KATHERINE SCHMIDT (1898-1978)
Available Work | Biography
Biography • Katherine Schmidt (1898-1978)
Katherine Schmidt was born in Xenia, Ohio where she spent her early childhood. In 1906 she and her family moved to New York City where they lived in Washington Heights. Around the age of 13, Schmidt started attending Saturday classes at the Art Students League where she drew from casts. She continued her art classes at the League after high school and was taught by F. Luis Mora, Kenneth Miller, and John Sloan. Her figurative work shows the influence of Kenneth Hayes Miller. At the League, Schmidt made many friends who later became prominent members of the New York art community, including Peggy Bacon, Alexander Brook, Reginald Marsh, and Lloyd Goodrich. She met Yasuo Kuniyoshi in Kenneth Hayes Miller’s painting class in 1917. They married in 1919 at the artist colony founded by Hamilton Easter Field in Ogunquit, Maine. They spent summers painting in Maine through 1926 in a studio provided by Field. The rest of the year they lived in Brooklyn where they along with other artists rented apartments in two of Hamilton Easter Field’s buildings. Kuniyoshi photographed artwork for income and Schmidt ran the lunchroom at the Art Students League.
In 1923 Schmidt began working for Juliana Force at the Whitney Studio Club. She was an early member of the club and exhibited her artwork in the member annual exhibitions. She ran sketching classes for the club and did various jobs for Force and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney until around 1930. There were exhibitions of Schmidt’s work in 1923 and 1925. Her artwork during this period consisted of drawings and paintings of landscapes, still lifes, and the unemployed. For her figurative work, Schmidt often used Walter Broe as her model. Broe was a favorite model for Reginald Marsh, Raphael Soyer, and Isabel Bishop as well. When the Studio Club became the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1932, Schmidt participated in every annual or biennial through 1943 and then five times thereafter until 1967. The Whitney has 11 works by Schmidt in their collection. At Schmidt’s death, she bequeathed her art collection of work by friends to the Whitney, including works by Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon, Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Jules Pascin, John Sloan, John Carroll, and Wood Gaylor.
Schmidt and Kuniyoshi spent a year in Paris in 1925 and returned for a shorter period in 1928. Schmidt preferred American subjects, she recalled not finding a barn or tree that grabbed her attention to paint while in France. Besides her attraction to American subjects, she and Kuniyoshi collected folk art, as did other Ogunquit Modernists. Around 1929, Schmidt and Kuniyoshi moved to the artist colony of Woodstock, NY where they built a house on Ohio Mountain with two studios. The couple divorced in 1932 but remained friends. Schmidt married Irvine Shubert in 1933 and they lived in Greenwich Village. They bought a home in Little Compton, Rhode Island around 1960 where other painters who had studied with Miller at the Art Students League had settled.
Schmidt showed with prestigious dealers including Daniel Gallery from 1927 to 1931 (solo exhibition 1931) and Downtown Gallery (solo exhibitions 1934, 1936, 1939). On the introduction of Lincoln Kirstein, she exhibited her late highly detailed works on paper with the Isaacson Gallery in 1961. She was later represented by Zabriskie Gallery in the 1970s.
Schmidt’s painting The White Factory was included in the Brooklyn Museum’s Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties in 2011-2012. Her work is found in the collections of: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Newark Museum, New Jersey; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.