The New Hope Artists Colony: John Fulton Folinsbee, Recognition

"(Untitled) Woodstock" by John F. Folinsbee

"In the early decades of the twentieth century, John Fulton Folinsbee’s reputation extended to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Houston, where his works were regularly included in annual exhibitions of contemporary American art. His increasing stature in American art was recognized by the National Academy in 1919, when he was elected an associate member at the age of twenty-seven (he became a full academician in 1928).

Although Folinsbee exhibited at museums, galleries, and private clubs in Pennsylvania, he never pursued active representation or membership in them, instead focusing his professional attention on the nation’s art capital, New York, while at the same time broadening recognition of his work in exhibitions across the country. For several years early in his career, Folinsbee was represented in New York by Macbeth Gallery—the first gallery in New York devoted to American art and the site of the legendary exhibition of The Eight in 1908. Beginning in 1917, and for nearly four decades afterward, he was represented by Ferargil Gallery, located at 24 East 49th Street, where he had a solo show nearly every year. In 1923, he became a founding member of the Grand Central Art Galleries, a cooperative located in the Grand Central Terminal building and devoted to promoting contemporary American art. Folinsbee was elected a member of the Salmagundi Club in 1913, a Life Member of the National Arts Club in 1921, and a member of the Century Association in 1937. 

He had his first solo exhibition at the Hillyer Gallery at Smith College in Massachusetts, in 1916. From then, until well into the 1940s, his work could be seen in traveling exhibitions organized by the American Federation of Arts, as well as in various international expositions and exhibitions in American embassies. By his mid-thirties, he had a national reputation that extended to Texas, Ohio, Missouri, California, Indiana, and elsewhere—far beyond the boundaries of Bucks County, with which he is so closely associated today. In 1953, Folinsbee was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1953, one of the highest honors an artist can receive."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "About John Fulton Folinsbee" by Kirsten M. Jensen in "The John F. Folinsbee Catalogue Raisonne.")