Robert Frederick Blum
Robert Frederick Blum
1857 - 1903
American painter and illustrator. The son of German–American parents, he probably became interested in magazine illustration while an apprentice at Gibson & Co., lithographers in Cincinnati, during 1873 and 1874. He began drawing lessons at the McMicken School of Design (now the Art Academy of Cincinnati) c. 1873, transferring to the Ohio Mechanics Institute in 1874. Blum visited the Centennial Exposition (1876) in Philadelphia and was impressed with paintings by Giovanni Boldini and Mariano Fortuny y Mansal and by Japanese art. He remained there for about nine months, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
In 1878 Blum moved to New York, where he contributed illustrations to such magazines as St Nicholas and Scribner’s Magazine. Two years later he took the first of numerous trips to Europe. In Venice he met James McNeill Whistler and Frank Duveneck and under their influence took up etching. He travelled frequently with William Merritt Chase, with whom he founded the Society of Painters in Pastel, New York, which held four exhibitions, the first in 1884. Sketchy pastels made in the Netherlands (1884) and relatively large, detailed and compositionally intricate paintings such as Venetian Lace-makers (1887; Cincinnati, OH, A. Mus.) demonstrate his stylistic range.
In May 1890 Blum was sent to Japan by Scribner’s Magazine to make illustrations for articles by Sir Edwin Arnold. He remained there for about two years, making both small sketches and ambitious works such as The Ameya (1892; New York, Met.), which depicts a crowded Japanese street scene.
In New York in 1893 Blum began the large murals for Mendelssohn Hall, Mood to Music and the Vintage Festival (both New York, Brooklyn Mus. A.). He was working on murals for the New Amsterdam Theater when he died of pneumonia. [Carolyn Kinder Carr. "Blum, Robert Frederick." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 3, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T009373.]
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