Above: "Orioles," a painting by Claude Allan Patterson, probably made while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, ca. 1935-1939. Patterson seems to have been born in 1887 and died in 1973, buried at Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa, near his parents Lemuel and Myrta. According to the Stewart Art Gallery, "He studied at... the Philadelphia School of Design, Monmouth College, Harvard (M. A.), and Columbia University... He was active in the New Deal era Federal Art Project," and according to the website AskArt, "He taught at the University of Illinois, University of Iowa, and Monmouth College in Illinois." While he was studying at Monmouth College he worked as an artist for "Ravelings," the school's student yearbook from 1892-2002. A few pictures of Patterson appear in Ravelings, for example on pp. 18 and 43 of the 1915 edition. These might be some of the very few, or only photos of Patterson remaining (it appears he had no children). Every once in a while, I'm contacted by a relative of an artist that I feature on my blog. Maybe the same will happen with this blog post. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the New Deal Gallery in Mount Morris, New York.
Interesting note: College yearbooks used to be much more prevalent than they are today. As colleges (and society generally) have become less cohesive and tight-knit over the last few decades, and more digitized and distant, the idea of a college yearbook has become less popular. Kinda sad... (see, e.g., "Yearbooks ending at University of Virginia, other colleges," Washington Post, January 27, 2010).
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