Leon Kroll

{{Infobox artist | name =Leon Kroll | image =Leon Kroll.jpg | imagesize = | alt = | caption =Leon Kroll, April 18, 1929 | birth_name = | birth_date ={{birth date|mf=y|1884|12|6}} | birth_place =New York City, New York, U.S. | death_date ={{death date and age|mf=y|1974|10|25|1884|12|6}} | death_place =Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S. | spouse = | field =Painting | training = | movement = | works = | patrons = | influenced by = | influenced = | awards = | elected =National Academy of Design (1927)<br />American Academy of Arts and Letters (1930) | website = }} '''Leon Kroll''' (December 6, 1884 – October 25, 1974)<ref name=SSDI>{{cite web|title=Leon Kroll|url=http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/ssdi/individual_record.asp?recid=080280754|work=Social Security Death Index|publisher=FamilySearch.org|access-date=July 29, 2011}}</ref> was an American painter and lithographer. A figurative artist described by ''Life'' magazine as "the dean of U.S. nude painters",<ref>{{cite book|last=Davis|first=Kenneth Morton|title=The Life and Works of Leon Kroll with a Catalogue of His Works|year=1993|publisher=UMI Dissertation Services|location=Ann Arbor, Michigan|oclc=31484438|page=14}}</ref> he was also a landscape painter and also produced an exceptional body of still life compositions. His public art includes murals for the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C. He created his only mosaic for the chapel ceiling at Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.

==Biography== Leon Kroll was born into a musical family on lower Second Avenue in New York City. His father was a violinist, and his cousin was composer William Kroll.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kroll|first=Leon|editor1-last=Hale|editor1-first=Nancy|editor2-last=Bowers|editor2-first=Fredson|title=Leon Kroll: A Spoken Memoir|year=1983|publisher=University Press for Virginia|location=Charlottesville|isbn=0813909929|page=2}}</ref> He studied at the Art Students League of New York under John Henry Twachtman,<ref name=AAA>{{cite web|title=A Finding Aid to the Leon Kroll Papers, 1905-1974|url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/leon-kroll-papers-9170/more|work=Archives of American Art|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|access-date=July 29, 2011}}</ref> and at the Académie Julian in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens in the late 1800s.

In 1911 and 1912, he showed in the group exhibition of The Independents initiated by Robert Henri at the MacDowell Club in New York. "It was a self chosen group: you had to be elected by the other ten. Hopper was in it and Speicher, John Sloan as well as Henri, Glackens and Luks - It was a very good group of the best artists" said Kroll.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Levin|first=Gail|title=Edward Hopper an intimiate biography|year=1995 |isbn=0394546644|pages=86|publisher=Knopf }}</ref>

In 1913 Kroll showed work at the Armory Show.

In addition to his own work, Kroll taught at the Art Students League of New York and the school of the National Academy of Design, where he had his first solo exhibition in 1910, was named as Associate in 1920 and as full Academician in 1927. Kroll also taught advertising and poster design at Cooper Union from 1926-1930. In 1911 he was elected to the Salmagundi Club New York as an Artist member.<ref>Centennial roster of the Salmagundi Club since its inception in 1871 to 1972. (SCNY, New York, 1972, p. 72)</ref> In 1930, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<ref name=AAAL>{{cite web|title=Deceased Members |url=http://www.artsandletters.org/academicians2_deceased.php |work=American Academy of Arts and Letters |access-date=July 29, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726004624/http://www.artsandletters.org/academicians2_deceased.php |archive-date=July 26, 2011 }}</ref> He was also named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1950. Kroll died in Gloucester, Massachusetts aged 89.<ref name=MassDeath>{{cite web|title=Leon Kroll|url=http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?ti=0&indiv=try&db=madeath1900&h=276187|work=Massachusetts Death Index|publisher=Ancestry.com|access-date=July 29, 2011}}{{subscription required}}</ref>

Artist-writer Jerome Myers in his autobiography ''Artist In Manhattan'' said:

{{blockquote|Leon Kroll has the eye of a hawk and the heart of a dove, which is to say that he has both intelligence and feeling. What he has given to our art is a matter of public record over more years than either he or I would care to say.

An academician and at the same time a humanitarian, Leon Kroll is a consummate craftsman, always sympathetic towards youthful talent, boldly standing up for the rights of others as well as for his own. His art activities have been prodigious, overlapping several generations. As a teacher and lecturer, he has been foremost in the van of the Woodstock tradition. He was an able president of the Painters, Sculptors and Engravers Society, and is an outstanding member of the National Academy. A fluent performer in many branches of art, his convictions have remained unshaken by the extremists; he has consistently carried his classic banner through the turmoil of modernism. Leon Kroll's success is to be respected. Personally, I have always found him a gallant adversary in argument, an artist who has captured many hearts as well as many prizes.<ref>Myers, Jerome (1940). ''Artist in Manhattan''. New York: American Artists Group, Inc. {{OCLC|1969673}}</ref>}}

== Work == Among Kroll's major public works are murals at these locations: * Department of Justice Building, 1935 * Worcester Memorial Auditorium, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1938–1942 * Senate chamber murals for the Indiana Statehouse, with farm figures described by critics as "Bolsheviks", 1952 (destroyed 1970s)<ref>{{cite web|title=The First Hundred Years (Statehouse timeline)|url=http://www.in.gov/idoa/2435.htm|website=Indiana Department of Administration|access-date=15 June 2017}}</ref> * Shriver Hall at Johns Hopkins University, circa 1953 * Normandy American Cemetery near Colleville-sur-Mer, France, 1953, his only mosaic<ref>{{cite magazine |last=McBride |first=Bunny |date=June 5, 2019 |title=Of Bombs and Beaches: Leon Kroll's Mosaic Ceiling at Omaha Beach |url=https://france-amerique.com/en/of-bombs-and-beaches-leon-krolls-mosaic-ceiling-at-omaha-beach/ |magazine=France-Amérique|access-date=November 3, 2019 }}</ref>

{{Gallery |title= |width= |align= |File:In the Country by Leon Kroll.jpg|alt1=A white family with a black woman are in a lightly forested area in front of a house. In the background is a mountain range.|''In the Country'' (1916) |File:Leo Ornstein at the Piano (color) by Leon Kroll.jpg|alt2=A man sits at and plays a piano.|''Leo Ornstein at the Piano'' (1918) |File:Worcester Memorial Auditorium mural.jpg|"Shrine of the Immortal," Worcester Memorial Auditorium, completed 1941 |File:NOAC-Plafond-Chapelle.jpg|Chapel ceiling mosaic at Normandy American Cemetery (1953) }}

== References == {{Reflist}} *Leeds, Valerie Ann. Leon Kroll Revisited. New York: Gerald Peters Gallery, 1998.

==External links== {{Commons category|Leon Kroll}} * [http://www.fineoldart.com/browse_by_essay.html?essay=340 online biography] * [http://rogallery.com/kroll_leon/kroll-biography.htm another online biography] * [https://online.nmartmuseum.org/nmhistory/art/kroll-santa-fe-hills.html Works at New Mexico Museum of Art]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kroll, Leon}} Category:1884 births Category:1974 deaths Category:20th-century American painters Category:American male painters Category:American muralists Category:Art Students League of New York alumni Category:Knights of the Legion of Honour Category:American people of German descent Category:Art Students League of New York faculty Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:Section of Painting and Sculpture artists Category:20th-century American male artists Category:American recipients of the Legion of Honour