Background
Elmer MacRae was born in New York City in 1875.
Elmer MacRae was born in New York City in 1875.
He studied at the Art Students League of New York with Robert Blum, John Henry Twachtman, H. Siddons Mowbray and James Carroll Beckwith.
MacRae was one of the organizers of the influential 1913 Armory Show in New New York He was also instrumental in founding the American Pastel Society (serving as its first secretary-treasurer), as well as the Greenwich Society of Artists. In the summer of 1896, when he was 20 years old, he visited Cos Cob for a class in outdoor painting.
While there, he fell in love with Emma Constant Holley, the daughter of the owner of the Holley House, where artists usually stayed during their summer seasons at the community.
She gave birth to twin girls, Constant and Clarissa, on October 31, 1904. MacRae lived at Holley House for the duration of his career.
He succeeded Twachtman as head the Cos Cob colony, and for two decades Elmer and Emma continued to run the boardinghouse, which served to host artists and writers while also serving as a studio and showcase for MacRae’s works. He died on April 2, 1953 in Cos Cob.
MacRae was primarily a realist painter influenced by impressionism and Japonism in his early work.
His floral studies in particular showcase techniques and stylistic choices popular in Japan. MacRae learned Japanese-style brushwork from Genjiro Yeto, a Japanese artist and fellow student who frequented the Cos Cob art colony. In 1910, MacRae joined the group of artists known as the Pastellists.
In 1911, he became part of the American Association of Painters and Sculptors (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists), the group responsible for planning the 1913 Armory Show exhibition.
He served as the Association"s treasurer. The modernism that came to prominence after the Armory Show made an impact on MacRae"s style.
By 1915, his work shows a movement away from impressionism and towards modernism, as his preferred subject of flowers became simplified, with stronger shapes and bolder colors. MacRae exhibited in New York and Connecticut throughout his career.
A posthumous retrospective of his work was held at the Milch Gallery in New York City in 1959.