Background
Frank Fowler was born on July 12, 1852 in Brooklyn, New York, the eighth of ten children of John and Margaret (Westervelt) Fowler.
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Frank Fowler was born on July 12, 1852 in Brooklyn, New York, the eighth of ten children of John and Margaret (Westervelt) Fowler.
Fowler's early education was conducted at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn and later continued in Europe where he studied painting, for two years as the pupil of Edwin White in Florence and after 1875 at the Écol. e des Beaux-Arts and under Carolus Duran.
In 1878 Duran’s “Gloria Mariae Medicis, ” a fresco for the Luxembourg, which Frank Fowler had helped to paint, was exhibited at the Paris Salon. In the same year one of his own portraits was entered in the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists, and his study of “Young Bacchus” was shown at the Paris Exposition.
He returned to America in 1880 and established a permanent studio in New York. With the construction of the Waldorf Hotel, which opened in March 1893, he was commissioned to design the ball-room ceiling, a three-paneled fresco representing “Music” and “Dance, ” done in the lavish manner of the decade. Although with this came his first general recognition, throughout his life it was in portrait-painting that his talents were most evident.
His list of subjects was long and distinguished, including among others William Dean Howells, Charles A. Dana, Archbishop Corrigan, and Governors S. J. Tilden and Roswell P. Flower, whose portraits were hung in the executive chamber in Albany. Although his treatment was in the main conventional, it had elements of distinction and decorative effectiveness.
These were all intended for the instruction of beginners, but with their elementary precepts contained some wholesome advice.
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As a critic he particularly deplored the dedication of portraiture to human interest, which he contended had “deprived the world of much that is genuinely ornamental”; a theory which he had generous opportunity to put to proof.
Frank Fowler was a member of the National Academy of Design, of the Society of American Artists, and the American Fine Arts Society.
Frank Fowler married Mary Berrian Odenheimer, an artist and writer, on November 28, 1878.