Boardman Robinson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boardman Robinson (September 6, 1876 - September 5, 1952) was a Canadian-American artist, illustrator and cartoonist.
Robinson first studied art at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He would later go on to study at the Académie Colarossi and the École des Beaux-Arts, both in Paris, where he was influenced by the political cartooning of Honoré Daumier. Upon returning to the United States, Robinson worked as a cartoonist, with his cartoons appearing in the New York Times and the New York Tribune among others.
In 1915, Robinson travelled to Eastern Europe with the journalist John Reed and saw first hand the effects of World War I on countries such as Russia, Serbia, Macedonia and Greece. He illustrated Reed's account of the journey in the book The War in Eastern Europe (1916). On his return from Europe, Robinson worked at the socialist journal The Masses. His highly political cartoons as well as the general anti-war stance of The Masses was deemed to have violated the recently passed Espionage Act of 1917, and The Masses had to cease publication. Robinson, along with the other defendants were acquitted on October 5, 1918. Following The Masses, Robinson became a contributing editor to The Liberator and the New Masses, working with former Masses editor Max Eastman.
Robinson would later go on to teach art at Art Students League in New York City (1919 - 30) and head the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center (1936 - 47). Some of his students include Bill Tytla, Edmund Duffy and Gerhard Bakker.
Robinson is also known for creating various murals. Some of his commissions include murals at the Rockefeller Center, the Department of Justice building in Washington DC and Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh. Robinson illustrated several books, among these are editions of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (1933), Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1941) and Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1942).
