WPA Art Inventory Project

Edward Ades was a Westport, Connecticut artist. In 1936 he completed six works for the Works Projects Administration (WPA) Federal Arts Project which were allocated to the Westport Town Hall, Westport Board of Education, and Undercliff Sanatorium. His birth and death dates are unknown.

Source: WPA Artist’s Work Card

Images available in Flickr

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Edward Ades:

All that is known about Louis Agostini is that he worked for the predecessor to the WPA Federal Arts Project known as the Public Works Arts Program. He completed at least six paintings, most of them in 1936. His paintings were allocated to the Laurel Heights Sanatorium, the State Teacher’s College in New Haven, and Milford High School in Milford, Connecticut. The work at the high school was a 140 square feet oil on canvass mural panel entitled They Shall Pass this Way but Once. Agostini’s birth and death dates are unknown.

Source: WPA Artist’s Work Card

Images available in Flickr

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Louis Agostini:

Ernest Maxwell Albert was born in Chicago, Illinois as the son of Ernest Albert (1857-1946). The elder achieved distinction for designing color schemes for the interiors of buildings at the 1895 Chicago World’s Fair. He worked as a set designer for the Chicago Opera House and then moved his family to New York. There he became the top Broadway set designer, sometimes working for several shows at a time. As his son grew older, the senior Albert became a landscape painter, a subject in which his son would also excel. In 1863 the family moved to a house in New Rochelle, New York. Maxwell Albert attended public schools and then, at the young age of 15, was admitted to the New York City Art Students League, one of the most famous art schools in the United States. He graduated in 1919. During World War I he served in the camouflage section of the Army. Beginning in 1917 Maxwell Albert began accompanying his father to Florence Griswold’s house in Old Lyme, Connecticut to paint with other famous American landscape Impressionists. The family moved to a 16 acre farm in New Canaan and converted one of the barns into a studio. Maxwell Albert was single and living in New Canaan when the Great Depression began. Between 1937 and 1941, he painted 54 easels for the WPA, mostly landscapes, many of which were distributed throughout the state. He earned a living as a commercial illustrator and as a teacher. In his later life, he became a restorer. Maxwell Albert continued to paint landscapes during his career and exhibited at the New Rochelle Art Association, the Lyme Art Association, the American Watercolor Society, the New Haven Paint and Clay Club, the Silvermine Art Society in Norwalk, and the National Academy of Design. He belonged to many art groups including the Allied Artists Association, Salmagundi Club of New York City, the Old Lyme Art Association, the New Rochelle Art Society, and the Silvermine Guild of Artists. Maxwell Albert died, unmarried, at his home in Stamford in 1955.

Sources:  WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Biography; AskART; Who’s Was Who In American Art (1985), p. 7; Hartford Courant:  “The Fine Arts,” July 22, 1923; “The Fine Arts,” September 2, 1923; “Annual Lyme Art Exhibition Opens, August 3, 1924; “Lyme Art Exhibition is Opened,” August 1, 1926; “Society,” August 5, 1927; “Art Show Opens In Old Lyme Gallery,” July 29, 1928; “Saturday Will Be Hamburg Day for Lyme Art Colony,” August 3, 1928; “Lyme Art Colony Exhibit Attracts Many Visitors,” August 5, 1928; “Antiques Hobnob With Art In Ancient Lyme Mansion,” August 26, 1928; New York Times:  “Here, There, Elsewhere,” February 2, 1949; “Ernest Albert, 64, An Artist, Restorer,” June 18, 1955.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Ernest Albert:

Nicholas Angeletti was born in Salandro, Italy on May 16, 1900. He came to Connecticut in 1901 and attended an evening high school for two years. He also worked in a factory and then sold meat. From 1919-1925 he studied art at the Connecticut Art Students League in Hartford, and he studied with Guy Wiggins, a prominent Lyme painter, for two summers. He was a member of the Association of Connecticut Artists. Angeletti has the distinction of being one of the painters of the larger-than-life figurines used in the Nativity Scene, a WPA Federal Arts Project that opened in Hartford in 1938. All told, he painted 22 figures for the Nativity Scene and 21 easel paintings for the WPA. On his work card, two oil paintings are marked as “missing.” In August 1939 a buyer purchased a painting, and the work card notes that it is “to be replaced.” The WPA allocated nine of his completed easel paintings to the [Hartford] Children’s Museum, Elmwood Community School in West Hartford, Norwich State Hospital, Laurel Heights Sanatorium, the Undercliff Sanatorium, and the New Haven Public Library. Angeletti died in early January 1946 and is buried at Mt. St. Benedict Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Biography

Images available in Flickr

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Nicholas Angeletti:

Wendell Austin was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1896 and educated in the public schools. He attended the Yale School of Fine Arts and in 1917 was an honor graduate. Just when he was about to receive the prestigious Prix-de-Rome, his ROTC was mobilized and sent to France. He spent the next two years on the Western Front and was a victim of mustard gas. He told a Milford newspaper reporter that his two years military service was a waste that delayed his development as an artist. Nevertheless, he visited some famous art schools while stationed in France. When he returned, he studied with Frank Dumond at the Art Students’ Leagues in Old Lyme and in New York City and married. In order to provide for his family, he worked as a commercial artist and started two syndicated newspaper features, A-MAZE A MINUTE and Round About New Haven. In 1940 the Austins moved to a house in Milford where he lived until his death. Austin ran his own school, The Austin School of Art and Design, in New Haven; and he taught at the Bridgeport Art League, the Bridgeport YWCA, and the Stratford Sterling House. Austin helped found the Milford Art League in 1950 and served as its first president. In later years he taught oil painting at Greens Farms in Westport and adult classes in oils and sketching at his home. He was a member of the New Haven Paint and Clay Club and the Salmagundi Club in New York City. For the WPA he painted a 144 square ft. oil on plaster mural known as the Gulliver’s Travel Series at Central School in Winsted, Connecticut. He was known for his portraits and exhibited his works throughout Connecticut. Austin died in 1966 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; AskART; “Wendell P. Austin Dies, One of Foremost Artists;” Sunday Milford Citizen, July 17, 1966; Entry for Austin, Wendell P. in Service Records of Connecticut Men and Women in the Armed Forces of the United States during World War, 1917-1920, Volume 3, p. 2909.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Wendell Austin:

George Avison was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on May 6, 1885. He attended public schools and wrote adventure stories and drew illustrations. At the requests of his teachers, he drew murals on blackboards with colored chalk. After school he sat at trolley stops and sketched passengers onboard before the trolleys left. After graduating Avison attended the New York School of Art and studied under Robert Henri, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Edward Enfield, and others. Subsequently, he received instruction from Edward Ashe and Frederick C. Yohn. He was a charter member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists in New Canaan and several other local clubs, leagues, and centers. Avison worked for the Public Works of Art Project, a predecessor to the WPA Federal Arts Project. He painted murals in Norwalk with Alexander Rummler, and he also painted murals in Fairfield and New Canaan, Connecticut. In 1939 the Edison Electric Company commissioned him to create a design for its exhibit at the New York World’s Fair. During his career Avison moved from illustration to landscapes, seascapes and marine paintings, and finally to portraiture. His daughter wrote that his “first passion . . . was for illustration.” Avison completed ten easel paintings for the WPA and worked on murals, one for the Founding of Fairfield; for sports-basketball, football, and hockey; Packet Day at Five Mile River; Man Power Behind the Student; and Mark Twain. His murals are found at Roger Ludlow High School in Fairfield, Norwalk High School, and Center School in Norwalk. Avison died in Norwalk in May 1970 at the age of 85.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Obituary, The Norwalk Hour, June 1, 1970; AskART; Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 23; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, p. 33.

Images available in Flickr

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from George Avison:

Nothing is known about Austin Ayers except that he painted three oil easels for the WPA in 1941.

 Source:  WPA Artist’s Work Card.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Austin Ayers: