Career
His work is characterized by rich hues and strong, textured brushwork. Born in a Jewish family in Kiev in Ukraine in 1879, he immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of 12. In 1889 he began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
“Molarsky’s color is delicate, refined and harmonious,” wrote critic William Howe Downes, who had authored books about American painters Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent.
After five years in the Boston area, the family moved to Nutley, New Jersey, where Molarsky would spend the rest of his life. During the summers, they often painted in Provincetown, Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts.
In 1922 a writer for The Boston Evening Transcript visited Molarsky"s summer studio in Gloucester and wrote that the paintings had "a rich and translucent patina of color." He described one landscape: "Delightful to the senses is a little scene from the moors overlooking the harbor, with its fresh notations of color, flight of green, soft distance and rolling clouds."
Throughout his career, Molarsky showed at many galleries and museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Montclair Art Museum and the Newark Museum. In New York, he was represented by the Milch Gallery.
In addition to doing his own work, Molarsky taught plein air painting, watercolor and pastel to students in Nutley for many years.
