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Archie
Boyd Teater Biography
Archie Boyd Teater
(May 5, 1901 - July 18, 1978) was an American landscape and genre
artist who painted in an untutored impressionist style.
Biography
The first artist he ever saw was an itinerant 'pot-boiler' painter
set up in the window of a store in his home town. His first canvas
may have been cut from the covering of a sheep herder's wagon.
He repaired fences for ranchers in exchange for the weathered tops
of wooden posts for use in carving. Some of his first paintings were
destroyed by cork-soled boots of loggers, yet his first sale was to
a lumberjack for fifty cents.
He lived in poverty as a child and young man, yet in the mid-1950s
built the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in the state of Idaho, and
spent much of the last 20 years of his life traveling and painting
in more than 100 countries, crossing the Atlantic on the Queen
Elizabeth on one occasion, and on the Concord on another.
He died with a substantial estate, and his large personal collection
of paintings was left to a foundation for handicapped children.
He once spent a night in jail for painting the rear-end of a buffalo
in the Central Park Zoo in New York City. He never finished eighth
grade, yet he studied with some of the country's finest artists. And
he could well have been the most prolific U.S. artist ever, with
paintings numbering in the thousands that range from raw
turn-of-the-century logging and mining camps in the West, to the
majestic grandeur of the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming, street
scenes in cowboy and mining towns, St. Patrick's Cathedral and
Central Park in New York, the San Francisco skyline, exotic markets
in North Africa, the Near East and Asia, plus what at the time he
painted it was acclaimed to be the only historically accurate
rendition of Custer's Last Stand.
Death
At the time of his death, he was one of the country's best-known
western landscape artists. He had had one-man shows in New York
City, his paintings had hung in shows in the Metropolitan and other
museums, as well as in U.S. Embassies around the world, he had been
featured in articles in Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan,
Flair, Ideals, Look, and Quick Magazines, and his paintings were in
a number of important private collections, including those of
Averill Harriman, Lawrence Rockefeller, Godfrey Rockefeller, George
S. Amory, Bennett Cerf, Henry P. Cole, and Mrs. Charles de Rham.
Yet, following his death he fell into almost total obscurity, so
that today he is largely known only by those who own his paintings
and the now rapidly disappearing coterie of people (centered mostly
in Boise, Idaho, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming) who knew him and his
wife personally.
All his life, Teater was a nomad who never remained long in one
place. When he was 14, he lived in a cave in Malad Canyon in the
Thousand Springs region of the Snake River in southwestern Idaho.
When he was 15 and 16, he lived in a horse-drawn covered wagon. With
his brothers, he built a corral in the Snake River to hold sturgeon
that they had captured, in anticipation of selling the giant fish to
mining companies for food for their mining crews. In the mid-1920's,
he spent summers trekking with a string of pack burros through the
Sawtooth Mountains prospecting for gold, sketching, and painting. By
the summer of 1928, he had acquired a Model T Ford and ventured for
the first time into Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to paint the Grand Tetons.
This visit initiated a lifelong love affair with the Tetons, and he
spent virtually every summer thereafter in Jackson Hole for the rest
of his life. During his first summers in the Tetons, he would begin
the season by working for the U.S. Forest Service constructing
trails in the then nascent Grand Teton National Park. But as soon as
he had a few dollars, he would quit working in
order to spend the rest of the summer painting. His first galleries
were in the open air on the shore of Jenny Lake at the base of the
Tetons. In the mid-1940's he became known as 'Teton Teater' for his
beautiful paintings of the Tetons. A ridge in the Tetons became
known as 'Teater's Ridge' because of the large amount of time he
spent on it. In the late 1930's, his 'studio' in Jackson was in the
back of a truck parked near the creek on the north side of town. His
first formal gallery in Jackson, in 1941, was in space rented from
the Railway Express Office.
Instruction
Teater's first formal art instruction began in the winter of 1921-22
when (using money he had accumulated from trapping mink and muskrat)
he left Boise to study for two winters at the Portland Art Museum.
His teachers at the Museum were Clara J. Stephens (1877-1952) and
Henry F. Wentz (1876-1965). In the early 1930's, a number of eastern
summer visitors in Jackson Hole felt that Teater would benefit from
exposure to the New York art scene and urged him to go to New York
for further training and study. Teater accordingly left Idaho for
New York City in September 1935 and began the first of what would
eventually become eight winters of study at the Art Students League
(1935-37, 1942-45, and 1956). His patron saint enabling him to do
was Frances (Mrs. Charles) de Rham, who lived on Park Avenue and had
a ranch in Jackson Hole where she spent summers. His instructors at
the Art
Students League between 1935 and 1945 included Homer Boss
(1882-1956), Alexander Brook (1898-1980), George B. Bridgman
(1864-1943), John Carroll (1892-1959), Frank Vincent Dumond
(1865-1951), Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), and William C. McNulty
(1884-1963). His final formal study at the Art Students League was
in early 1956, when he sat for four life classes from Edwin
Dickensen (1891-1971), Ivan Olinsky (1878-1962), and Robert Philipp
(1895-1981).
