Deane G. Keller

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Deane Galloway Keller (1940- January 4, 2005) was an American artist and educator. Keller was a draftsman, painter, sculptor, and teacher who instructed students in the visual arts for forty years, most notably in figure drawing and the artistic application of human anatomy.

The son of Deane and Katherine Hall Keller, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Yale University, where he studied under his father, and a Master of Arts in Education from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut. Additionally, Keller studied in Florence, Italy, with Nera Simi, and anatomy under David Rubins at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Keller also held a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Sculpture.

Portrait of Wayne Southwick (detail) by Deane G. Keller.

For 25 years Keller served as a professor at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. The head of the drawing department, in 2001 he was honored with the endowed Deane G. Keller Chair of Classical Drawing and Figurative Art, a position which he held until his death. Keller was also a member of the faculty of the New York Academy of Art, the Art Students League of New York, the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, and the Woodstock School of Art. He lectured on drawing at the Yale Center for British Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

A portrait, landscape and still life painter, Keller was in his later years engaged in a series of large charcoal drawings of draped figures inspired by his travels to the Middle East. His work is in many public and private collections, including the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Brandywine River Museum, the Slater Museum at the Norwich Free Academy, Woodstock School of Art, Yale University, and the Lyme Academy.

Keller authored numerous articles, and wrote two books, Figure Drawing in the Academy Tradition, 1890-1998, and Draftsman's Handbook: A Resource and Study Guide for Drawing from Life, published in 2003.