Frederick Frary Fursman, impressionist painter and teacher, was born February 15, 1874, near the small town of El Paso, Woodford County, Illinois, the son of Elias S. and Elmira E. Fursman. The Fursman family had arrived in North America prior to the Revolution. William E. Fursman, Frederick’s grandfather, was a veteran of the War of 1812. Elias was a native of Niagara County, New York, and moved to Illinois in 1857, settling first in Waldo Township, Livingston County, where he was married December 3, 1863, to Elmira E. Pool, a school teacher.

In 1865, the family moved to Panola Township, about two miles north of El Paso, where all five of the children, three sons and two daughters, were born. Frederick was the eldest son. In addition to home schooling by his mother he attended Panola No. 1, a township schoolhouse about a mile east of his home, and El Paso secondary schools.

Elias Fursman was a farmer and had an early nursery which furnished fruit trees and ornamental plantings for most of the farms in the area. In 1874, he became the Illinois dealer for the Chicago scraper and ditcher, and in 1883, was cofounder of a tile and brick works in El Paso. The company, using their own product from locally dug clay, built four connected brick buildings, the Fursman block, on Front Street in downtown El Paso.[1]

Early in 1892, Elias’ corn, grain and grasses display shown first at the El Paso Fair, won the $250 blue ribbon prize at the Illinois State Fair in Peoria.[2] In 1892, D. W. Vittum, state superintendent of agriculture, appointed Elias to set up the agricultural portion of the Illinois state pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition, scheduled to open in Chicago on May 1, 1893.

The summer of 1892 was spent drying and packing railroad box cars full of materials to ship to the World’s Fair to decorate the pavilion. The entire Fursman family moved to Chicago for a year.[3] Later, the official Illinois Board report stated the commission: “Having at least a faint idea of the value to the many visitors from all nations at the great Columbian show of presenting to their view a picture of a typical Illinois farm home, determined to make the same in a form as yet never undertaken, by making it entirely out of grains and grasses.”[4] Although little mention of Frederick’s contribution is made in the contemporary press, later historical summaries and the El Paso Journal obituaries, for both Frederick and his father, note that in preparing the exhibit, “Fred’s experience as an artist was a valuable aid. Fred designed and his father executed the famous farm scene picture, all features… being constructed of grasses and grains all grown on farm lands... it was the centerpiece of the Illinois agricultural exhibit and later was exhibited at fairs in Philadelphia, St. Louis and Paris, France.”[5]

The commissioners later wrote, “The commission planned more wisely than it knew; for during the Columbian Exposition possibly no single exhibit was inquired after oftener or received more of written and verbal commendation.”[6]

Frederick had gone to Chicago as early as 1891, when he was 17 years old, and enrolled in the Bryant and Stratton Business College. That year, he met Georgia Brown, a bookkeeper who boarded on Lake Park Avenue. In 1892, Frederick was identified as a clerk at 228 Wabash Avenue, and in 1893, a bookkeeper at 116 Lake.[7] No family tradition or written record reveals any proclivity toward art earlier than 1893, when he became involved with his father’s grain mural project.

Some time between 1892 and 1894, Frederick was married to Georgia Brown, later described in Frederick Fursman’s obituary as “also an artist.”[8] In 1896, a daughter, Laurens Lucile Fursman, was born in Chicago.[9] In late 1897, Georgia Brown Fursman arrived at the E. S. Fursman homestead by train “after having been assured by her physician in Chicago that her case was beyond medical aid.” She died of consumption on January 14, 1898, in El Paso.[10] Their young daughter, known as Lucile, born a partial dwarf with a near-normal torso but foreshortened limbs, lived with Frederick’s parents in El Paso until Elias Fursman died in 1901, during the preparations of his exhibit for the Pan American exposition at Buffalo. Then both Lucile and her grandmother moved to Chicago to reside with Mary, Frederick’s older sister.[11]

After the death of his wife, Fursman returned to Chicago, where directories continued to describe his work as “clerk” working this time at The Rookery until 1901, when he is identified for the first time as “artist.”[12] From 1900 to 1901, he studied at the J. Francis Smith Art Academy in Chicago.[13] In February 1901, he enrolled in evening classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In his second semester, October 1901 to June 1902, he took instruction in life drawing, and in October 1901, for six consecutive Wednesdays, studied color composition during the day.[14]

In January 1902, he enrolled in the regular school and was a student in the class of visiting professor Gari Melchers (1860-1932).[15] As Mr. Melchers’ class was reserved only for the most advanced and gifted students, it is clear Fursman had obtained a very sound foundation at the Smith Academy and already possessed a good deal of talent. Fursman must have forged bonds with some of his fellow students in this class as many were active later in Saugatuck, Michigan.[16] That year, apparently swept up in the Arts and Crafts movement, he became affiliated with craft workers known as Varied Industries.[17]

In 1902, his first painting in a juried exhibit, A Summer Day (location unknown), was accepted at the Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.[18] The year marked another milestone. On September 2, 1902, he was married in Chicago to Ida Luella Morton, daughter of Charles and Catharine (Johnson) Fish of Toronto, Canada. She had come to Chicago in 1888. Her first husband was Charles B. Morton, a print shop employee. Ida was a teacher and worked first at the Chicago Athenaeum and later as assistant principal at the Avondale School.[19]

From fall 1902, through December 1906, Fursman continued classes in the evening at the School of the Art Institute studying life drawing and illustration. The only exception to his evening study was a month-long day class in the spring 1905, academic life drawing with John H. Vanderpoel (1857-1911) and Karl Albert Buehr (1866-1952). He led a not-untypical artist’s life in Chicago, changing residences frequently.[20]

John C. Johansen (1876-1964), a Danish-born portrait painter, was probably one of his instructors at the School of the Art Institute. Johansen achieved local fame in 1903-1904, when he won the Municipal Art League purchase prize, Young Fortnightly prize, Chicago Society of Artists silver medal, Arché Club purchase prize, Chicago Woman’s Aid purchase prize and a West suburban woman’s club prize (Hinsdale, LaGrange and Western Springs). He taught both life drawing and illustration in the 1903-04 academic year. Johansen had organized summer classes in Saugatuck during the summers of 1904 to 1906.[21] His classes were immediately popular and cut into the only real competition, John H. Vanderpoel’s Delavan, Wisconsin group.[22]

The 28-year old Fursman and Johansen became friends, and in 1906, Johansen and his wife, illustrator M. Jean McLane (1878-1864) invited Ida and Fred to join them for an extended tour of Europe. During the next several years Fursman studied with Raphael Collin,[23] Henry Ossawa Tanner,[24] Myron Barlow, Claudio Castelucho at the Académie de la Grande Chaumier and Jean Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris.[25] Ida made use of the trip to research French education and they often traveled separately. In 1907, the couple rented a room in Etaples, a small fishing village southwest of Paris. The trip also included visits to Germany, Italy and Belgium.

At the Académie Julian, Fursman experienced intensive work with the living model executed plein-air paintings in settings in and around Paris. The outdoor instruction would later be a mainstay when he taught at his own summer school. Fursman had one painting La visite de la grand-mere (A Visit from Grandmother) in the Salon Société des Artistes Français (Paris Salon) at the Grand Palais des Beaux-arts in Paris in 1908. The catalog gives his address as “Rue Boissonade 14.”[26] In 1909, before leaving Europe, two more of his paintings, Sur les bords de la riviere (On the Banks of the River) and Un coup de vent (A Gust of Wind), were accepted at the grand exhibition. His address in the catalogue was “Etaples (Pas-de-Calais).”[27]

In December 1909, shortly after his return to Chicago, the Art Institute organized an exhibition of twenty-nine canvases he had painted in France.[28] Critic Harriet Monroe leveled some praise for as well as some criticism his works commenting upon his gallery which “gives a breezy out of door impression, with the pictures of girls in the wind, children on the beach, etc.”[29] Also in 1909, for the first time since 1902, Fursman had two works in the Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists there. In January 1910, Fursman taught a month-long class at the School of the Art Institute. The 1910 catalog described him as “Pupil of the Art Institute, Laurens, Colin, Castelucho, Tanner, Barlow and others.”[30] The 1910 bulletin for The Summer Art School noted: “Mr. F. F. Fursman has recently returned from a sojourn in France. He is a former student of the Art Institute of Chicago and has studied with the best modern masters.”[31] He also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annual exhibit in 1910. The Fursmans settled into a new home in 1911, at 4465 N. 43rd Avenue later renamed Kildare Avenue, which they would occupy until 1920.