In September 1941, Teater married (Agnes) Patricia Wilson, who was
two years his junior. Patricia Wilson had been in Jackson Hole
during the summer of 1941 for health reasons, and was from a totally
different social and educational background. Orphaned at a young
age, she had been raised on the west side of Chicago by a wealthy
but distant and unloving grandmother. She had degrees in journalism
and geography, and had studied and traveled extensively in Europe.
In addition, she had considerable formal exposure to art. But, like
Teater, she too was a nomad. Their first winters after marriage were
spent in New York City, where they lived in Greenwich Village and
studied at the Art Students League, with Patricia taking sculpture
lessons from William Zorach. The summers of 1943 and 1944 were spent
painting in Ogunquit, Maine, and Rockport, Massachusetts. In the
summer of 1945, they returned to Jackson Hole and opened a studio
gallery on the Jackson town square. A studio in Jackson then
remained a fixture until their deaths.
Despite having, after the late-1950s, a house designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright on a bluff overlooking the Snake River near Hagerman,
Idaho, the Teaters only real constant in terms of residence was the
summers spent in Jackson Hole. At the end of a summer, they would
usually spend several weeks in Idaho, either at their home in
Hagerman or with friends in or around Boise. Before 1958, winters
were spent traveling and painting in the U.S., but beginning in 1958
their travels were mostly international. Altogether, the Teaters
visited some 115 countries of the world, and Teater sketched or
painted in them all. The paintings from these travels formed what
was called their 'International Collection', and came to include
more than 500 oils. Because of deteriorating health, their permanent
residence for the last few years of their lives was in Carmel,
California.
In general, and especially after his marriage, Teater was a loner in
terms of art. He was a member of no school, and except possibly in
his New York years, he almost always painted by himself. He often
gave clinics and demonstrations, but never offered classes or formal
instruction. Although he was sympathetic and congenial to young
artists, he never took any under his wing. Teater''s personal self,
however, was quite different. He loved people, and liked being with
them. He had a large number of friends, and it is accurate to say
that he was universally loved by them. With strangers and slight
acquaintances, he tended to be shy and reserved, but with friends,
especially when he was alone with them, he was relaxed and jovial,
with a wry and impish sense of humor. Indeed, to people who knew him
well, he was viewed as a 'character'. He was generous to friends,
and was without guile or malice. He maintained a child's curiosity
throughout life, and he wanted to paint virtually everything he saw.
And there was nothing he saw that he felt he could not paint. His
ambition was to paint, rather than make money. Yet, he had an acute
practical sense of marketing and a great feel for what the public
was willing to buy.
Artworks
Teater was an enormously prolific painter. A canvas a day was
standard, and often he would do two or more. Patricia Teater once
remarked that her husband had done 10,000 paintings, but this seems
implausibly large. Teater himself said when he was in his early 70's
that in two years he would have painted more than any artist in
history. Whatever, his output was prodigious, and it is safe to say
that his lifetime output of paintings is well in excess of 4000. His
subject matter was broad as well, and included portraits, still
lifes, nudes, animals, landscapes, coasts and seashores, cowboy and
mining towns, city street scenes, barrooms and dance halls, mining
and logging camps, range life, humor, fantasy and autobiography,
natural, social and military history, and social commentary.
For the most part,
Teater was a plein air artist, and the bulk of his painting was done
on the scene in open air. He painted outdoors in every kind of
weather, including rain, snow, sleet, and sub-zero temperatures.
Teater painted entirely in oil, usually on canvas, but occasionally
on wood or canvas board. In his youth, he did a lot of wood carving
and some sculpting, and at least one early painting exists that was
carved in relief before being painted. However, in his mature years,
his medium appears to have been exclusively oil. He may have written
a few poems, and in addition left an unpublished novel that is an
allegory of a couple of years of family life when he was a teenager
living along the Snake River.
Teater''s painting style has been described by one commentator (John
Walker) as "Post-Impressionistic Romantic" and by another as "The
Burl Ives of Canvas". However, it is probably best simply to say
that his style was unique. There was nothing whatever academic about
him. He painted from his experience, and painted what he saw. No
artist has ever painted mountains, especially the Grand Tetons, with
his particular grace and touch. Anyone who knows his art can tell
his paintings of the Tetons at a glance. And the same is true of his
cowboy and mining towns and his peopled street scenes. His scenes
can be joyful and humorous, or they can be forlorn and mournful. His
people and animals in compositions are often impressionistic
swatches, yet his formal portraits are done with the care and skill
of a near master. He had great balance and sense of color. Until his
early 20s, he was totally self-taught. While it is clear that he was
influenced by some of his teachers, and at times his oils were
strongly impressionist, basically his style was that of an extremely
talented primitive.
Sources
Papers and materials of Archie and Patricia Teater on deposit in the
Idaho Historical Library in Boise, Idaho, articles in New York
Times, New York Herald Tribune, Idaho Statesman, Salt Lake City
Tribune, Jackson Hole Courier, Jackson Hole Guide, Jackson Hole
News, and other newspapers, and interviews (conducted by Lester D.
Taylor) with family members, friends, and acquaintances of Archie
and Patricia Teater. |
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