"Springtown Grocer"

John R. Foster (1908 - 1989)

R. John Foster lived all of his life in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art under Thornton Oakley and at the Cape Cod School of Art. After serving in World War II as a detachment artist in Iran and Egypt, he returned to join the faculty at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. He served there as director of the Freshman Program (1957-65) and as a professor of drawing and painting.

While still a student, he was possibly one of the youngest exhibitors at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1928) and was invited back in subsequent years, winning the Dana Medal in 1952. His first one-man show was in 1934 at the Independents Gallery in New Hope. He frequently exhibited in New Hope at the Phillips Mill Art Association. In Philadelphia he was honored by a one-man show at the Art Alliance, a medal at the Watercolor Club, a medal at the Sketch Club in 1952, and a prize at the Woodmere Art Museum in 1974. He also exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Wilmington Museum of Art.

Foster began his career painting beautiful scenes in and around Newtown in the “traditional” impressionist manner. He quickly turned to abstract representations. He called his later work “Neo-Objective”, as it combines representational compositions with cubism. These works have brought him more prizes and recognition throughout his career than his earlier works and are in many important private and museum collections.

Sources:

New Hope for American Art, James M. Alterman
Philadelphia Bulletin, 7/19/53
American Artist, March 1954
The New Hope Archive, January 1934