At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism | Art & Artists

May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023

Carl Newman

Several nude figures relax and bathe on a colorful shoreline with a rainbow and sailboat.

Carl Newman

Born 1858 in Philadelphia, PA
Died 1932 in Abington, PA

Carl Newman was a fifty-two-year-old Pennsylvania Academy–trained figure painter when he spent the summer of 1910 in Paris with his close friend Henry Lyman Sayen, a fellow Philadelphia artist who had adopted Fauvism during his seven years living in France. Working alongside Sayen over the summer, Newman loosened his brushwork and brightened his palette. After Sayen returned to Philadelphia in 1914, the two artists began spending almost every weekend together at Newman’s large house and studio in the suburbs. In 1915, Newman commissioned Sayen to decorate the studio’s eighteen-foot-high ceiling. Painting beneath Sayen’s Fauvist kaleidoscope, Newman inaugurated a series of brightly colored Arcadian landscapes that recall Henri Matisse’s 1905 Joy of Life (which he would have seen in Paris in 1910 while attending Gertrude Stein’s salon). As his work evolved during the next decade, it came to be dominated by large-scale nude female figures. Unabashedly fleshy and voluptuous, they shocked American audiences to such an extent that one was once removed from an exhibition because of complaints. In a misguided effort to salvage her husband’s reputation, Newman’s wife destroyed many of these later figure paintings after his death.

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

View 87 works

At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism | Art & Artists

May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023

At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism | Art & Artists

Exhibition works

Carl Newman

Untitled (Bathers), c. 1917

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

On the Hour

At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism | Art & Artists

May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023

At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism | Art & Artists

Exhibition works

Carl Newman

Untitled (Bathers), c. 1917

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection