Roswell Weidner

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1911, Roswell Weidner received a scholarship from his high school to attend the country school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Chester Springs, PA. He completed his studies at the Academy’s city school in Philadelphia and the Barnes Foundation. For sixty-six years he would remain associated with the Academy as student and teacher until his retirement in 1996.

In 1936, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) accepted Weidner, a penniless graduate of an art school and son of a Depression Era steelworker who had turned to bootlegging, for its Art Project.

His early successes in art exhibitions at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Corcoran Biennial in Washington, D.C., and Academy Annuals in Philadelphia resulted in his inclusion in the 1939 New York World’s Fair representing Pennsylvania.

During World War II he worked as an expediter and pipe fitter in a New Jersey shipyard. He afterwards bought a farm outside Philadelphia and returned to teaching painting, drawing and lithography at PAFA and the Philadelphia College of Art.

Until the mid-1950’s he was content to paint in the style of his early teachers at the Academy that included Henry McCarter, George Harding, Daniel Garber, Francis Speight and Joseph Pearson. He described himself as a Jack-of-all Trades since he was proficient in landscape, portrait, figure and still life painting. Influences of post-impressionist painting at the Barnes Foundation and a love of Japanese art permeated his work. The New York art world was in the throes of Abstract Expressionism and its freedom and vitality intrigued him. Nevertheless he was not swayed from his commitment to realism although subsequent ‘isms’ such as the color in ‘Op Art”, the hard edges of ‘Pop Art’ and the simplicity of ‘minimalism’ were reflected in his paintings of untamed nature. His work became more ambitious in scale and incorporated the Oriental concept of space while retaining Western form of modeling, light and perspective. He also returned to drawing – large, powerful but delicately executed charcoals.