WPA Art Inventory Project

Howard Rackliffe was born in New Britain, Connecticut in 1917. He attended public schools there but left in his junior year in high school in order to “devote full time to his self-development as a painter.” From 1933 to 1940 he resided in New Britain and followed interests in painting, poetry, piano, and “improvisational musical composition and modern dance performance.” He worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project in March and April 1941. He was self-taught as a painter, and this may have influenced the response of the WPA to his seventeen watercolors of landscapes and still life. Thirteen of these were “Returned to the artist.” Certainly this negative evaluation did not foretell the successful, particular abstractionist style that he later developed. After the WPA, Rackliffe went to York City and did not return to New Britain until 1951. In 1948 he was employed by the Airwick Corporation working in the laboratory to neutralize odors. In 1949 he received a Florida Chemical Research painting grant and spent a year in Sarasota. He returned to New Britain in 1951 and painted full time. In 1952 he was in a car accident and received a sufficient enough financial settlement to allow him to open the Studio Arts Gallery in New Britain, but it closed within a year. In 1955 Rackliffe lived once more in New York City, this time reviewing art, music, and theater forThe Village Voice. He returned to New Britain in 1959 and began taking annual trips to the coast of Maine, which became one of his favorite subjects for painting. After having survived two open heart operations, Rackliffe died of heart failure in 1987. He led the life of a loner, a supreme individualist, who developed his own style. Before he died he had the pleasure of seeing his art exhibited in numerous shows, and he received awards from the Connecticut Watercolor Society and the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. In 1950 Vivien Raynor wrote a review for the New York Times of a show entitled “Arcadia Revisited” at the New Britain Museum of American Art. Reflecting on his solitary path through life, she wrote that his paintings were “outgoing art from a man who seems to have been anything but . . .” Like Irving Katzenstein, Rackliffe’s works remain popular in the Greater Hartford area. Just recently, from January 28-Febraury 28, 2009, LaMotta Fine Art of Hartford ran a show entitled, Vital Ground, featuring the work of Jonathan Scoville and Howard Rackliffe.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; AskART; Howard Rackliffe 1917-1987; Paintings and Poems (Elmwood, Connecticut 1990). There are many articles in the Hartford Courant and New York Times announcing Rackliffe’s exhibitions. The following are selected from the New YorkTimes citations on the basis of their evaluations of his art and biographical data: Vivien Raynor, “Art; Regional Artists’ Work at Atheneum,” March 22, 1981; Vivien Rayonor, Art; Romantic Views Recall the Berkshires,” September 30, 1990; William Zimmer, “Where Maine Shines Alone,” August 9, 1992; William Zimmer, Perennial Favorite in a Compact Show,” August 25, 1996; Eleanor Charles, “The Guide,” January 5, 2003; Connecticut Art Scene, “Friday opening at La Motta Fine Art: Vital Ground,”  January 29, 2009. “Howard Rackliffe (1917-1987),” Paesaggio Fine Art.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Howard Rackliffe:

