Adolphe Borie was an American artist. He mostly specialized in portrait painting.
Background
Adolphe Borie was born on January 5, 1877, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, of French (Catholic) stock. His progenitor, Jean Joseph Borie, a Gascon ship-owner trading from Bordeaux, was caught in the insurrection in Haiti in 1802. He escaped and in 1805 settled in Philadelphia. There Adolphe was born, the fourth of five children of Beauveau and Patty Duffield (Neill) Borie. The father was a banker of wealth and social distinction; his mother was a niece of Edward Duffield, John, and Thomas Hewson Neill.
Education
Adolphe attended the Lawrenceville School and subsequently the University of Pennsylvania. For three years (1896 - 1899) he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Pollock Anshutz, and then for another three years (1899 - 1902) under Carl Marr at the Royal Academy in Munich.
Career
During his studying in Europe Adolphreceived the full impact of French Impressionism and fell under the spell of Mary Cassatt's enthusiasm. It was a double influence, then, which marked his early career: the somber palette, the realistic integrity, the painter's opulent craft, inherited from Leibl, Duveneck, von Lenbach, Eakins, and Chase; and on the other hand the surface sensitivity, the color radiance, and the broken touch of the Impressionists. In 1905, shortly after his return to the United States, his father's bank failed. The young painter, who as a student had "spent more energy in living than in learning, " from then on supported himself by his portraits. Commissions came early and continued until he died. With the commissions came official recognition and prizes. During all these years of success and official recognition, Borie held only one exhibition of his work at the Folsom Galleries in New York in 1915 that in any way gave evidence of the wealth and variety of his painting.
His serious work, his means of livelihood, had been his portraits. His other works - the still lifes, nudes, and landscapes - had been his recreation. In this sense his finest work was as purely aristocratic as the man himself: done lightly, thrown off in moments of leisure, with absolute integrity and satisfying no standard but his own intellectual curiosity. During the generation of 1905 to 1930 when almost all American artists were concerned either with art for art's sake, as represented by the Modern movement of the École de Paris, or with the school of social criticism, Borie was content to reflect the life of his own social milieu. The qualities, then, that give his work distinction are inherent in that culture - sophisticated, aristocratic, sensuous.
In 1911 Borie moved to 4100 Pine St. , Philadelphia, where, except for intervals of travel and change, he made his home for the rest of his life. In 1912 he spent several months in Wyoming; from 1915 to 1919 he lived in New York, spending several summers in Ogunquit, Maine. During this period he spent a year, after the entrance of the United States into the war, in camouflaging ships. In 1919 he returned to Philadelphia but in 1921 he was again in Paris, there to stay until 1924. Again he returned to Philadelphia, refreshing himself with journeys to Portugal and Spain in 1926, to Germany and Paris in 1929, to Italy, Paris, and Ireland in 1931, and to Mexico in 1933. He died of pneumonia at the age of fifty-seven. He was especially remembered for his rare gift for friendship and for his genuine love of art.
Achievements
Membership
Borie became a member of the National Society of Portrait Painters; in 1917 he was made an associate member and in 1934 a full member of the National Academy.
Connections
On April 8, 1907, Adolphe Borie was married to Edith Pettit, also of Philadelphia.
Awarded Carol Beck gold medal, Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts, 1910. Silver medal, San Francisco Exposition, 1915. Isaac North. Maynard prize, National Academy of Design, 1917.tempSpaceSilver medal, Sesquicentennial International Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1926, Third William
A. Clark prize and Corcoran medal, Corcoran Gallery of Artist 1926; Norman Wait Harris bronze medal The Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, 1928.tempSpaceA.N.A., 1917. Fellow Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts.
Member National Society Portrait Painters.
Awarded Carol Beck gold medal, Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts, 1910. Silver medal, San Francisco Exposition, 1915. Isaac North. Maynard prize, National Academy of Design, 1917.tempSpaceSilver medal, Sesquicentennial International Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1926, Third William
A. Clark prize and Corcoran medal, Corcoran Gallery of Artist 1926; Norman Wait Harris bronze medal The Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, 1928.tempSpaceA.N.A., 1917. Fellow Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts.
Member National Society Portrait Painters.
Corcoran bronze medal at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington
1926
1926
Maynard portrait prize at the National Academy
1917
1917
Beck gold medal for portraiture at the Pennsylvania Academy
1910
1910
Gold medal at the Philadelphia Art Club
1928
1928
Silver medal at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition at San Francisco
1915
1915
Norman Wait Harris bronze medal at the Chicago Art Institute
1928
1928
Silver medal at the Sesqui-Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia