D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc.

WILLIAM EMILE SCHUMACHER (1870-1931)

Available Work | Biography

Modernism 1913-1950 | Realism of the 1930s & 1940s | Abstraction of the 1930s & 1940s | Post-War | Selected Biographies

William Emile Schumacher was born in Belgium and came with his parents to the United States as an infant. He studied at the Dresden Academy in 1888 and at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1890. It was in Paris that Schumacher allied himself with the modernist movement. He developed a style that incorporated sound draftsmanship, reliance upon pattern and the use of vivid colors. He regularly exhibited with the modernists at the Salon d’Automne where he received a number of honorable mentions before his return to the United States in 1912.

Upon his return to New York, Schumacher exhibited two works in the 1913 Armory Show, the pivotal exhibition that introduced the American public to modernist painting and placed Schumacher among the leading artists of the American avant-garde. A collection of William Schumacher’s flower paintings was exhibited at The Daniel Gallery in New York in 1913. The gallery owner Charles Daniel also championed the American modernists Maurice Prendergast, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin. Schumacher had three solo exhibitions at Daniel Gallery from 1913 to 1915. In November of 1916, Schumacher was part of a group exhibition at the St. Botolph Club in Boston titled Paintings by William Glackens, Maurice Prendergast, and William Schumacher. Schumacher had a studio in New York’s Greenwich Village from 1912 to 1914. He subsequently found a studio on 138 West 55th Street.

Schumacher taught in New York City and at Byrdcliffe, a haven for artists and craftsmen in Woodstock, New York. There he was artist-in-residence during the summer months from 1913 until his death in 1931. He also worked on a number of important commissions, including stained glass windows for St. Thomas church in Chicago, as well as designing and executing murals for public spaces.

Schumacher was the recipient of honors both in Europe and America, including a prize at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901. His work was included in annual exhibitions of the Art Institute of Chicago (1912) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1901-1915), and the Society of Independent Artists (1917-1920). Schumacher was the subject of a memorial exhibition at the Ferargil Galleries in New York in 1932.