"The Gossips"

Richard Wedderspoon (1889-1976)

Richard Wedderspoon was an important member of the New Hope Art Colony as both an Impressionist and Modernist painter. Wedderspoon was not only a respected painter, but also a teacher, spending summers at his Bucks County home and the school year at Syracuse University, where he was a professor of painting. He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, first studying art at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, before continuing at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, and at age twenty-four, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, studying with Henry McCarter and Daniel Garber. While there, his roommates were Charles Garner and Lloyd Ney, and he became friends with fellow artists, Charles Hargens, Clarence Johnson, and Stanley Reckless, all of whom would become a part of the New Hope art scene in the future. Both McCarter and Garber recognized Wedderspoon’s talent and were generous with their time and criticism. Garber frequently brought Wedderspoon back to his Lumberville home for weekends and a long-lasting friendship resulted. In 1915 and 1916, Wedderspoon was twice honored with the Cresson Traveling Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy.

After returning from World War I, he lived in Chicago for a time, traveling to the Missouri Ozarks and western Michigan to paint. He and his wife also took a long trip to paint in Great Britain, France, and Italy. In 1923, Wedderspoon joined the faculty of Syracuse University, where he remained until 1949. In 1926, he bought land on Phillips Mill Road near New Hope and built a colonial home where he spent summers. Too busy during the academic year to concentrate on his painting, Wedderspoon looked forward to his summers in Bucks County for artistic inspiration. Upon retirement, he moved to New Hope and later, to a smaller home in nearby Yardley.

Wedderspoon was a versatile artist, able to paint well in both impressionist and modernist styles. Most of his paintings, and clearly the most identifiable of his styles, is a combination of the two. The most sought after of his works are landscapes painted in and around New Hope during the 1920s and 1930s which are of an impressionist style and having a slight modernist influence.

Wedderspoon exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery Biennials, the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Fine Art, the Chicago Arts Club, the Philadelphia Art Club, the Phillips Mill near New Hope, and the Syracuse (Everson) Art Museum.

Sources:

New Hope for American Art by Jim Alterman
Richard Wedderspoon Journals, undated, unpublished
Jim’s of Lambertville Archives
Richard Wedderspoon Style in Tandem, Tana Steen, September 28, 2000, unpublished

Period frame