“Corbie Cathedral, Somme,” conte drawing by Dabo c. October 1918 from Sketchbook No. 3, paired with WWI postcard of Corbie from the same period with Cathedral in the background.
Original tissue “copy” of Special Order No. 8, 1/8/191 transferring Dabo from General Headquarters AEF to the G-2 Section of Commanding Officer, General Mark L. Hersey of the 4th Division.
Leon Dabo was an American artist, associated with the style of Tonalism. He is best known for his landscape paintings, especially of Hudson Valley in New York.
Background
Dabo was possibly born in Paris, France, but recently available documents claim he was born in Saverne, on July 9, 1864. He was the son of Ignace Scott and Madeleine (Oberle) Dabo. His father was a professor of aesthetics and a classical scholar. Dabo's family moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1870 to escape the Franco-Prussian War.
Leon Dabo was the eldest of three brothers, besides, he also had five sisters. The middle brother, Scott Dabo, became a noted painter, while the youngest, Louis, was a writer and publicist.
Education
Leon Dabo received the first lessons from his father, who taught him Latin, French, and drawing. After his father's death, the Dabo family moved to New York City in 1883. There he found a job as an architectural designer, working to provide support for his family so that his younger brother Scott, who was considered the talented one, could concentrate on his art.
Dabo later became a student of John LaFarge. The two remained close friends until LaFarge's death. When Dabo intended to go to Paris for his studies, LaFarge wrote several letters of introduction, enabling Leon Dabo to meet Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Chavannes became his mentor. Thanks to one of these letters Dabo enrolled to the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. He also studied part-time at the Académie Colarossi.
Leon Dabo also studied for a short period of time at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. But he didn't like the evolving form of German Expressionism and he moved on to Italy, where he stayed for three years. Then he spent a year in Nancy, France, studying colour with Émile Lauge, a physicist.
Eventually, Dabo spent some time in London around 1886, where he got acquainted with James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who also evidently was a fellow student of Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre with Dabo's father. Whistler had a significant influence on Dabo's style.
Dabo settled in New York in 1890 and started his career as a muralist. However, by the beginning of the 20th century he had turned to painting landscapes. For several years, Leon Dabo's artworks were rejected for exhibition by the major juries of the United States, until Edmond Aman-Jean, a reputable French painter, recognized his talents and began presenting Dabo's works in France. After that Dabo became a major success.
Leon Dabo's art pieces were displayed in museums all around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée du Luxembourg, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Renowned critics, including Royal Cortissoz, Sadakichi Hartmann, and J. Nilson Laurvik expressed approval of his paintings.
Leon Dabo frequently exhibited with his younger brother Scott. In addition, he even held the power of attorney to act as Scott Dabo's representative with prospective buyers in Europe. When Scott began his studies in Paris in 1902, Leon Dabo wrote letters of introduction on his behalf. Nevertheless, reviews in the press were usually more favourable to Leon, purchasers were more interested in Leon's artworks.
Eventually, the youngest brother Louis Dabo completed his studies in Europe and returned with a new power of attorney, replacing Leon and taking the responsibility of Scott's works. Louis accused Leon of imitating Scott's style, undermining him with buyers, and misappropriating the proceeds from the sales of Scott's artworks. On his turn, Leon simply refuted the charges and The New York Times did not pay much attention to Louis' statements.
Dabo took part in the "Exhibition of Contemporary Art" held at the National Arts Club in 1908. In 1909 the artist curated and participated in an art exhibition for the Rand School of Social Science and in 1910, he was among participants of the "Exhibition of Independent Artists" organized by members of the Ashcan School. He was a key exhibitor at the MacDowell Club in their non-juried exhibitions. Leon Dabo became an organizer of the International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1913, commonly known as the Armory Show. He held several of its earliest meetings in his studio, but Dabo had returned to Europe before the show opened.
During the First World War, Dabo moved to France and offered his services to Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. He was appointed an officer in the French and then of British Armies and managed to expose a number of German spies, using his ear for dialect and accent. Moreover, he himself was once a spy, when he went behind German lines to gain information.
He also served for the United States, being a part of a commission that investigated supposed atrocities that happened in France during the war, and reported that some of them were indeed true. Dabo was a captain in the United States Army and also served as an interpreter for the American Expeditionary Force as well as an aide-de-camp to Major General Mark L. Hersey of the 4th Infantry Division.
After the war, his devoted much less time and attention to his oeuvre and was no longer as phenomenally productive as he was in his earlier years. Leon Dabo started to feel that American men had become too materialistic, whereas women, he believed, were of a more spiritual nature, and could "save" art from their indifference. As a result, Dabo became a popular lecturer on art, often speaking to as many as fifteen women's clubs a month all around the country.