Frank Raymond was born in Pittson, Pennsylvania in 1907. At an early age he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut where he attended the local public schools. He also lived in Stonington, Connecticut with an uncle who was the keeper of the lighthouse at Latimer Reef. In his lifetime he worked a number of odd jobs including sword fishing, working in a brass foundry and a velvet factory, boxing and wrestling professionally, and playing the saxophone and clarinet in a local jazz orchestra. Raymond first became interested in art while he was the assistant keeper of the Latimer Reef lighthouse. He got the post at age 16 in 1923 and stayed in it for eleven years. It was there that he taught himself to paint using small pieces of tarpaulin. In the spring of 1936 he got a job as a farm hand on artist Rockwell Kent’s farm for three months. In exchange for his service, Kent gave him instruction in art and useful criticism. Raymond traveled to Europe and up and down the East Coast on very little money. During the winter of 1937 he was hired by the WPA Federal Arts Project to do a series of seascapes. He completed 98 easel works, some of which were allocated to Middlesex County Temporary Home, Fairfield State Hospital, Portland High School, Cedarcrest Sanatorium, Long Lane Farm, Laurel Heights Sanatorium, Board of Park Commissioners, Southbury Training School, Department of Public Works, Fairfield State Hospital, Central Jr. High School, Rocky Hill Soldiers’ Home, and Southbury Training School. Late in life he was storing thousands of water colors, oil pastels, and line drawings. He refused to sell his art because, as a friend told a newspaper interviewer, “he had apparently fallen in love with them and couldn’t bear to part with them.” Raymond died in Stonington in 1993.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Biography; Social Security Death Index; AskART; Connecticut Death Index, “Frank Jo Raymond, 86,” The New London Day, September 22, 1993.  Thanks to Wendy Schu, G. W. Blunt Library, Mystic Seaport for her assistance.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Frank Raymond:

Paul Reilly was a cartoonist and artist. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he received his early art education. He began his career in art in 1913, submitting sketches to the old Life magazine and other publications. During his later life he focused primarily on portraits and landscapes. Under the WPA Federal Arts Project, Reilly created 182 easel works, none of which were allocated. They were most likely used for educational books and brochures. Reilly’s wife Helen was an author of detective mysteries. Reilly’s date of birth is not known. He died on May 14, 1944.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Obituary, New York Times, May 15, 1944.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Paul Reilly:

For some WPA artists, recognition of their talents came after the Federal Arts Project. Mischa Richter was one of these artists. He was born in 1911 in Kharkov, Ukraine. He recollected once that his “childhood house was filled with song and neighborhood streets filled with magicians and acrobats.” Daily he took French and German lessons from his governess, drew at a table next to a window, and played in Gogol Park. The Bolshevik Revolution changed the family’s life. Richter’s uncle was killed shortly after joining the Red Army. His father was appointed Commissar of the Waterworks of Kharkov but knew that the family would have to flee the country after Stalin came to power. Family in the Boston area implored them to immigrate. During this tense time Richter took art lessons from a tutor. In 1922 the Richters came to the United States via Poland. They were met at Ellis Island by cousins and settled in Boston. Mischa studied art at the Boston Museum School from 1929-1930.

From there he went to Yale University studying under Eugene Savage. Graduating from Yale in 1934, he married another artist he had met at Yale, Helen Sinclair Annand, and the two went back to Boston. As part of the WPA in that city, Richter completed a fifty foot mural at the Boroughs Newsboy Foundation building acclaimed as the first narrative mural in the city. He began to develop his cartooning which he called “magazine art.” Between 1937 and 1942 he became the art director and produced anti-fascist cartoons for the left leaning, progressive newspaper, The New Masses. From 1940-41, he worked for the Connecticut WPA Federal Arts Project turning out a block print and seven easels. During his career his work was published in the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, This Week Magazine, Esquire, Penthouse, Ken Magazine, PM,Cavalcade and many more. In 1942 he joined The New Yorkeras a cartoonist and by his retirement in 2000, the magazine had published over 1,500 of them. He also did work for King Features and wrote and illustrated children books. It is important to note that he continued to paint and was influenced by the Abstract Expressionists. His wife died in 1992, and until his death in 2001, Richter continued to paint at his home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; AskART; Wolfgang Saxon, “Mischa Richter, 90, A New Yorker Regular,” New York Times, March 27, 2001; “Mischa Richter,” The Independent, April 7, 2001; Alan Bodian, “Mischa Richter-Profile of a Provincetown Legend” at www.lively-arts.com/humaninterest/2004/0403/richter.htm; “Mischa Richter” at http://bershad.com/gb/artists/richter/index.html; Emma Ross, Richter, Mischa, (1910-2001) in the Provincetown Artist Registry atwww.provincetownartistregistry.com/R/richter_mischa.html.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Mischa Richter:

James Ridolfo was born in Troy, New York in 1913. For the majority of his life, he resided in Hartford, though he moved to Glastonbury in 1973. A 1936 photograph in the Hartford Courant showed him in a night class of the Hartford Art School. Perhaps it was his inexperience as an artist that led the WPA Art Project to reject all but one of the eight art works that he submitted. On the other hand, a Hartford Courant article for 1936 announced that Ridolfo won the Hartford poster competition sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He graduated from the Hartford Art School and the Porter School of Design. He served in the Army in the Second World War. Ridolfo worked as a freelance draftsman and was employed by C. E. McGuire in New Britain. Ridolfo died at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford in 1979.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; “James Ridolfo Wins Local Poster Contest,”Hartford Courant, February 6, 1936; “Students at Work in Evening Class at Hartford Art School,” Hartford Courant, April 12, 1936; “Death Notices,”Hartford Courant, March 4, 1979.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from James Ridolfo:

Vincent and Girard Rossi were born to Pasquale and Margaret Famiigletti Rossi, the former in 1891 and the latter in 1895. Their father came to the United States in the 1920’s. He was a “well known barber in Waterbury” for 15 years and then moved to Thomaston, living there for twenty eight years. For 25 of the 28 years, he ran Piney Grove Inn on the Torrington-Thomaston Road. He moved to Lakeland, Florida and lived there from 1950-1959, dying in the latter year on December 8th. We know nothing about the early education of the two sons nor the family life of the Rossis, When the Federal Art Project began in Hartford, the brothers were stone masons working for the Kelly Brothers Company makers of cemetery headstones. They worked on FAP projects from 1937-1940. One of their first jobs was restoring the headstones at the old cemetery behind First Church in Hartford. Vincent produced numbers of a Mark Twain Plaques, and the FAP placed them in schools. However, only the family has one of these. The largest job the brothers worked on was The Nativity Set of life size figures of the traditional Christmas scene. Both made plaster castings of the figures. The Set opened in front of the Old State House in 1938 and attracted many admirers from outside of Hartford. The Rossi brothers also worked on the creation of stone walls for the set. 1940, they took part inwere part another project for the Set, this time to redesign and repaint the figures and walls. Vincent Rossi died in 1951 and Girard Rossi in 1962.

Sources: FAP work cards for each brother; Hartford Courant articles: “Ancient Epitaphs Reappear Clear Cut on Headstones behind Center Church,” May 7, 1937; “Striking Nativity Scene To Be Displayed Here,” December 15, 1938; “Holy Family Pictured in Park Scene,” December 21, 1938; Obituary of Vincent P. Rossi,” August 11, 1951; Pasquale Rossi Dies at Age 66,” December 8, 1959; WPA/FAP newsletters, 1937-1938; Social Security Death Index.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Vincent Rossi:

There is much we do not know about Albert Ruby’s life. He graduated from the Yale School of fine Arts in 1932 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and worked for the WPA in 1938 and 1939. He was assigned to landscape and figure painting. At the time he was living in Hamden, Connecticut.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Federal Arts Project Newsletter, November 1938.