In the summer 1910, Fursman taught an Art Institute class in illustration, two to three times a week from July to September.[32] There he undoubtedly came into close contact with Walter Marshall Clute (1870-1915), who had been teaching a similar class during the regular term since 1901. Clute had been teaching summer students since 1909 and in 1911, took his classes to Saugatuck where he and Fursman opened the “Summer School of Painting.”[33]

Saugatuck is a small resort community located about ninety miles around the Lake Michigan coast from Chicago. Artists had discovered it by about 1896, when four from the Chicago area rented a red scow and paddled along the Kalamazoo River painting the scenery. John C. Johansen and his brother, Peter, had organized summer classes for many of Johansen’s students from the School of the Art Institute in the summers of 1904 to 1906. There is no record of Fursman visiting these classes, but it is not unlikely. The program certainly would have been a topic of conversation between the two artists on their joint trip to Europe 1906-1909. John W. Norton, a teacher at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and later an Art Institute instructor and active Saugatuck visitor, had held classes in nearby Douglas in 1906.[34]

Using Johansen’s studio and former quarters at Riverside Rest, a resort on the Kalamazoo river, the classes offered competition for John H. Vanderpoel’s summer school in Delavan, Wisconsin. Like the Delavan classes, the school at Saugatuck was always allied, at least informally, with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Students and faculty would meet at the Graham and Morton Transportation docks at the foot of Wabash Avenue and the Chicago River to take a Saturday night boat across Lake Michigan.[35]

Fursman received the first widespread acclaim of his career in the fall 1910. Harrison S. Morris, Commissioner General of the United States to the International Exposition of Art and History at Rome, Italy, visited Chicago and viewed several pictures at the Art Institute. Fursman received a letter in October asking that he allow his “Taking Tea in Open Air” to be part of a “very select selection of about 200 pictures” to be exhibited at the American pavilion. A second letter from Morris’ office in January 1911, confirms shipping information for Fursman’s painting In the Garden (Toledo Museum of Art). Since the canvas depicts a young lady taking tea out-of-doors it is highly likely the two letters contain different titles for the same painting.[36]

Fursman’s position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago did not become permanent as it was common for the school to hire capable, short-term replacements for the regular teaching staff when someone was absent, or for the short duration of the summer term.

Alexander Mueller, of the Milwaukee School of Art, (sometimes called the School of Fine and Applied Art) invited Fursman to teach beginning in the fall term of 1910. In 1911, it became part of the Milwaukee Normal School. He enjoyed his work in Wisconsin enough that in the spring 1911, he took a role in A Colonial Girl, a play presented May 20, 1911, at the Pabst Theater under the auspices of the Milwaukee Daughters of the American Revolution chapter.[37] He would continue to teach at the school until 1920, usually spending three days and two nights in Wisconsin each week. He met his later close friend, Milwaukee artist and crafts teacher, Elsa Ulbricht (1885-1980), there.[38] She would regularly meet him at the train from Chicago to take him to his quarters. The Normal School evolved into the State Teachers College and eventually was absorbed into the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

In the fall 1911, Fursman returned as a student to the School of the Art Institute for a three month class with George E. Ganiere, a sculptor from Chicago. Why he sought such training we do not know.[39] Fursman had two paintings in the 24th Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute, and received the Martin B. Cahn prize for the best painting by a Chicago artist, for his work Summertime (location unknown). The painting was then invited to the 1912 annual International exhibition at the Carnegie Institute.[40] Highly respected art critic James William Pattison praised the painting by describing the difficulty of technique in Fursman’s work:

“…the really interesting problem which the painter set himself is the painting of a light green dress against the lively green of a meadow both in sunshine and shadow. It is no easy trick; the pale green dress is actually very much lighter than the green grass, but the sunlight on the grass beyond must be lighter than the pale dress in shadow. The ability to paint for the sake of painting is already an indication of talent which deserves attention.”[41]

The 1912 Saugatuck classes included an autumn session “to study the unusually beautiful color effects which Saugatuck, with its wealth of sumac, sassafras, poplar, hard and soft maple, beech and trailing vines, annually gives.”[42] The fall classes began on October 4, 1913, and were held at Riverside Hotel since “their work will mostly be in the woods.”[43] These fall classes must have been held in the charge of Clute; Fursman had left August 19, 1913, on the S. S. Potsdam, for Europe.[44] Fursman must have seen the International Exhibition of Modern Art, known as the “Armory Show,” at the Art Institute when it had opened in March 1913. Some of the canvases he showed upon his return from France prior to the summer of 1914, contained a decided influence of Fauvism.[45]

Classes for the 1914 summer school, were announced in April by Clute and began June 22, delayed so Fursman could finish up “the auxiliary art class at Madison, Wis.”[46] For the first time both the summer and fall classes were held at the Riverside Hotel on the Ox-Bow Lagoon. Fursman would later tell a reporter, “We found the spot one day by chance as we walked along the river and cut through the woods toward the lagoon... this spot, close to the village and yet quite apart from it... was ideal for our purposes.”[47]

Fursman and Clute hosted a record eighty students, including some Saugatuck area artists. They celebrated the Fourth of July holiday by inviting a number of important Chicago art critics out for a visit including: Lena McCauley, of the Chicago Evening Post; Maude I. G. Oliver, of the Chicago Record-Herald; Mrs. Eva Webster, of the Chicago American and Harriet Monroe of the Chicago Tribune.[48] Theodore J. Keane, Dean of the School of the Art Institute also came out for a visit. In August, an exhibition of work by both faculty and students was held at the Saugatuck Village Hall and several paintings were sold. Fursman and Clute were speakers at a special pre-exhibition show held at the Saugatuck Woman’s Club.[49]

In December 1914, the Toledo Museum of Art included Fursman in a group of one person exhibits which also featured the work of Edmund W. Greacen (1877-1949), Walter Gilman Page (1862-1934) and Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). Eighteen paintings, some done at the Summer School and several from his European trip, were presented.[50] Toledo art critic Elisabeth Jane Merrill wrote:

“The work of Frederick F. Fursman... is intensely interesting to all who are students of color... The work which he did a few years ago appears almost academic by comparison with that which he is now doing. These might be called ‘mass impressionistic’ for they are studies of color seen in different kinds and degrees of light, but instead of having the colors laid separately on the canvas very close together, they are painted in broad flat masses of color… A student of color, Mr. Fursman is leagues ahead of the majority… He uses color audaciously, producing wonderfully forceful and decorative effects.”[51]

Prior to the exhibition in 1913, Cora Baird Lacey had purchased his painting In the Garden, for five hundred dollars and given it to the Toledo Museum in memory of Henry Allen Lacey.[52] Asked for biographical material Fursman wrote a sketch of his education and honors and added, “I regret to say that the only museum that I am represented in is the Toledo Museum of Art, but I trust that in the near future other museums will follow the very good example of Toledo.”[53]

One of the artist friends he visited in France was George Senseney (1874-1943), who had been a fellow student at the Smith Academy in Chicago. Fursman probably convinced him to return to the United States to help found the New School of Drawing, Painting and Etching in the Tower Building on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, which opened classes on January 1, 1915.[54] Clute and Senseney were also friends, having met in Paris in 1899, and working together at the Académie Julian and in the country at Auvers sur Oise. Clute was planning on leaving Chicago for his health at the end of 1914, and it is more than likely the three of them worked out the plan for Senseney to come to Chicago to replace him as Fursman’s partner.[55]

The classes were designed to appeal to those who were unable to be full-time art students, a situation with which Fursman was very familiar.