In the 1920s, Dabo taught and concurrently painted in various artists' colonies in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. From 1933 Leon Dabo started to exhibit his flower paintings as well as pastels. They were well received by the public. For instance, The New York Times said the artworks were "a distinct contribution to be associated with the flower harmonies of Odilon Redon and of Fantin-Latour." Dabo participated in forty-two exhibits between March 1920 and June 1939, displaying nearly two hundred canvases in thirty-three venues.
He moved back to France in 1937 and opened a studio there, where he mainly painted French landscapes. Trying to escape the German occupation of France in late 1940, he fled to Portugal. In 1941 Feragil Galleries of New York helped the painter publicize the struggle of the French people living under Nazi occupation and his own heroic escape with an exhibition titled "When I Last Saw France." Many of the major American newspapers reviewed this exhibition.
In 1948 Dabo returned to France in 1948 and continued to paint landscapes, most notably of Montagne Sainte-Victoire. These paintings were a success and Leon Dabo was invited to present them at the "Painters of Mont Ste. Victoire: Tribute to Cézanne" exhibit in 1951. The same year, he returned to the United States for the last time.
In 1960, a 95-year-old Dabo saw his work included in the fiftieth anniversary of the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, which was held at the Delaware Art Center Wilmington and the Graham Gallery, New York.
Leon Dabo was known to be an extremely productive and successful artist, who painted a wide range of landscapes and still lifes. During his peak, he was considered a master of his art, earning praise from such eminent individuals as John Spargo, Edwin Markham, Bliss Carman, Benjamin De Casseres, and Anatole Le Braz.
Over the course of his artistic career, Dabo exhibited over a thousand of his canvases. Numerous solo exhibitions of his artworks were held in Los Angeles, Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston, New York and Washington, DC. Internationally, Dabo had individual shows in Montreal, London, Berlin, Dresden, and Paris.
The artist became a recipient of a number of awards and prizes. In 1909 he was awarded the First Prize by the Muncie Art Association, Muncie, Indiana, for his works entitled "Dawn". The same year, he received the William T. Evans Prize from the National Arts Club, New York. In 1934 Dabo received the Legion of Honour (Chevalier) in Paris, France. The artist was awarded the Gold Medal by Societe National des Beaux Arts, Paris, France, and the Silver Medal by the Societe de Amis des Arts, Versailles, France, both in 1938.
At the time of his death, Dabo's paintings were held in the permanent collections of fifty of the finest museums in the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musee d'Orsay, the Smithsonian, and the Louvre. Today his artworks are still getting attention and praise.
Leon Dabo was a member of the Allied Artists Association, a newly organized artist group in London mounting non-juried exhibitions, from 1908. In 1910 Dabo became the leader of The Pastellists, a somewhat radical artist exhibition society. Besides, he was a charter member of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1911. In 1934 Leon Dabo was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design, becoming a full member in 1946.
Dabo was also known to be an active member of the following organizations and clubs: Allied Artists of London, Brooklyn Society of Artists, Hopkin Club of Detroit, Les Amis des Arts, National Arts Club, New York Historical Society, Poetry Society of America, School of Arts League, Societe des Amis du Louvre, among others.
Allied Artists' Association
,
United Kingdom
1908
The Pastellists
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United States
1910
Personality
Leon Dabo was multilingual. He had a perfect ear for different accents and dialects and could easily distinguish them.
Quotes from others about the person
Sadakichi Hartman: "The highest quality in Dabo’s work is the result of inner, not outer vision, denoting less the painter’s eye for difference than the seer’s eye for the analogy of pictorial and psychological phenomena..."
Connections
Leon Dabo met his first wife, Mary Jane "Jennie" Ford, in London. The couple married in 1889 and gave birth to two children: Madeleine Helen (born in 1891) and Leon Ford "George" (born in 1892). Leon and Jennie separated in the 1920s. After Jennie Ford's death in 1945, Leon Dabo married his second wife, Stephanie Ofenthal.
Father:
Ignace Schott de Dabo
Ignace Schott de Dabo (1818-1883) was a French-born artist, etcher and educator. He worked mainly as a mural painter but also in stained glass. Many of his creations have survived to this day.
Mother:
Madeleine (Oberle) Dabo
Spouse:
Mary Jane "Jennie" Ford
Spouse:
Stephanie Ofenthal
Brother:
Theodore Scott-Dabo
Theodore Scott-Dabo, or Scott Dabo (1865-1928), was a French-American tonalist landscape artist. His subjects were usually landscapes and seascapes in the early morning or evening at twilight.
Leon Dabo's Florals
This book was published to commemorate the contribution that National Academician Leon Dabo (1864-1960) made to still life painting between 1890 and 1956.
