Earle B. Winslow, Artist and Illustrator of the Historic Woodstock Art Colony

By Bruce Weber

Earle B. Winslow’s painting “Tannery Brook” serves as the catalog cover for the exhibition “In the Open Air: The Art Student League’s Woodstock School of Landscape Painting and Its Impact," opening from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday October 11^th at the Woodstock School of Art. Its appearance calls out for a discussion of the life and career of this Woodstock painter, draughtsman, and illustrator. The exhibition runs through December 13th.

Various programs are scheduled for “In the Open Air,” including gallery talks on Sunday October 26^th and Sunday November 30^th at 2 p.m., as well as the panel “An Anniversary Celebration of Woodstock and the Art Students League of New York” on Saturday November 8^th at 2 p.m., with artists Bruce Dorfman, Paula Nelson, Richard Pantell, and Stephanie Cassidy, Head of Research and Archives, Art Students League of New York, which I will be moderating. The panel celebrates the League’s publication of “150 Stories: Lives of the Artists at the League,” on the ocassion of the school's 150th anniversary, which includes essays that Paula Nelson and I have contributed individually on the League’s legacy in Woodstock, followed by a book signing.

“In the Open Air” is accompanied by an llustrated catalog and is beautifully designed by Susanna Ronner. This rich catalog is available for $25 and tells the story of the long and fascinating connection between Woodstock and the Art Students League, and the important contribution that Woodstock has made to the development of landscape painting in the United States. Information about ordering the publication by mail appears on the website of the Woodstock School of Art.

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

Tannery Brook, 1928

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum 

Illustration by Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

Earle B. Winslow was born in Northville, Michigan in 1884. At a young age he moved with his family to Grand Rapids where he graduated from Union High School, and studied art with Mathias J, Alter. By 1912 he was studying at the Detroit School of Fine Art. Winslow next attended the Art Institute of Chicago. He remained in the city working at various printing houses as an illustrator as well as an art director. In around 1918 he met the  commercial artist, painter and printmaker Rudolf Wetterau, who informed him that George Bellows was teaching at the Art Students League in New York City. Winslow moved to New York in the course of 1918 in order to study at the league with Bellows and John Sloan. In the city he quickly established a successful career as a book and magazine illustrator, and regularly found work at the Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Home Companion, Liberty, and Outdoor Life. Upon settling in New York City, Winslow became friends with Wetterau, who invited him up for a visit to Woodstock in 1919 where he and his wife Margaret had just established a home.

Rudolf Wetterau, circa 1930-1935 

Meed Wetterau Collection

Rudolf Wetterau (1891-1953)

Cover of Motor Life,  July 1918

Rudolf Wetterau and his wife Margaret are best remembered today for their 1926 map marking the homes of numerous Woodstock artists. In addition to his commercial work, Rudolf was a painter and studied at the Art Students League. The Wetteraus were the subject of three articles in 2024 in Learning Woodstock Art Colony.

Detail with Winslow House,

Wetterau Map of Woodstock Artists Houses, 1926

Winslow settled in Woodstock in the early 1920s, when he established Invisible Ink Studios and achieved national success for his comic strip Bingville Bugle. Previously he studied outdoor figure painting and drawing at the Art Student League’s summer school in 1919 with Andrew Dasburg and landscape painting with Charles Rosen, and in the summer of 1921 he attended George Bellows lectures in town at the school. Winslow and his wife Zenna built a house off of route 212 at 15 Schoonmaker Lane which had a outdoor setting with rock gardens, grape arbors and terraces, as well as a lily garden and tennis court. In 1929, he established a studio at 219 West 14th Street in New York City. The same year he had a solo exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery. In about 1953 Winslow moved permanently to Woodstock.

