Background
Voorhees, Clark Greenwood was born on May 29, 1871 in New York, United States.
Voorhees, Clark Greenwood was born on May 29, 1871 in New York, United States.
He also studied with Irving Ramsey Wiles on Long Island and with Leonard Ochtman in Connecticut.
He was initially drawn to the sciences and earned degrees in Chemistry from Yale and Columbia Universities. In 1894, Voorhees began to seriously pursue fine art (which had always been a hobby) when he enrolled in classes at the Art Students League. The following year, Voorhees enrolled at the Metropolitan School of Fine Artist
In 1897, Voorhees traveled to Europe, studying with Benjamin Constant and J. P. Laurens at the Académie Julianin Paris and spending time in the French village of Barbizon as well as in the Netherlands.
Voorhees first visited Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1893. Stylistically, Voorhees was one of the Old Lyme artists who remained at least somewhat loyal to the Barbizon-derived, Tonalist style associated with Ranger even after the majority had adopted Childe Hassam’s Impressionist style.
Most of Voorhees’s paintings are undated, but it appears that he gradually adopted a more Impressionistic approach later in life. He also experimented with etching in the 1930s.
Many of Voorhees’s paintings depict Old Lyme prospects.
Bermuda scenes are also common—beginning in 1919, Voorhees and his family wintered there. Examples of Voorhees’s work are in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Florence Griswold Museum, and the Lyme Historical Society. Major exhibitions featuring Voorhees’s work have included the Lyme Historical Society and Florence Griswold Museum’s Clark G. Voorhees, 1871–1933 (June 13 – August 30, 1981) and Hawthorne Fine Art’s The Light Lies Softly: The Impressionist Art of Clark Greenwood Voorhees, 1871–1933 (December 15, 2009 – February 27, 2010).
Vorhees exhibited along with other members of the Old Lyme Art Colony as well as at the National Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, the American Watercolor Society, the Carnegie Institute, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Married Maud C. Folsom, August 20, 1904.