“They believe in using to its fullest extent the tremendous faith and enthusiasm of youth, and feel that the proper artistic outlet for these is in the tendencies to the use of fuller color and a more careful consideration of the decorative elements. They believe that there is possible for the students of today a freer, fuller and more varied expression than ever before.”[56]

“Painting and drawing will be taught in the morning and etching in the afternoon. A class which should appeal on account of its convenience in time for business people will be that from 1 to 4 on Saturdays. This class will be in painting and will be in charge of Mr. Fursman who will also hold one on Sundays from 10 to 3.”[57]

Fursman kept busy teaching as he also served on the staff of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1914-1915.[58]

Fursman had an opportunity to present his views on modern art to the public when he, Senseney and a few other artists were invited to speak at the annual Chicago artists’ dinner held at the Press Club, February 7, 1915. While Fursman’s views were not aired in the local papers, Senseney had earlier said Chicago was “more plastic than New York and less saturated with European ideas.”[59] A month later, Fursman’s works were hung in the “radical room,” gallery 53, at the Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago Artists, reflecting the influence of modernism and his recent sojourn to France on his new paintings. Other modernists in the room included Jerome S. Blum (1884-1934) and Raymond Johnson (1891-1976, soon to be “Jonson”).[60] Art critic Maude I. G. Oliver commented on his “daring orange and purple” and called room 53, the “iconoclastic room of the whole collection” and that to some it was a room of “shrieking riot of all that is dischordant sic in color combinations.”[61]

Walter Marshall Clute died in California on February 13, 1915. A news release to the April 23, 1915, Commercial Record announced the Summer School of Painting would continue with George Senseney who took over Clute’s landscape classes while Fursman continued his classes in out-of-door figure painting. Elsa Ulbricht was hired to open a crafts department and taught jewelry design, basketry and stenciling.[62] Summer school in 1916, was under the sole direction of Fursman. Senseney had determined to spend the summer at Lovetts Court, in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[63]

In 1917, The Book of Chicagoans profiled both Fursman and his wife. Frederick was described as associated with the Fine and Applied Arts School of Milwaukee and director of the Saugatuck Summer School of Painting. He was listed as a member of the Chicago Society of Artists, the Artists’ Guild of Chicago and the Socialist Party. Ida was described as “head assistant at the Avondale School, Chicago, twelve years, and in a similar position at the Linne School, six years; president of the Chicago Teachers’ Federation five consecutive years, now serving, and a member of the Socialist Party since 1913, a pacifist, single-taxer, trade unionist, and Christian Scientist.” She belonged to the Political Equity League, and the Women’s Legislative Congress. Ida listed her recreation preferences as “walking, riding and boating.”[64]

In June 1917, Fursman was given a one man exhibition at Favor, Ruhl & Co., in Chicago.[65] A few weeks later, works of the summer students at Saugatuck were shown.[66] It is interesting that the company was involved in the art supply business and told art critic Lena M. McCauley, they “noted the increased interest in highly keyed color and the study of color theory and color charts.” It is likely there was some connection with Fursman’s exploration of color that impacted the way the company was thinking about trends in color.[67] A later newspaper column noted their rooms were “the favorite haunt of the art student. The theories of palette arrangement and new methods in color study are of particular interest.”[68] In June 1918, Favor, Ruhl announced an exhibition of the summer school at Saugatuck, stating their company was the “home of the artist.”[69]

In 1919, Fursman and his wife secured a lease from the government for an unused lighthouse across the lagoon from the Summer School of Painting as a summertime cottage.[70] This was the first year he affiliated the school with the Alumni Association of the Art Institute of Chicago. The idea was to increase the number of artists attending the area and to give more seasoned artists a chance at outdoor instruction under a less academic structure. The Alumni sent a class out from Chicago on June 28. It was also an opportunity for some of the older artists who “want to get out of a rut.”[71] While they all worked hard during the day culminating in regular weekly concours, evenings were mostly filled with entertainment, plays and cook-outs on the beach. Saturday evenings were reserved for well planned carnivals which could include any number of antics, almost always in jest of something. And each summer an elaborate dramatic event was given with titles such as “Interior of the Artist’s Brain at the Saugatuck Summer School of Art.” During all this activity, Fursman was proud of the “fraternal” feeling among the artists and the absence of “cliques.”[72] A decided success, the school attracted eighty-two students from ten states and Canada that summer, including twenty-seven from the alumni association.[73]

Initially, Ida presided over teas for the students on Sunday afternoons at the lighthouse.[74] However, as time wore on she seldom mixed with the artists and many of them did not even know she was in town.[75] Fursman had begun a series of portraits he called the “Saugatuck Anthology.” They were non-commissioned and painted in a style more realistic than many of his earlier works; yet continued to express the sharp contrasting colors of his brand of Fauvism. The Heuer family were particularly favorite subjects. A portrait of Dick Heuer, poling his clamming scow, was shown in the 1919 Annual Exhibition of American Oil Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Institute. Critic Marguerite Williams said it was Saugatuck people like Heuer who were “its picturesque old characters who are the painter’s delight…,” as a way to describe the charm of the area. She continued to recount that Heuer was none to pleased to sit for a portrait, as he thought artists were frivolous and beneath his dignity. But when the finished product was hung in the local drug store, it created enough of a warm stir that old Heuer invited Fursman to dinner. She described Saugatuck as “one of those old-time villages in which the democracy of civil war times still exists.”[76] The editor of the local newspaper wrote, “Too bad they had to hang old Dick who was always a pretty good sort of chap. But that’s what comes of mixin’ in along (sic) of them artist fellers.”[77]

For the 1920 season, a studio building was renovated and a new fireplace, something which would be very important to social gatherings at the school, was cause for celebration. Summer students had hauled stones from the lakeside and donated their time for construction.[78] Fursman extended an invitation to Charles L. Hutchinson, president of the Art Institute, and in August, a party of people came out from Chicago to join in the festivities.[79] 

In 1921, a stock company was formed for the Saugatuck School. Fursman owned 57 percent, Thomas Tallmadge (1876-1940), a noted Chicago architect and artist, owned 29 percent and Edgar A. Rupprecht (1889-1954), a Chicago artist friend of Fursman, owned 14 percent.[80] An option had been secured in 1919 to purchase the Riverside Hotel.[81] This property included: “the thirty-room hotel, a four-room cottage, a studio building, a dormitory, store building and barn and seven acres of land.” The buildings came furnished and the complete price was $8,500.[82] Plans called for the use of rooms for rental to help support the project.[83] Critic Eleanor Jewett noted, “From the point of view of comfort and convenience, everything has been done to the place that human wit can devise.”[84]

The very next winter, the shareholders of the school voted to add two directors, Arthur T. Aldis and Chicago artist Richard Fayerweather Babcock (1887-1954), a successful commercial illustrator who taught both at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.[85] The shareholders soon elected to hire a full time manager for the “Ox-Bow Inn” and to spend up to $1,500 improving the property. They also took steps to incorporate in the state of Michigan.[86] In September, officers were officially elected including Tallmadge as president, Rupprecht as vice president and Fursman acting as secretary and treasurer. Results for the more formal enterprise showed revenues of the Ox-Bow Inn at $6,700 and a strong profit from its operation of $1,800. Clearly the school was not the only money making venture for in addition to this, there were profits from operation of an on-site store.[87]

Frederick and Ida had moved to Saugatuck in 1920. Ida apparently retired from her duties although she made frequent trips back to Chicago. They stayed in the lighthouse during the summer and rented seasonal quarters in town during the winter. Now living in Michigan, Fursman continued his close ties with the Chicago art community. His work was included in the Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity at the Art Institute through 1924.[88] In the 1923 exhibition, he won the $150 Harry A. Frank prize, an award given from 1920 to 1934 for the best figure composition in oil, for his canvas entitled Morning (location unknown).[89] In 1924, he won the Chicago Society of Artists Silver Medal, an award offered for the best group of paintings or sometimes for recognition of significant overall painting achievement as displayed at the exhibition.[90] He had entries accepted in the Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture in 1921, 1922 and 1924. Publicity for the Saugatuck summer school played on his recent honors by featuring a portrait of Fursman on the front cover of the brochure.[91] Throughout these years, his opinions as a teacher and artist were valued as he served on the Chicago & Vicinity exhibition juries in 1914, 1917, 1918, 1920, 1921 and 1923. Fursman maintained his membership in several Chicago clubs including the Cliff Dwellers, Arts Club, Chicago Galleries Association and Tavern Club.

