On a Raft

1901

Turns down a baseball team’s offer

In his senior year a baseball scout from the Indianapolis team makes him an offer, but he declines and enrols at Ohio State University.

1904

From Ohio to New York: a pupil of Robert Henri

Although his parents do not encourage it, he leaves the university just before graduating and moves to New York City to study art. He soon becomes a student of Robert Henri at the New York School of Art and is drawn into Henri’s “The Eight” and the Ashcan School.

1908

Exhibition of Henri’s pupils: first wide notice

Together with other pupils of Henri he organizes an exhibition of mostly urban studies: many critics find them crudely painted, others welcome their audacity as a step beyond the work of his teacher; it brings him his first widespread notice. Other accounts say the exhibition was organized by Henri himself.

1909 · Award

the National Academy of Design

A year after his first success he becomes a member of the National Academy of Design.

January 1925

Peritonitis from a neglected appendix

After a ruptured appendix that he fails to tend to in time, peritonitis sets in; the artist dies on 8 January 1925, aged forty-two, survived by his wife Emma and daughters Anne and Jean.

8 January 1925

Died