Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 - September 18, 1975) was an American painter and art critic.[1] He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus. Though educated at Harvard, he was largely self-taught, and produced representational work in the midst of the Abstract Expressionist movement. His subjects were primarily landscapes, domestic interiors and portraits of family, friends and fellow artists, many of them affiliated with the New York School of writers, including John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler. Many of his paintings were set in or around the family summer house on Great Spruce Head Island, Maine. His painterly vision which encompassed a fascination with nature and the ability to reveal extraordinariness in ordinary life was heavily indebted to the French painters Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. He said once, "When I paint, I think that what would satisfy me is to express what Bonnard said Renoir told him: make everything more beautiful."
References
- Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
- ^ Art in its own terms Selected Criticism 1935-1975," by Fairfield Porter, Zoland Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979 ISBN 0-944072-31-3
