WPA Art Inventory Project

George Frederic Earle was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He began oil painting at the age of 8. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design and the College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, and while at Syracuse he organized the institution’s first ski team. After graduating from Syracuse Earle “travelled alone by burro through the tropical west coast region of Mexico” for a year. He then moved to Connecticut in 1928 and pursued an advanced degree of fine arts at Yale. From 1939-1941 he painted around 82 oil works for the WPA. Earle enlisted in the Army in 1942 and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant. He joined the 10^th Mountain Division serving as a ski instructor with the Mountain Training Group at Camp Hale, Colorado then served in the 87^th Mountain Infantry Regiment seeing action on Kiska Island in the Aleutians and in combat in Italy. Earle was a combat artist “painting most of the scenes in 30 minutes or less.” He donated his art work to the Denver Public Library [George F. Earle Papers, 1943-1945, 1993-1995]. He later wrote a history of the 87^th Mountain Infantry Regiment. After the war Earle completed his degree at Yale and returned to Syracuse University to teach skiing and run the largest ski school in the U.S. He taught architecture, art design, and art history and continued to paint. In 2003, the State University of New York Department of Landscape Architecture established the George F. Earle Scholarship. Earle died in 2010.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Artist’s Biography;Social Security Death Index; AskART; Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 179; Finding Aid to the George F. Earle Papers at the Denver Public Library through Denver Public Library Online.

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

Arthur Elder was born in London, England on March 28, 1874. He joined the Chelsea Art Club and studied under prominent artists such as Walter Sickert and James Whistler. He moved to San Francisco, California in 1905 but left the city after the 1906 earthquake to come east. By 1925 Elder was living in Westport, Connecticut. He became the director of the Westport Art School, a job he held until his death. He painted two murals and three easel works for the WPA Federal Arts Project. His works were allocated to the Internal Revenue Office in Hartford, Westport Town Clerk’s Office, Greens Farm School in Westport, and Uncas on the Thames. Elder died in Westport on June 28, 1948.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Obituary, Hartford Courant, June 29, 1948;Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 184; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters (1986), p. 255; AskART.

Images available in Flickr

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Arthur Elder:

Little is known about Martha Elliott. At the time she worked for the WPA she was living in New Haven, Connecticut. A newsletter by the WPA for the Federal Arts Project stated that she was “formerly a designer for the Hooked Project” before being “transferred to the Index of American Design.” The newsletter reported that she was assisting “in the office work for the present and later on will do some rendering of textiles.” Elliot completed three plates for the Index between 1938 and 1939 and an easel watercolor entitled, “Adam and Eve” in 1940. In 194l one of her color plates and plates by John Matulis and Alfred Parys were exhibited in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park. Elliot’s dates of birth and death are unknown.

 Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; “Art in August [1938],” WPA Federal Arts Project Newsletter (ND); “Three State Artists Have Work in Hyde Park Show,”Hartford Courant, September 13, 1941.