out the current statement in the article might not be correct. --Doncram (talk) 04:34, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Maurice Brown, and about "student" prizes
Maurice Braun is not listed among the three asserted winners of the 1900 prizes (or anywhere else) in this list-article, but a Maurice Braun Gallery website (whose URL is blocked from being mentioned in Wikipedia, try removing the spaces from "h t t p : / / w w w . m a u r i c e b r a u n g a l l e r y.com/mauricebraunbiography.html") asserts he "won the Hallgarten Prize, National Academy of Design in 1900".
 * I do see he is mentioned in "Possible winners" section above, with indication "Invalid - won a Hallgarten School Prize", which I assume is correct though there is no source cited there. --Doncram (talk) 05:01, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I gather that could have been one of the "other" Hallgarten prizes which this list-article states it will not cover. But i also don't really get why it does not. The current "Other Hallgarten Prizes" section implies these are student prizes only, i.e. it states "Student winners of the Julius Hallgarten School Prize and Alfred N. Hallgarten Traveling Scholarship do not belong on this list." I assume they are inferior somehow, but I think it's not completely clear to readers that those prizes should be regarded as greatly inferior, and I think that at least the passage should be developed a bit more. There is no source given to support the student-only assertion. What was the process, who did decide, about those prizes? Was it clearly a much narrower pool, and less prestigious? Maybe these were fewer in number, and had more eligible candidates or otherwise covered a wider scope (e.g. out of all of the person's works, vs. in the "main" prizes only paintings included in one specific NAD show were eligible), and/or involved bigger dollar amounts (it seems possible/likely these were for more than $100, $200, or $300). It would be especially helpful if there were some source which explicitly compared the relative importance of the various Hallgarten prizes. My two cents.

By the way I am finding these several items by googling "Hallgarten Prize 2008" and "Hallgarten Prize 2006", though many hits come up on prizes awarded many years earlier. --Doncram (talk) 04:52, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Hallgarten Prizes vs. Hallgarten School Prizes
Thank you for your research above. The reason I argue that Hallgarten School Prizes do not belong on this list is a matter of degree and of importance. In the early decades, the three Hallgarten Prizes at NAD's annual exhibitions were awarded to works that scores of the most noted artists in the United States voted to be that year's best three works by young painters. So each year the pool was (potentially) every American professional painter under age 35.

The Hallgarten School Prizes and Hallgarten Traveling Scholarships were limited to student work done in NAD's school, so the pool was relatively tiny. At least twice&mdash;1928 with George Byron Browne (NAD student), and 1936 with Maurice Blumenfeld (ASL student)&mdash;a work by a student was accepted for NAD's annual exhibition and awarded a Hallgarten. But the hundreds of other Hallgartens were awarded to professional painters.

Pre-WW2, winning a Hallgarten was a signal honor for a painter, something that could give an enormous boost to a career, and might be mentioned in her/his obituary. The school prizes were notable, but nowhere near the level of importance of the prizes from NAD's annual exhibitions. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 21:53, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I do (and did) believe you that the other prizes were less important; maybe i seemed to imply differently but didn't really mean to.  I do think it is not yet obvious to readers why that would be the case.  Could your entire statement here, giving context, be included into the article?  I think it would help if much of what you say here could be added to the "Other Hallgarten prizes" section.  Also I was not aware about part of what you are saying, i.e. that it was only "in the early decades" and "pre-WW2" that it was such an honor and had such a boosting effect. Are there sources which speak to the effective decline of its importance (or equivalently to its higher relative importance pre-WWII?  Actually I don't really understand why the prize apparently did decline in importance, then drop to being biannual only, then stop.  Why?  I dunno, maybe you know these things to be true but maybe they are not written up in citeable sources? --Doncram (talk) 05:32, 23 September 2019 (UTC)


 * NAD has always been conservative. The Art Students League of New York was formed by NAD students who broke away from it because its teaching was too conservative. But being elected a member of NAD, and especially being elected an Academician, was one of the highest honors an artist could receive in America.
 * I suspect that the prestige of a Hallgarten Prize waned after WW2 because NAD was extremely slow to embrace modern art. So NAD became viewed as more and more irrelevant. In recent years, it has had major money problems. NAD sold major works to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum, and became a pariah among art museums. It has now sold both of its Manhattan buildings, and is moving to Long Island City, Queens. According to the NYT, it mission is mostly to honor and serve its membership. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 13:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)