Operations at the school at Ox-Bow were very successful and the Fursman’s continued to entertain a variety of guests and students from Chicago and the Midwest. Duncan Clark wrote to Fursman about the fine work he was doing, giving a perspective that perhaps was valuable for its objectivity:

“We think that you and Mrs. Fursman are very wonderful people and are doing a wonderful and beautiful thing at Ox-Bow. You are both of you too near to it, perhaps, to realize how wonderful and beautiful it is, but as those who came newly to it and watched if with the interest of outsiders – at first – we were in a position to pass judgment impartially, and judgment became admiration. You have made a picture for us which cannot be put on any canvas, and in which the human values find an altogether lovely setting against Nature’s background – and are wholly worthy of it.”[92]

Fursman was enjoying Michigan as a place to paint. In 1925, the school on the lagoon was visited by Russell Gore of the Detroit News. Portions of the story were repeated in the local newspaper and included the Fursman observation:

“Michigan to me is the most paintable state in the union. A peculiar atmospheric condition gives the landscape a softness not found elsewhere. In Wisconsin, immediately across the lake, outlines are hard and bold. I think perhaps there is more moisture in Michigan. This moisture is like a lovely veil to the brilliant and variegated coloring, enhancing and at the same time subduing the transcendent beauty to be found on every hand.”[93]

The buildings at Ox-Bow were not winterized and the Fursmans rented a variety of apartments and houses in town in the early 1920s. To solve the continually changing seasonal housing problem and to supplement their income, the Fursmans began to travel during winter months. In 1924-25, they were at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where he had been engaged to teach a special course. Both Dr. Frank L. McVey, president of the University, and H. D. Sachs, head of the Department of Fine Arts, had spent time at Ox-Bow and “have long endeavored to induce him to go to them during the winter.”[94] A special one-man exhibition was held during his visit.

Just prior to leaving for Kentucky, Fursman had put together a group of paintings for a one man exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Institute. The Milwaukee Journal gave a strong review to the show which was shared with Chicagoan Walter Ufer (1876-1936, featured in this book with an essay). The critic was primarily taken by the effect of color and bright light in the canvases:

“Far apart in theme, the two men, and yet a certain kinship might be found in a shared strength, vigorous color, and freedom of spirit in making an expansive gesture… Mr. Fursman, in his matters of every day, gives the familiar a new beauty and floods the casual with radiance… through the muslin sash curtains the morning sun pours like a bright rain on the girl’s delicately modeled back… and fills the whole room with swimming shifting light. To come upon the canvas is like going through a doorway into the very clearness of morning light itself… commenting on another painting Even the air takes color from its flaming hues.”[95]

The summer of 1925, he had his third one man exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago which remained open from July 15 until September 13. Critics said of the show:

“… But Mr. Fursman’s main purpose seems to have been to paint sunlight – sunlight as it falls in blinding brilliance on water, sunlight slanting thru the leafy shelter of the trees, sunlight falling on human hands and faces and garments… Mr. Fursman appears to have been content with the simplest in composition and the minimum of trickery in drawing for the sake of registering the sunlight as it affected his subjects… There is no denying his gift for catching the shifting gleam on the surface of the water.”[96]

“In Frederick F. Fursman’s exhibition, we have a painter with a love for strong color, for bright sunlight – one who boldly and courageously tackles the problem of painting nature garbed in vivid hues. In all of Mr. Fursman’s pictures he has introduced a human figure as the principal theme, upon which the bright light plays and reflects an interesting interplay of color.”[97]

In the winter 1925-1926, he was invited to be the first director of the Chappell School of Art in Denver, Colorado. The appointment came from George William Eggers, director of the school, who had previously been the director of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.[98] His stay opened with an October exhibit “which has been on view during the entire summer at the galleries of the Art Institute and which has come directly from there.”[99] Whether he was not selling his most important works purposely so as to gain from their exhibition and press, or his efforts to sell the canvases were unsuccessful, is not known. Many of the works in this exhibit were from previous shows and included his prize winning paintings.

The following winter Frederick and Ida left in mid-September to spend the winter in Regina, New Mexico. According to a letter from Ida, they had expected to camp and paint on the way West but rain and flooding prevented this.[100] They returned to Saugatuck at the end of April 1927, with a number of sketches “characteristic of the state” and four portraits, having spent considerable time in the artist colonies at Santa Fe and Taos.[101]

Still prior to the Great Depression, the summer school was running strong. An impressive brochure for the 1927 summer season featured in its title “Under the Auspices of the Alumni Association of the Chicago Art Institute.” The brochure carefully balanced the work of painting with descriptions which evoke summer camp: “The opportunity for healthful sport is unusual,” “Next to swimming the most popular sport is hiking and picnics” and “The school encourages home entertainment.”[102] And who wouldn’t want to attend a school where the surroundings included “the cool shadowy green of the pines, the sunlight on the dunes and the cool depths of the forest… and the shallow waters of the lagoon filled with pond lilies.”[103] It sounded like an oasis during the heat of a strong Chicago summer.

In the fall 1927, the Fursmans finally purchased a house in Saugatuck. It was a small white structure on Mary Street which had been the first schoolhouse in the Village in the 1860s. It had a large shed in the back which he converted into a studio. With the help of his architect friend Tallmadge, he changed the windows in the front of the building and made significant other improvements. To while away the winter, Fursman made a few attempts at woodblock printing, something he evidently picked up from the many visiting artists during the summer.[104]

Ida joined in small town life. In an account of the Saugatuck Woman’s Club annual banquet, she addressed the needs of the village speaking of the need for a club house, “where women can hold small social affairs while the men are golfing, fishing and attending to their various society meetings” and advocated a public library for the village. The library became her pet project and within a year it opened under the auspices of the Woman’s Club. Ida Fursman was on the first library board and was librarian of the new collection.

Fursman’s daughter, Laurens Lucile, had begun study at the School of the Art Institute taking a life class taught by John Warner Norton in 1928. That summer, she was an official student at the Summer School of Painting. In the fall, she and her father took a motor trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan and then traveled South past Saugatuck on to Missouri to visit Fursman’s brother William. She spent the winter term of 1928-1929, at the School of the Art Institute. After another summer at Ox-Bow, she decided “to spend the winter here Saugatuck studying with her father.”[105] He was pleased enough with her progress to plan a three-month tour for the family to Europe beginning in late October 1930, including ten days in England and more than a month in Etaples, and other “scenes of his student days in Paris.”[106] The summer season had started off slowly and looked to be a particularly difficult one as only twenty-five students enrolled in classes at Saugatuck. However, by the close of the summer, Fursman announced the total number of students in attendance had exceeded any previous year.[107]

Fursman was one of the founders of the Saugatuck Art Association in 1931, an organization of area artists both professional and amateur. The group received permission to use the upper rooms of the Saugatuck Village Hall as an art gallery which would feature both local and guest artists.[108] The first exhibition opened in July 1931. It included works by: Fursman; Carl Hoerman (1885-1955), a Bavarian born architect, turned artist, who had a studio in Saugatuck; Cora Bliss Taylor (1889-1986), who ran an art school in town and Albert Krehbiel, a Park Ridge, Illinois, artist, friend of the deceased Clute, who had taught since 1926 at Ox-Bow, but had just opened his own school in town.[109] Other artists included Milo Denny, Olive Williams, Edith Hammond (1887-1969), Christiana Hoerman, Adele Houser and visiting artists Frank Charles Peyraud (1858-1948) and Wellington Jarard Reynolds (1866-1949) of Chicago.[110]

Fursman used his resident status in 1932, to enter the Annual Exhibition of Michigan Artists at the Detroit Art Institute and had two canvases accepted. The following spring, he was the Chicago artist named to the jury of the Nineteenth Annual St. Louis Artists’ Guild Exhibition. The Guild traditionally invited three artists, one each from New York, Philadelphia and Chicago to serve on the jury. In 1934, after a hiatus of ten years, Fursman had a painting in the 1934 Exhibition of Chicago & Vicinity Artists at the Art Institute. Later that year, at the close of Ox-Bow classes, Fursman had a one-man exhibit in the gallery on the second floor of Saugatuck’s Village Hall. It is described extensively in the July 27, 1934, issue of the Commercial Record, by Saugatuck resident and art student Edith Barron. The exhibit included many of the portraits of Saugatuck area residents and Fursman opened the exhibit with a talk about his experiences of painting in Saugatuck and in other places in the world. Mrs. Barron wrote: “It is always a pleasure to listen to Mr. Fursman, because of the fact that he never ‘puts on dog’ and always has his whimsical sense of humor on tap as well as many delightful experiences and associations to draw from.”[111]

During the Depression there was decreased enrollment at the Summer School and money was tight in the Fursman household.[112] He began teaching again in Chicago, the luxury of time off during the school year apparently no longer affordable. The school he chose was the same where his friend John Warner Norton had been teaching for some years, The Studio School of Art.[113] Fursman was fortunate financially in 1934 when he received a contract with the Federal Art Project for a mural in the upstairs assembly room of the Saugatuck High School. He had a local boat builder pose in buckskin garb as a pioneer and produced a three-paneled painting that wrapped around two walls of the room. According to the local newspaper, “The mural depicts the discovery of this pleasant site, our pioneer days and the first settlers, all with our well-loved Kalamazoo River in the background.”[114] The wife of the boat builder posed for a picture of a woman sewing, planned to form part of another panel, but the painting was never expanded.[115]

In December 1937, three members of the Summer School of Painting staff, Fursman, Francis Chapin (1899-1965) and Edgar Rupprecht had a show in the east wing of the architecture building at the University of Illinois.[116] A student reviewer praised Fursman for the “delicacy and softened brilliance” of two snow scenes.[117] A reviewer for the local Sunday Courier wrote:

“Subdued colors blend effectively in Mr. Fursman’s character studies and other paintings… his technique is equally enjoyable to contemplate… whether it is enjoyed in his two nudes or in the interesting portraits of elderly persons.”[118]

Fursman was a frequent lecturer on art topics both to art students and to the general audience. In 1937, in a presentation entitled “The True Appreciation of Art,” he told a woman’s organization, “Art is a challenge, not an opiate. And like a marriage partner must be something that one can enjoy and laugh with, yes, but also cry with, and, now and then, quarrel with.”[119]

Fursman seldom painted commissions, but in 1940, probably as a special favor to his friend and Chicago painter, Dr. Michael Mason (1895-1963), he painted a portrait of Dr. Charles Addison Elliott, first head of the medical department of Passavant Hospital, Chicago. The portrait was hung in the library of the Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. Mason, formerly closely associated with the Summer School of Painting, and a surgeon, presented a talk at the dedication, February 1, 1940, describing the artist and his work.[120]

The Art Institute of Chicago, its school and the summer school at Saugatuck, were featured in a 1941 Life magazine article which included a photograph of the gray-haired Fursman directing the operations of an outdoor class. Life photographer Wallace Kirkland spent many summers at Ox-Bow sometimes taking macro-photography of insects and plants for magazine features.[121]

Ida died in Saugatuck on May 11, 1942, after a long illness and was remembered in her Commercial Record obituary both for her work representing the Chicago Teachers’ Federation and her interest in the growth of the Saugatuck library and Woman’s Club “and any worthwhile affairs.”[122]

Fursman died quietly at his home just one year later on Sunday, June 12, 1943, after a short illness. The Saugatuck Commercial Record paid a kind tribute to Fursman in saying:

“Through his various activities in the village… he became known to and learned to know intimately a great many people in every capacity of life; that faculty of human interest and kindliness, which was so much a part of his nature, enabled him to understand and to appreciate all people with whom he came into contact… He was a man of great integrity, simplicity and directness – one who sensed true values and avoided sham and insincerity – a friendly, genial personality… with an infectious laugh… To meet him was to be cheered… An unfailing memory, spurred on by a sense of fun and an irrepressible imagination, contributed to his ability to relate interesting anecdotes at every occasion.”[123]

Former colleagues Elsa Ulbricht, Chicago artist Alice Mason (1895-1977), wife of artist Dr. Michael Mason, instructor Francis Chapin, Gerald Landt and Winifred Phillips of Milwaukee, gathered for the funeral and moved immediately to the Ox-Bow Inn to make preparations for the opening of the summer school on June 28. The local newspaper wrote, “Friends and colleagues... were imbued with the desire to make this season successful so the school which he had established 33 years ago would be perpetuated in his memory.”[124] Shortly after the opening of the season, Lucile Fursman gave a reception in honor of Francis Chapin, her father’s successor as director, to help smooth the transition.[125]

Fursman remained very much a part of the details in running the Summer School right up until the very end. By this time, many of these details were carried out by Elsa Ulbricht and included such mundane matters as: who would run the store; upholstery for the furniture; help for the kitchen and difficulty with the gasoline shortage.[126] Before his death, Fursman had wanted to transfer his stock in the summer school to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with voting rights to transfer upon his demise. Despite the fact that the “Summer School of Painting At Saugatuck, Mich.” letterhead included in its subtitle, “The Summer School Of The Art Institute of Chicago,” the arrangement wasn’t quite formalized, and in a letter to trustee Joseph T. Ryerson and a return letter from the director, it is evident the persons at the School of the Art Institute had little knowledge of the financial workings of the school and the particulars of its stock ownership.[127]

In 1947, friends of Fursman set up the Frederick F. Fursman Art Foundation as a memorial and to assist in the maintenance of the summer school. After Lucile’s death in March 1948,[128] her heirs who were her father’s siblings, William and Frances, contributed the paintings they had inherited and the voting stock in the Summer School of Painting to the Foundation. This stock gave the foundation considerable influence in the running of the school.[129]

In addition to fund raising, the Fursman Foundation sought to make his work better known. In 1964, they mounted an exhibition of twenty-eight Fursman paintings. Many were from his Saugatuck anthology of local people. Also included were canvases from trips to France and New Mexico. The exhibition opened in July, in the Ox-Bow gallery and later moved to the Woman’s Club auditorium, which had been designed by his long time friend Tallmadge. None of the paintings were available for purchase but the foundation donated one canvas which became part of a scheme “to encourage donations to the Woman’s Club of funds to be used for maintenance.”[130]

In 1969, upon the urging of Fursman colleague Elsa Ulbricht, the Charles Allis Art Gallery, affiliated with the Milwaukee Public Library System, mounted an exhibit of forty-five paintings. Eight years later, at the suggestion of the foundation, a Fursman painting, Woman with a Green Parasol, was accepted into the National Collection of Fine Arts of the Smithsonian Institution.[131] In 1977, his painting In the Garden, was lent by the Toledo Museum for the exhibit, Currents of Expansion: Painting in the Midwest, 1820-1940, at the St. Louis Art Museum.

In September 1991, a retrospective exhibit, including more than one hundred paintings completed between 1900 and 1939, was presented under the title, Frederick Frary Fursman: A Rediscovered Impressionist, at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee Art Museum.[132] A painting by Fursman was part of the 1997 exhibition, Painting the Town: A Century of Art in Saugatuck and Douglas at the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Museum in the exhibit The Color of Modernism, The American Fauves, at the Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York.

[1] Portrait and Biographical Album of Woodford County, Illinois, (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1889), p.579.

[2] El Paso Story: The Centennial Book of El Paso, Illinois, (El Paso: El Paso Public Library Board, 1954), p.271.

[3] El Paso Journal, 7/20/1892, p.5.

[4] Report of the Illinois Board of the World’s Fair Commissioners at the World’s Columbian Exposition May 1 - Oct. 30, 1893, (Springfield: H. W. Rokker, printer, 1895), pp. 747-748. Although unusual at the time, the idea was not unique. The same year the Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota, opened decorated inside and out with pictures executed in grasses and grains.

[5] “Fred Fursman Dies,” El Paso Journal, 6/17/1943, p.1. Mrs. Mark Stevens, who wrote Six Months at the World’s Fair, (Detroit: Detroit Free Press Printing Company, 1895), p.326, wrote that the picture was a representation of the Fursman farm and a nearby spread of Mr. John Viginiuus in Woodford County. The work is illustrated on a full page, plate 19, not paginated in: The Dream City: A Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World's Columbian Exposition, (St. Louis: N. D. Thompson Publishing Co, 1893): “In the western part of the Illinois Building, covering a large expanse of wall…It was designed by Mr. Fursman.”

[6] Op. cit., Report of the Illinois Board..., pp.747-748.

[7] Chicago city directories, Chicago Public Library, 1891 through 1893.

[8] Op. cit., El Paso Journal, 6/17/1943, p.1.

[9] Elsa Ulbricht would later write in his obituary that Fursman named his daughter after French artist Ralph Laurens. However, he did not study with Laurens until 1896. Fursman probably named her after his deceased brother Laurens D. Fursman, who died of typhoid in October 16, 1895. The error is repeated again in the obituary of Lucile, Commerical Record, 3/5/1948.

[10] “Death of Mrs. Fred Fursman,” El Paso Journal, 1/22/1898, p.1.

[11] Interview by the author with Mrs. Anne Partridge Richter, Holland Michigan, November 1996. As a high school student Anne Partridge took classes at Ox-Bow and lived with the Fursman family in the summer of 1929.

[12] Chicago city directories, 1896 though 1901.

[13] Chicago Record-Herald 4/14/1901 in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 14, p.28. Efforts to locate the newspaper page were unsuccessful. The Académie Julian had a Concours (competition) arrangement with the J. Francis Smith Academy of Art. This article details the entrants for the year. “The competition was known as the Julian-Smith concours in compliment to J. Francis Smith, director of the Art Academy, which the Chicago competitors are attending.”

[14] A 1909 interview noted: “Only five years ago he was a night pupil in the same structure Art Institute, his days being spent among the ledgers and journals with which he earned his living.” Fursman told the interviewer, “I was always trying to draw when I should have been attending to something else.” “Unusual Career of Chicago Artist,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 12/5/1909, Section 2, p.8.

[15] Student record, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1902.

[16] Two of these students included John Warner Norton (1876-1934) and Albert Henry Krehbiel (1875-1945). Ethel Louise Coe (1878-1938) was also in this class and spent some summers in Saugatuck. See: Student Records of Norton, Krehbiel, Coe, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, various dates. According to the 1909 interview, op. cit., Chicago Tribune, 12/5/1909, p.8, “Within a year of entering the Institute he was able to bid goodbye to his bookkeeper’s stool, his earnings from commercial drawings and posters and magazine illustrations being sufficient for his needs and for the ‘Paris fund’ to which every possible penny was devoted.”

[17] Lena M. McCauley, “Art And Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 12/27/1902, p.8: “A band of craft workers has incorporated... the associates are Walter Whitehead, Walter F. Holler, S. J. Kennedy, Oscar Lovell Triggs, Thomas Hyde Warren, Frederick Fursman and Addison Blakely. Their views of how art should find a place in the ‘problem of living’ are hinted at in an artistic little book... by Aldric H. Worswick.”

[18] The Annual Exhibition Record of the Art Institute of Chicago 1888-1950, (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1990), p.345.

[19] Chicago city directories, 1888 through 1906.

[20] Records from Art Institute of Chicago student files, art exhibitions and city directories give his addresses as: 1900-01, 855 Rookery; 1901-02, 262 Dearborn St.; 1903, 175 Monroe; 1905-06, 2770 N. 43rd Avenue.

[21] Announcement of the 1906 class was made in Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 5/12/1906, p.11.

[22] Letter to John H. Vanderpoel from William M. R. French, French Letters, Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago, 6/23/1904.

[23] It is very possible he studied under Collin at the Académie as well.

[24] Maude I. G. Oliver, Chicago Record-Herald, 11/21/1909, section 6, p.7.

[25] Fursman most probably studied with Barlow and Tanner in Etaples, where they were both active residents.

[26] Salon de 1908, Societe des Artistes Français, Exposition Annuelle des Beaux-arts, (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1908), p.62

[27] Salon de 1909, Societe des Artistes Français, Exposition Annuelle des Beaux-arts, (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1909), p.65. Many of the titles of his works have changed over the years as records were lost. It is perhaps the job of a future scholar to draw comparisons between exhibited works and their titles to works known today.

[28]Exhibition of Paintings of Frederick Frary Fursman of Chicago, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1909). In this modest four page catalogue, the twenty-nine paintings are numbered and titled along with a brief note: “Mr. Fursman has returned recently from three years sojourn in France where the pictures included in this catalogue were painted.”

[29] Harriet Monroe, “Meeting of Old and New In Chicago Art Galleries,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 12/12/1909, part 8, p.6.

[30] The Art Institute of Chicago Circular of Instruction of the School of Drawing, Painting, Modeling, Decorative Designing, Normal Instruction, Illustration and Architecture, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1910), p.17.

[31] “Art Institute of Chicago Summer Art School,” Art Institute of Chicago Bulletin, 1910, p.10.

[32] Fursman faculty records, Ryerson Library Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. For announcement of his hire see: Maude I. G. Oliver, “Among the Artists,” Chicago Record-Herald, 6/26/1910, section 7, p.4.

[33] There has been some confusion as to whether Clute or Fursman arrived in Saugatuck first. Fursman was teaching in Chicago, not Saugatuck, in 1910. Although some scholars have imagined the Art Institute hired Fursman to teach in Saugatuck that summer, there is no proof, and logic leads one to believe the two joined forces in Saugatuck with Fursman providing additional strength in teaching and Clute offering his ready roster of paying students. In Lena M. McCauley, Chicago Evening Post, 6/25/1910, p.6, Fursman and Edward J. F. Timmons (1882-1960) were “leading groups of young people to paintable country in the immediate vicinity Chicago,” which probably did not include Saugatuck due to its distance from Chicago. For evidence that Clute and Fursman’s classes were consolidated in Saugatuck, see: Maude I. G. Oliver, “Among the Artists,” Chicago Record-Herald, 6/4/1911, section 7, p.9. The class was officially announced in Chicago Evening Post, 6/17/1911, p.6. Clute taught landscape painting and Fursman figure painting, see: Chicago Eveing Post, 7/26/1911, in the Art Institute of Chicago scrapbooks, vol. 28. Efforts to locate the newspaper page were unsuccessful. In the Chicago Evening Post, 4/20/1912, p.6, it is stated the school in Saugatuck was entering its fourth season; this must have been based upon Clute’s earlier school in Park Ridge in the Summer of 1909.

[34] An advertisement for the school appears in The Sketchbook, Vol. 5, No. 10, June 1906.

[35] Instructions from Elsa Ulbricht diary, Ulbricht Papers, in posession of Jeune Nowak Wussow, 6/20/1914 (hereinafter: Ulbricht papers).

[36] Letter to Frederick F. Fursman from Harrison S. Morris, 10/22/1910 and 1/11/1911, Ulbricht papers. The painting had previously been shown at the Carnegie International exhibit in 1910, in Pittsburgh. It is likely Mr. Morris first became aware of the work from this show since it was international in scope.

[37] Playbill for Pabst Theater production of “A Colonial Girl,” sponsored by the Milwaukee Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, 5/20/1911, Ulbricht papers.

[38] Ulbricht joined the faculty of the Wisconsin School of Art in 1911. Fursman convinced her to enroll in the Summer School of Painting in 1913. See: Elsa Ulbricht, “Recollections Of The Summer School Of Painting At Saugatuck, Michigan,” typescript, no date, c.1970, Ulbricht papers.

[39] He never earned any kind of certificate or diploma from the school, but in 1922, was a director of its Alumni Association.

[40] Harriet Monroe, “Prize Winners at Autumn Exhibit,” Chicago Tribune, 11/19/1911, p.B6. “Only One Week More of the American Art Collection -- A Critique in Review,” Chicago Record-Herald, 12/17/1911, p.7.

[41] James William Pattison, “The Annual Exhibition of American Art,” Fine Arts Journal, Vol. 26, January 1912, pp.38-39.

[42] Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 10/5/1912, p.8.

[43] “Saugatuck Local,” Commercial Record, Saugatuck, Michigan, 6/22/1913, p.4 and Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 9/18/1913, p.6.

[44] Elsa Ulbricht diary, 6/19/1913, Ulbricht papers.

[45] Maude I. G. Oliver, “Gossip of the Artists,” Chicago Sunday Herald, 12/27/1914, section 2, p.5: “... whence he has imported some of the last words uttered by some of the most advanced of the experimental schools of color.”

[46] “Saugatuck Locals,” Commercial Record, 6/12/1914, p.4.

[47] Ethel Louise Knox, “Saugatuck Art School Vies With Any in the Country,” Grand Rapids Herald, 8/17/1930, magazine section, p.4. See also: “Chicago Artists Trying Painting In Open Air,” Chicago Evening Post, 7/10/1914, p.15.

[48] “Local News,” Commercial Record, 7/3/1914, p.2.

[49] “Art Students Give Saugatuck Exhibit,” Chicago Evening Post, 8/10/1914, p.4.

[50] Exhibition of paintings by Transient Exhibitors. Frederick Fursman, (Toledo: Toledo Museum of Art, 1914).

[51] Elisabeth Jane Merrill, “Artist Sees Tints Many Never Know,” Toledo Blade, Cleveland Museum of Art library artist file, 12/11/1914.

[52] The painting had previously been at the Toledo Museum in January 1913, when it toured with the Seventeenth Society of Western Artists annual show. It was also illustrated under the heading of ... “Pictures Here Reproduced Are Among Popular Ones,” Chicago Daily News, 12/13/1912, p.6., when it was exhibited in Chicago to begin the tour in December 1912. It was illustrated again in George B. Zug, “Among the Art Galleries,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, 12/22/1912, M-3. The announcement of its purchase appeared in the Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 2/8/1913, p.8.

[53] Letter to Mr. Stevens from Fursman, 2/12/1915, Ulbricht papers.

[54] Senseney, Fursman and T. Austen Brown all had taken studios in the Tower Building. Art critic Lena M. McCauley commented, “Mr. Senseney is an acquisition to the artistic circles of the city.” She spoke highly of his colored etchings, see: Chicago Evening Post, 11/14/1914, p.8.

[55] “Clute Memorial Exhibit,” Chicago Daily News, 4/17/1915, p.6.

[56] Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 12/26/1914, p.6. The reader could interpret this as a disguised treatise on the teachers’ own brand of fauvism.

[57] “Gossip of the Artists,” Chicago Sunday Herald, 12/27/1914, section 2, p.5.

[58] Registration card of Henry C. Hannig, 11/14/1914, and Mrs. A. E. Tanberg, 9/26/1914, which show Fursman as the instructor; Illinois Department of Education, defunct school records, microfilm, alphabetical, Springfield, IL.

[59] “Chicago’s Art Advance To Be Told At Dinner,” Chicago Herald, 2/4/1915, p.9.

[60] “ ‘Radical Art’ Gets A Place,” Chicago Daily News, 3/2/1915, p.3. It may be interesting to note he sat on the jury this year when twelve hundred works were submitted with three hundred accepted.

[61] Maude I. G. Oliver, “Gossip of the Artists,” Chicago Herald, 3/14/1915, section 11, p.4.

[62] Maude I. G. Oliver, “Gossip of the Artists,” Chicago Herald, 4/18/1915, section 2, p.6. Senseney’s importance in the Chicago artists community was verified when in 1916, he was voted president of the Chicago Society of Etchers, see: “Art Notes,” Chicago Journal, 1/25/1916 in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 33. Efforts to locate the newspaper page were unsuccessful.

[63] Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 6/24/1916, p.8.

[64] Albert Nelson Marquis, editor, The Book of Chicagoans, (Chicago: A. N. Marquis and Company, 1917), p.252.

[65] “Exhibitions at the galleries,” Chicago Tribune, 6/10/1917, part 7, p.6. However, no criticism can be located concerning the show.

[66] “Exhibitions at the galleries,” Chicago Tribune, 6/17/1917, p.C6.

[67] Lena M. McCauley, “Art and Artists,” Chicago Evening Post, 7/17/1917, p.8.

[68] Lena M. McCauley, “Among The Art Dealers,” Chicago Evening Post, 9/11/1917, p.9.

[69] “The Far Reaching World of Art,” Chicago Examiner, June 1918, in Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks, vol. 37, p.122. Efforts to locate the newspaper page were unsuccessful.

[70] “Up to the Times,” in “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 8/26/1919, p.11. No longer serving any purpose, the Lighthouse Service removed the lantern from atop the tower, and for the next twenty years leased the old station buildings to Fursman for the sum of $10.00 a month. As Fursman was only there during the summer, the building began to show signs of wear for maintenance. After some twenty years of use, Fursman let the lease go and the buildings and property were sold in 1936 to his architect friend Arthur F Deam. The Deams used the buildings during the summer and steadily made rennovations.  The old Kalamazoo Light station was finally destroyed in on April 3, 1956 by a tornado.

[71] “Sketch at Saugatuck,” in “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 6/3/1919, p.9.

[72]Lena M. McCauley, “Saugatuck Painters Found Art Colony,” in “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 9/2/1919, p.11. The next summer a pageant with the theme of “Indians and Pioneers” was elaborately written and staged by students and guests at the school. The pageant garnered considerable press coverage by Lena M. McCauley, “From Tepee to Saugatuck Studio,” in “News of the Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 8/17/1920, p.10.

[73] Louise James Bargelt, “Architectural Exhibit on at Art Institute,” Chicago Tribune, 4/11/1920, part 9, p.7, and Thomas E. Tallmadge, “To the Alumni,” “News of the Art World,” Chicago Evening Post, 5/3/1920, p.10. In this letter to the alumni, Tallmadge proposed spending the sum of $800 to improve the facilities of the school and accommodate what was expected to be a large increase in the student population due to the affiliation of the school with the alumni association.

[74] Op. cit., Lena M. McCauley, Chicago Evening Post, 9/2/1919, p.11.

[75] Interviews by the author with Mrs. Winifred Flack and Mrs. Sylvia Randolph of Saugatuck, November 1996. Flack and Randolph were students at the school in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

[76] Marguerite B. Williams, “Saugatuck Summer School Of Painting,” Chicago Daily News, 4/14/1920, p.10.

[77] “Dick Heuer Hung In Chicago,” Commercial Record, 11/27/1919, p.1. The painting was mentioned in the Chicago Press: “Mr. Fursman Returns,” in “News Of The Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 11/11/1919, p.11. The article states they had come back to Chicago to live and Fursman was continuing to commute to teach at th the State Normal college in Milwaukee.

[78] Lena M. McCauley, “Summer School Is on a Firm Basis,” “News of the Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 3/22/1921, p.9.

[79] Letter to Charles Hutchinson from Frederick Fursman, Hutchinson Archives, Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago, 8/4/1920.

[80] “RESUME - The Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck, Michigan,” compiled by Elsa Ulbricht, Ulbricht papers. Rupprecht had been a student of Fursman’s at Saugatuck beginning in 1913. He met his artist wife, Isobel Steele MacKinnon (1896-1972) at Ox-Bow, and they were later married December 27, 1921.

[81] The purchase was announced in “Art Institute Alumni,” in “News of the Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 3/8/1921, p.9.

[82] Eleanor Jewett, “Art And Architecture,” Chicago Tribune, 6/19/1921, p.G5. Op. cit., McCauley, Chicago Evening Post, 3/22/1921, p.9. McCauley said the funds were raised from a stock offering among students; forty-four stockholders included thirty-one students. By 1940 it was reported the school had expanded to a 200 acre plot, see: “Classes at Saugatuck,” Art Digest, Vol. 14, 5/1/1940, p.26.

[83] “Local News and Comment,” Commercial Record, 10/15/1920, p.1.

[84] Op. cit., Chicago Tribune, 6/19/1921, p.G5.

[85] Minutes of stockholders of Ox-Bow Summer School of Art, 1/6/1921, Ulbricht papers. Minutes of 1/6/1924, show two new outside directors, etcher Lee Sturges (1865-after 1947) and Wisconsin artist Elsa Ulbricht, replaced the previous outside directors. A summary by Elsa Ulbricht of the articles of incorporation of the Summer School of Painting, c.1948, incorrectly states that Babcock was a “C. F. Babcock.”

[86] Minutes of stockholders of Ox-Bow Summer School of Art, 2/12/1921, Ulbricht papers.

[87] Minutes of stockholders of Ox-Bow Summer School of Art, 9/8/1921, Ulbricht papers.

[88] His painting Under The Apple Tree (location unknown), exhibited in 1919, was featured with an illustration in the Chicago Daily News, 3/8/1919, p.10, as an example of artists abandoning dark tones in favor of bright sunlight.

[89] “Local News and Comment,” Commercial Record, 2/9/1923, p.8. The painting was illustrated in “Harry A. Frank Prize Winner,” Chicago American, 2/1/1923, p.6. It was also illustrated in “Prize Work By Fursman,” in “News of the Art World,” supplement, Chicago Evening Post, 2/13/1922.

[90] As he had previously exhibited a portrait of Dick Heuer, this time he showed a portrait of Annie Heuer. “Medal Goes to Fursman, Chicago Evening Post, 2/26/1924, p.8.

[91] “Frederick Frary Fursman – Dir. Announces the Sixteenth Season of the Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck Michigan June 23, to Aug. 30, 1924.” The black and white portrait is unsigned but it is similar to other works of Walter Marshall Clute about that time and may have been completed before he left for California. The biography on the back of the brochure notes, “Mr. Fursman has had a wide experience teaching and had sic the happy faculty of imparting to others a knowledge of the principles of the Art of Painting.” Copy in the Ulbricht papers.

[92] Letter to Frederick Fursman from S. J. Duncan Clark, of the Chicago Evening Post, 9/2/1924, Ulbricht papers.

[93] Commercial Record, 6/28/1925, pp.1, 4.

[94] “Local News and Comment,” Commercial Record, 11/14/1924, p.8. The article continues, “The Fursmans anticipate a profitable and pleasant time.” Mention of Dr. McVey in Saugatuck as early as 1920, is made in op. cit., Chicago Evening Post, 8/17/1920.

[95] J. K., “Foursman and Ufer Exhibit at Gallery,” Milwaukee Journal, 2/1/1925, Ulbricht papers. The critic was commenting on his painting Morning, which won the Frank Prize.

[96] R. A. Lennon, “One-Man Shows at the Art Institute,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 7/21/1925, p.1. An illustration of his Morning (location unknown), appeared on p.16. Another illustration, Maybelle and Connie location unknown, appeared in the 9/15/1925 issue, p.2.

[97] Possibly Wesley John, “Another Point of View,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 7/28/1925, p.6. For further criticsm see: Ernest Heitkamp, “Fursman’s Paintings On Exhibit,” Chicago Herald-Examiner, 10/11/1925, in the Art Institute of Chicago scrapbooks, vol. 50, col. 1, p.40.

[98] “Fursman to direct Denver Art School,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 9/22/1925, p.2. The school had a full program in the fine arts with one hundred fifty students in attendance.

[99] “Furnsman sic Is Given Welcome By Painter Folk of City,” Rocky Mountain News, Cleveland Museum of Art library artist file, 10/18/1925.

[100] Ida Fursman, “Fursmans Arrive At Denver,” Commercial Record, 10/8/1926, p.1. She wrote, “The benches and tables of the first advertised camping grounds were floating in two feet of water... we are becoming quite proud of a distinctly improved order of small town hotels.”

[101] “Local News and Comment,” Commercial Record, 4/15/1927, p.8. See also: Lena M. McCauley, “School at Saugatuck to Open on June 27,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 5/3/1927, p.6.

[102] “The Summer School of Painting At Saugatuck, Mich.,” four page school brochure, for season 6/27-9/3/1927, Ulbricht papers.

[103] Florence Davies, “The Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck, Mich.,” Detroit News, typed excerpted transcript of article, 7/28/1929, Ulbricht papers.

[104] “Notes About Artists,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 12/27/1927, p.5.

[105] “Local News and Comment,” Commercial Record, 10/25/1929, p.8.

[106] “Local News and Comment,” Commercial Record, 12/5/1930, p.8, and “Fursmans to France,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 11/25/1930, p.4. She was an accomplished artist and passed the jury for exhibition into the annual show of Chicago & Vicinity artists at the Art Institute in 1932, and again in 1937.

[107] Lena M. McCauley, “Saugatuck Season Gets Under Way,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 7/8/1930, pp.1, 4, and Lena M. McCauley, “Saugatuck Ready to Wind Up Season,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 9/2/1930, p.2.

[108] Fursman had successfully opened a gallery for his school, designed by Thomas Tallmadge, where student works were displayed during the summer season. “Painters Hit Trails to Ox-Bow, Saugatuck,” The Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, 6/26/1928, p.4.

[109] As previously mentioned, Krehbiel and Fursman studied with Gari Melchers in 1902 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

[110] “Local Artists Exhibit,” Commercial Record, 7/3/1931, p.1.

[111] “The Frederick Fursman Exhibit,” Commercial Record, 7/27/1934, p.1.

[112] There were just eighteen students enrolled at the height of the season in 1933. “Summer School of Painting,” Commercial Record, 7/21/1933, p.1.

[113] “Studio School and Staff Ready for New Art Year,” Chicago Evening Post, 10/11/1932, Art Section, part II, p.4.

[114] “Saugatuck Attends Dedication of Mural at School Auditorium,” Commercial Record, 6/8/1934, p.1.

[115] Although no known photograph of the work exists, the painting was described by several former high school students. The room was later used as a study hall. The most remembered feature of the mural was its “greeness.” The indoor sketch is owned by the Saugatuck family of the woman who was the model. The mural was lost to fire when that portion of the school burned in 1950.

[116] “Chicago Paintings Now on Display,” The Daily Illini, 12/3/1937, p.6.

[117] Jo Miller, “Brilliant, Morbid Features in Art Are Shown,” The Daily Illini, 12/4/1937, p.2. The show was probably held on the recommendation of Aurthur F. Deam, head of architectural design at the University of Illinois. Deam had come to Ox-Bow as early as 1930. Deam served on the summer school board for many years and was president of the board 1944-1957. Heros, Rogues and Just Plain Folks: A History of the Saugatuck Area, (Saugatuck: Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society, 1998), pp.44-45.

[118] William Judy, “Chicago Artists in Exhibit,” Sunday Courier, Champaign, Illinois, 12/5/1937, p.4.

[119] “Michigan Artists’ Show Attracts Large Crowd,” Commercial Record, 7/30/1937, p.1.

[120] “Portrait by F. F. Fursman Unveiled,” Commercial Record, 2/9/1940, p.1.

[121] “Chicago Art Institute: Its French Exibit Is Tops, Its School Best in Midwest,” Life, 9/8/1941, p.54.

[122] “Mrs. Ida Fursman Died Monday Evening May 11,” Commercial Record, 5/15/1942, p.1.

[123] “Frederick F. Fursman, Artist, Dies at Home Here,” Commercial Record, 6/18/1943, p.1.

[124] “Local Happenings,” Commercial Record, 6/18/1943, p.8 and “Francis Chapin New Director of Summer School,” 7/2/1943, p.1.

[125] “Miss Lucile Fursman Gives Reception,” Commercial Record, 7/25/1943, p.1. Chapin had begun teaching at the Saugatuck school in 1935, Ulbricht history of Ox-Bow, Ulbricht papers. A 1925 graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, he began teaching lithography there in 1931. In a 1941 letter to Fursman, friend Elsa Ulbricht wrote she was still concerned about securing sponsorship from the Art Institute and implied Chapin was becoming part of the school. Her efforts in this letter refer to Art Institute school director Norman Rice. See letter in Ulbricht papers, 9/7/1941. Chapin had a long and successful career teaching at the School of the Art Institute.

[126] Letter to Frederick Fursman from Elsa Ulbricht, 3/17/1943, Ulbricht papers.

[127] Letter to Joseph T. Ryerson from Frederick Fursman, 11/12/1941, and Letter to Frederick Fursman from Joseph T. Ryerson, 11/19/1941, Ulbricht papers.

[128] Laurens Lucile’s obituary appears in the Commercial Record, 3/5/1948.

[129] Draft of letter written by Chicago artist Michael Mason, to solicit funds for the foundation, undated, Ulbricht papers. A history of the school is in the Ulbricht papers, compiled in 1950 by Elsa Ulbricht. The best summary which can be made is that through 1950, the School of the Art Institue and the Summer School of Painting held a loose affiliation. At times this relationship was close and at times it was distant. Thomas Tallmadge, who died in1940, had worked to keep the two organizations as close as possible. Upon Tallmadge’s death, his shares were bequeated to the Art Institute of Chicago Alumni Association. Fursman’s shares went first to his daughter, then upon her death to her aunts and uncles and in the same year 1948, into the Fursman Foundation. Upon Rupprecht’s death in 1954, his shares went into his estate, represented by his daughter. In 1972, the status of the Ox-Bow school was changed to not-for-profit and in 1995, it became part of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, however, the Saugatuck school maintains its own board of directors.

[130] “Saugatuck Woman’s Club to Give Painting,” Commercial Record, 8/6/1964, p.9. The article adds: “As no Fursman paintings are available for purchase the winner will treasure this valuable prize.”

[131] Letter to Elsa E. Ulbricht from Joshua C. Taylor, 5/17/1977, Ulbricht papers.

[132] The catalogue which accompanied the exhibition contained numerous factual errors which this essay has corrected.