J. P. McEnvoy, “Why I Live in Woodstock,”

With Illustrations by Earl Winslow

Hearst’s International -  Cosmopolitan, September 1932

Winslow’s next door neighbor was the playwright, writer and creator of the Dixie Dugan comic strip J. P. McEvoy, with whom he would collaborate on the illustrated article “Why I Live in Woodstock,” which appeared in the September 1932 issue of Hearst’s International – Cosmopolitan. One passage comically compares a local citizen with the contingent of summer artists: “Willie What’s his name, who roams the hills back of Shady, wearing green gloves and eating cake, has at least the charm of sincerity. He comes of a long line of honest, intensive inbreeding and he is indigenous. Our summer plague is not. They come out of strange garrets and cellars and look decidedly unhealthy in the sunshine. What they call life has more in common with larvae,” and also adds “A studio is anything with a ‘north light.’ . . . . Old inhabitants of Woodstock have not to leave anything lying around, whether it’s a car or a straw hat, for a real estate agent is sure to put a north light in and rent it out for a studio.”

Earle B. Winslow (1864-1969)

Tannery Brook, 1928

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum

Rudolf Wetterau (1891-1953)

Woodstock in 1925, 1924

Linocut

Woodstock Library District

From Woodstock Almanac

Winslow created a lively and humorous series of paintings exploring the life and architecture of the village that reflect the combined influences of Bellows, Dasburg, Rosen, George Braque and Pablo Picasso. The subject and idea for the painting Tannery Brook was influenced by Wetterau’s linocut Woodstock in 1925, which appeared in the Woodstock Almanac, published in 1924 and edited by Wetterau and Ernest Brace. In the painting Winslow comically turns Woodstock into a Cubo-Futurist village where every pictorial element is fair game to be shifted in space, tilted at will, or turned into a geometric shape or form. In his painting Woodstock becomes a modernist city where the town’s radical artists have taken visual control of everything save perhaps for the country air.

Tannery Brook includes an image of the painter, printmaker and graphic artist Clarence Bolton carrying a bowl of an undisclosed substance (probably discarded ashes from a wood stove) that he appears on the verge of throwing away. Bolton appears several feet away from his and his wife Louise’s ice cream shop The Nook (currently the home of Happy Life Productions). Winslow and Bolton were great friends, drawn together by their participation in the First Church of Christ Scientist in Woodstock.

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

The Mill Stream, n.d.

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

Woodstock Fire House, c. 1920-1925

Historical Society of Woodstock 

In The Millstream and Woodstock Fire House the artist sets the scene on the night of a full moon where a luminous ghostly light makes everything look magical and otherworldly.

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

The Woodstock Bus, 1921

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum

In The Woodstock Bus, Winslow pictures the tall and hefty artist and actress Wilna Hervey attempting to squirm into the back seat of the local taxi. She’s helped by the driver Jimmy McAuliffe who provides a nudge with the push of his rump, while the bus franchise owner Stanley Longyear, Sr. looks on with a chagrin verging on impatience, tightly holding onto his ledger book, behind his back and out of view to the participants.

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

Maverick Festival and Fair, 1919

In Maverick Festival and Fair, Winslow pictures a group of attendees at the annual fair in nearby West Hurley, including a clown, a top-hated ring master, and a man holding a spear and shield, and adopts an elevated point of view while flattening the space. His aesthetic choices are as playful as the costumes worn by the festival goers.

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

Kingston, 1930

Conte crayon

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum

Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969)

Woodstock, 1930

Conté crayon

Woodstock Artists Association and Museum

More down to earth are Winslow’s bold and beautifully rendered conté crayon drawings of the hills, mountains and roads of the area.

Nina Leen (1914-1995)

Artist Earle B. Winslow with a Painting

Under his Arm, Struggling

To Control his Stubborn Irish Setter, 1944

“City Dogs,” Life Magazine,

April 3, 1944, p. 74

Later in life Winslow was the subject of a series of comical photographs in Life Magazine, where the artist is pictured being pulled zestfully on the streets of New York City by his Irish setter, with one of his paintings held under his arm. In the early 1950s the artist taught at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and after settling full time in Woodstock occasionally offered outdoor classes in landscape painting.