“In the Open Air” at the Woodstock School of Art

“In the Open Air: The Art Student League’s Woodstock School of Landscape Painting and Its Impact,” which runs from October 11 to December 13 at the Woodstock School of Art, is perhaps the first exhibition ever to provide a full survey of landscape painting in Woodstock from the beginning of the 20th century through the 1970s. Curated by art historian Bruce Weber, who also authored the comprehensive catalog, the show illustrates the key role played by the League’s summer school swamping the village with artists. It showcases the various styles that evolved as well as the artists’ connections to and significant influence on the broader art history currents of the time. The show has been organized in conjunction with the League’s 150th-anniversary celebration.

Approximately 50 works are on display, most culled from private collections. (Weber photographs every work of art he encounters in the course of his art-historical research, and his resulting archive of 30,000 photographs was invaluable in sourcing the paintings.) It’s a sumptuous banquet, from the moody Tonalist paintings of John F. Carlson to the delightful snowy vistas of fields and mountains of Julia Leaycraft and Florence Ballin Cramer to the blocky, Cubist-inspired works of Charles Rosen and Earle B. Winslow to Walter Goltz’s and John William Bentley’s warmly chromatic farm building scenes to the lyrical abstractions of John W. Taylor, William Pachner, Richard Mayhew, and Bruce Dorfman (whose award-winning Umbrian Landscape, with its nod to Paul Klee, is a personal favorite). 

The pleasure of looking is heightened by the fact that one recognizes certain features, though the land was far less forested than it is today; the open fields not only offered artists a panoply of views but also access to their subjects on foot. In addition, many of the buildings that housed the classes and student accommodations as well as artists’ houses survive (including the large studio built by the League on Mill Hill Road in 1912—today the First Church of Christ, Scientist—and the accompanying dormitory on Rock City Road). 

The Art Students League had run its summer school in Old Lyme, Connecticut, but the high cost of lodging and, Weber speculates, a shift in aesthetics, from Impressionism to the more cutting-edge style of Tonalism, which was influenced by the works of James McNeill Whistler, prompted the League to relocate its summer school to Woodstock in 1906. (Yet another factor was Woodstock’s proximity to New York City.) League student John T. Carlson had studied with Birge Harrison, who was teaching painting at the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts colony, located nearby on Mt. Guardian, and the two Tonalist painters became the first teachers at the newly formed Woodstock School of Landscape Painting. 

Woodstock provided a setting “that allowed an incredible richness of diversity for plein air painting of the land,” says Weber—meadows, fields, streams, forests, mountains, farm buildings, and a charming village, complete with church steeple. By 1912, under Carlson’s leadership, the school was attracting hundreds of students. To accommodate them, the local farmers converted their barns and outbuildings and constructed sheds with north-facing windows. Students also lodged in boarding houses in town, with room rates starting at $7 a week. “They could stay as long as they wanted, and some of the painters stayed year-round,” enduring primitive living conditions, notes Weber. “They starved, they helped each other, they partied, and if someone made money, they’d share it,” he says. Subgroups of artists formed, such as the Rock City Group, who showed their work in New York City, Boston, and Indianapolis, and the Blue Dome Fellowship, which specialized in the painting of nude models in the open air. 

The 1913 Armory Show, which introduced Americans to avant-garde art from Europe, sent shockwaves through the art community, and in 1916 Cezanne-inspired Charles Rosen replaced Carlson. He was joined the next year by Andrew Dasburg, who’d spent time in Paris. Other Modernists who came to the school were Daniel Putnam Brinley and Konrad Cramer, an immigrant from Munich. The stylistic sea change, competition from the plethora of low-priced classes offered independently by numerous artists, and low enrollment as a result of World War I presented challenges. In 1921 the school hired George Bellows, Eugene Speicher, and Robert Henri as a way to juice up interest—to no avail: In 1922 the school closed. 

The art colony continued to flourish through the next two decades: During the Depression, Woodstock was second only to New York City in the number of artists who were selected for commissions for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. Arnold Blanche, who arrived in Woodstock in the summer of 1921 to study with Rosen, was instrumental in attracting artists from the West and other places he’d taught, according to Weber. “He was a progenitor of keeping Woodstock alive as a place for artists to come to,” he says. 

Blanche taught at the League and convinced it to open a summer school in Woodstock, which it did, for the second time, in 1947; after a period of sagging attendance at the League, enrollment had boomed thanks to the passing of the GI Bill, which provided servicemen with stipends for tuition and supplies. Classes were taught at the former National Youth Administration Crafts Training Center, a crafts school constructed by the federal government in 1939 and 1940 that had never opened. 

One of the students at the school in 1950 was Robert Angeloch. He had studied with Yasuo Kuniyoshi and other prominent artists at the League and married artist Nancy Summers, daughter of a longtime member of the colony. Angeloch was instrumental in bringing back landscape painting to the Summer School of the Art Students League, as it was called, which had initially focused on the figure. He taught classes there in the 1960s and meanwhile, in 1968, along with four other artists, started the Woodstock School of Art (WSA), hosting classes in the fall, winter, and spring. When the League’s summer school closed in 1979, Angeloch successfully lobbied for the WSA to take over the premises. The complex was owned by the City of Kingston—the inability of the League to purchase the buildings from the city had been a factor in the school’s closing—and eventually the WSA was able to obtain ownership of the buildings. Angeloch, who is represented in the exhibition by both his representational and abstract works, was also an accomplished printmaker and opened a printmaking facility at the WSA, which continues to thrive, having recently expanded into a new facility.

The still-vibrant Woodstock arts colony is distinctive in part for its longevity, which Weber attributes to “the recirculation of younger artists coming to study and settle here through generations.” As late as 1955, “there were 70 galleries in the village” according to Weber, which is obviously not the case today; however, the tradition of art-making, including landscape painting, remains strong, as evidenced by the high caliber of classes held at the WSA, which attract students from around the nation, and the other institutions in the village. As evidenced by this exhibition (which was preceded by three other historical shows curated by Weber at the school), the richness of that tradition is partly predicated on knowing what came before.

An opening reception for “In the Open Air” will be held on October 11 from 2 to 4 pm. Curator Bruce Weber will present two gallery talks, on October 26 at 2 pm and November 30 at 2 pm. On November 8 at 2 pm, there will be a panel discussion and book signing with Weber and Art Students League instructors and alumni.

This article appears in October 2025.