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

Alexander Rummler was born in Dubuque, Iowa in 1867. He received his high school education at Iowa private schools. He studied in Detroit, Michigan, and at the Art Students League in New York City. In 1892 he married. In 1906 he studied at the Academie Julian in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens. Rummler was a member of the Salmagundi Club and the Silvermine Guild of Artists in New Canaan, Connecticut. While studying art, he earned a living through commercial illustration. He was a realist artist. In 1939 he exhibited at the New York World’s Fair. Rummler served as the City Treasurer of Norwalk, Connecticut, and his wife was important in local Republican politics, serving in 1929 as the first female member of the Norwalk City Council. For the Federal Arts Project, Rummler completed over 1,000 square feet of murals at the Norwalk High School on the subject of the local oyster industry. In 1942 Rummler and his wife moved to Stamford where he died on March 13, 1959.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Biography; AskART; “Alexander Rummler,” Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rummler; “Alexander J. Rummler, “Artist, Dies at 91 Years,” Hartford Courant, March 15, 1959; Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 534; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters (1986), p. 800; “First Woman Member of Norwalk Council,” Photograph Standalone, Hartford Courant, December 28, 1929; “Norwalk’s First Councilwoman,” Hartford Courant, January 5, 1930; Michele Block, “Murals a Heritage Norwalk Cherishes,” New York Times, November 30, 1984; Dirk Johnson, “Norwalk Seeks Renewed Glory for W.P.A. Art,” New York Times, January 16, 1986; Sharon L. Bass, “Norwalk’s Depression Murals To Regain Their Luster,” New York Times, April 27, 1986.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Alexander Rummler:

Michele Russo was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1909. He grew up in the Italian American section of the city and later in life stated that he stood out as being different because he was interested in art and literature. Several tutors throughout his youth encouraged him to continue his interest in both. When he was five, he went to Italy with his mother and three younger sisters. With the outbreak of World War I, Italy detained them until after the Armistice was signed ending the conflict in 1918. Ten years old on his return to Waterbury, Russo had learned to speak and live like an Italian and to absorb new cultural influences. He could not attend a public school because he was an immigrant, but a priest named Giulo Perillo became his tutor. He attended a very “progressive” public school and took art classes. In 1930 he entered the Yale Fine Arts School and considered himself different, since most of the students were from wealthy families. He would later say that the school demanded conformity and that he spent time in the library looking at books on art. During the Great Depression Russo, who had developed a social consciousness for the under-dog in Waterbury, became active in radical politics that were anti-war and anti-Fascist. He graduated in 1934 and the next year wed another artist, Sally Haley. In 1936 the couple moved to Colorado Springs. Russo had obtained a fellowship to the Colorado Springs Art Center, and there he took classes taught by Boardman Robinson and George Biddle. When the Russos returned to New Haven, he began working for the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the WPA’s Federal Arts Project (FAP). He painted murals at the Nathan Hale High School in Hamden under the PWAP and, with Basillio Yurchenko, another social activist he had met at Yale, he painted the daring Columbus mural at the Christopher Columbus School in New Haven. During World War II he worked in a factory producing instruments for planes and at a chemical lab doing experiments. In 1947 Michele and Sally moved to Portland, Oregon. He taught at the Portland Museum Art School, now called The Pacific Northwest College of Art, until 1974. He was prominent in Oregon for bringing abstract art to the region. Russo died in 2004.

Sources: WPA Photograph of the Columbus mural, AskART, Social Security Death Index, “Oral History Interview with Michele Russo,” 1983 August 29, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Michele Russo:

Frank Rutkoski began work for the WPA Federal Arts Project on November 20, 1935. Prior to that, he had worked on the Public Works of Art Project. He completed eight murals and 13 easel works for the WPA. One mural is about the Amistad captives and can be seen at Troup Junior High School in New Haven. Other works are at Bethlehem School, Newington Jr. High School, Mansfield State Hospital, and New Britain High School. Later in life Rutkowski taught art classes. His dates of birth and death are unknown, though the Social Security Death Index lists a Frank J. Rutkoski born on February 22, 1905, who died on November 24, 2000, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; Social Security Death Index;“Artists to Give YMCA a ‘Thank You,’” Hartford Courant, October 13, 1976; See following for murals by Rutkoski and an article about the WPA in New Britain by Lois L. Blomstrann.  “Personnel Study Has Partial Approval,” Hartford Courant, November 26, 1975; “Around Town,” Hartford Courant, March 11, 1983; “Best Bets,” HartfordCourant, June 9, 1983.  Thanks to the New Britain Industrial Museum for assistance.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from Frank Rutkoski: