Skip to main contentBiographyIn the late summer of 1922, the painter Augustus Vincent Tack (1870–1949) wrote: “I have been developing some compositions of forms and colors based on essential rhythm and to my mind they are the most interesting things I have so far accomplished. They are abstractly decorative at the same time combining a deep mystical meaning which stimulated the imaginations. It was given to the ancients to express the emotion of serenity—I sometimes think it may be given to our time to express the emotion of movement.” [1]
Born to a wealthy Catholic family from Pittsburgh, Tack was the second of fourteen children. His father’s business, the American Oil Development Company, originated in western Pennsylvania but the family moved to New York City when Tack was in his early teens. There he attended a Jesuit school, St. Francis Xavier College, already having demonstrated a strong interest in art. It seems that the ecclesiastic décor of the adjoining St. Francis Xavier Church, featuring murals of the Stations of the Cross by German-born American artist William Lamprecht, was a formative influence on him. After high school, Tack enrolled in classes at the Art Students League in New York. Among his teachers were John Henry Twachtman and Henry Siddons Mowbray, the latter a noted figure painter and also a muralist. Tack began his studies with Mowbray in 1893 and from him learned mural technique, especially the practice of projecting to enlarge his drawings. Tack traveled to Europe in 1890, 1893, and 1895. He painted in an impressionist style but also studied traditional drawing techniques with Luc-Olivier Merson, from whom he learned the method of pouncing for the transfer of drawings to another surface.
Although Tack is best known for his abstract paintings with facets of jewel-like colors evoking spiritual themes, during his lifetime he was a muralist, painter of religious subjects, and primarily a portraitist. He executed fifteen large-scale mural commissions for Roman Catholic churches as well as for government buildings, two of the latter being the legislative chamber of the New Parliament Building in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1920, and the governor’s reception room in the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, 1928. He did portraits throughout his career, especially from the 1930s until the end of his life. Due mostly to the efforts of his great friend and sponsor, the art collector and museum founder Duncan Phillips, in the post-World War II period Tack painted several distinguished military officers including Generals Marshall, Pershing, and Eisenhower, and Tack was working on a large scale painting of President Harry S. Truman’s cabinet, entitled The High Command, when he died.
As Tack developed as a painter, he was greatly influenced by Tonalism, a style of art that like American Impressionism had arisen out of the American Barbizon movement, but included both painting and photography. Using muted color harmonies, low contrast and somewhat out-of-focus renderings, Tonalists such as George Inness, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, and Gertrude Kasebier depicted more meditative and intimate subjects, often in a natural rather than urban setting. Tack, however, felt that his most significant artistic mentor was the artist John La Farge, a painter who was known for his mural and stained glass commissions. La Farge, along with the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and others, championed a revival of medieval and Renaissance techniques that came to be known as the American Renaissance, with the intent of elevating contemporary public art and architecture to the level of fine art.
Tack’s reputation peaked early in his career. In 1892, he was accepted for membership in the Art Students League, with life membership granted in 1902. In 1894 Tack established his first studio in New York City and listed himself as a portrait painter in the city directory. He was already exhibiting his work at the Society of American Artists, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, and the Carnegie International. After 1897, Tack began splitting his time between New York City and Deerfield, Massachusetts, where the painter George Fuller had set up an art colony. Tack married Fuller’s eldest daughter, Agnes Violet Gordon Fuller, in 1900. He was a member of numerous art associations such as the New Haven Paint and Clay Club, the Century Association, and the Coffee House. Tack also taught at the Art Students League from 1906 until 1910 and the Yale School of Art from 1910 to 1913. He was awarded an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.
Tack exhibited his work and was supported by New York dealers William Macbeth, who included him in eight group exhibitions between 1907 and 1914, and Charles W. Kraushaar, who first exhibited Tack’s work in 1896 and continued to do so intermittently through 1929. His greatest champion, however, was art collector and critic Phillips, whom Tack first met in 1914. When the Phillips Collection opened in 1921, it was the first museum of modern art in the country. Phillips bought Tack’s paintings for his collection, encouraged museums and galleries to show his work, and made connections for portrait commissions. After Tack’s death in 1949, Phillips helped sell and/or place his work in collections and supported his widow until she died in 1959. Although Tack was more formally and ideologically conservative in comparison to the modernists that Phillips also collected, such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, Phillips never wavered in his support of Tack whom he described as “one of America’s most original painters.”[2] The Phillips Collection today owns more than forty of Tack’s works.
Notes:
[1] Leslie Furth, “Augustus Vincent Tack: A Mystic’s Journey to Abstraction,” in Augustus Vincent Tack: Landscape of the Spirit. Exhibition catalogue (Washington, DC: The Phillips Collection, 1993), 48.
[2] Duncan Phillips, “Original Painting of Today,” Formes 21, no. 21 (January 1932), 197.
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for Augustus Vincent Tack
Augustus Vincent Tack
1870 - 1949
Born to a wealthy Catholic family from Pittsburgh, Tack was the second of fourteen children. His father’s business, the American Oil Development Company, originated in western Pennsylvania but the family moved to New York City when Tack was in his early teens. There he attended a Jesuit school, St. Francis Xavier College, already having demonstrated a strong interest in art. It seems that the ecclesiastic décor of the adjoining St. Francis Xavier Church, featuring murals of the Stations of the Cross by German-born American artist William Lamprecht, was a formative influence on him. After high school, Tack enrolled in classes at the Art Students League in New York. Among his teachers were John Henry Twachtman and Henry Siddons Mowbray, the latter a noted figure painter and also a muralist. Tack began his studies with Mowbray in 1893 and from him learned mural technique, especially the practice of projecting to enlarge his drawings. Tack traveled to Europe in 1890, 1893, and 1895. He painted in an impressionist style but also studied traditional drawing techniques with Luc-Olivier Merson, from whom he learned the method of pouncing for the transfer of drawings to another surface.
Although Tack is best known for his abstract paintings with facets of jewel-like colors evoking spiritual themes, during his lifetime he was a muralist, painter of religious subjects, and primarily a portraitist. He executed fifteen large-scale mural commissions for Roman Catholic churches as well as for government buildings, two of the latter being the legislative chamber of the New Parliament Building in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1920, and the governor’s reception room in the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, 1928. He did portraits throughout his career, especially from the 1930s until the end of his life. Due mostly to the efforts of his great friend and sponsor, the art collector and museum founder Duncan Phillips, in the post-World War II period Tack painted several distinguished military officers including Generals Marshall, Pershing, and Eisenhower, and Tack was working on a large scale painting of President Harry S. Truman’s cabinet, entitled The High Command, when he died.
As Tack developed as a painter, he was greatly influenced by Tonalism, a style of art that like American Impressionism had arisen out of the American Barbizon movement, but included both painting and photography. Using muted color harmonies, low contrast and somewhat out-of-focus renderings, Tonalists such as George Inness, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, and Gertrude Kasebier depicted more meditative and intimate subjects, often in a natural rather than urban setting. Tack, however, felt that his most significant artistic mentor was the artist John La Farge, a painter who was known for his mural and stained glass commissions. La Farge, along with the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and others, championed a revival of medieval and Renaissance techniques that came to be known as the American Renaissance, with the intent of elevating contemporary public art and architecture to the level of fine art.
Tack’s reputation peaked early in his career. In 1892, he was accepted for membership in the Art Students League, with life membership granted in 1902. In 1894 Tack established his first studio in New York City and listed himself as a portrait painter in the city directory. He was already exhibiting his work at the Society of American Artists, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, and the Carnegie International. After 1897, Tack began splitting his time between New York City and Deerfield, Massachusetts, where the painter George Fuller had set up an art colony. Tack married Fuller’s eldest daughter, Agnes Violet Gordon Fuller, in 1900. He was a member of numerous art associations such as the New Haven Paint and Clay Club, the Century Association, and the Coffee House. Tack also taught at the Art Students League from 1906 until 1910 and the Yale School of Art from 1910 to 1913. He was awarded an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.
Tack exhibited his work and was supported by New York dealers William Macbeth, who included him in eight group exhibitions between 1907 and 1914, and Charles W. Kraushaar, who first exhibited Tack’s work in 1896 and continued to do so intermittently through 1929. His greatest champion, however, was art collector and critic Phillips, whom Tack first met in 1914. When the Phillips Collection opened in 1921, it was the first museum of modern art in the country. Phillips bought Tack’s paintings for his collection, encouraged museums and galleries to show his work, and made connections for portrait commissions. After Tack’s death in 1949, Phillips helped sell and/or place his work in collections and supported his widow until she died in 1959. Although Tack was more formally and ideologically conservative in comparison to the modernists that Phillips also collected, such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, Phillips never wavered in his support of Tack whom he described as “one of America’s most original painters.”[2] The Phillips Collection today owns more than forty of Tack’s works.
Notes:
[1] Leslie Furth, “Augustus Vincent Tack: A Mystic’s Journey to Abstraction,” in Augustus Vincent Tack: Landscape of the Spirit. Exhibition catalogue (Washington, DC: The Phillips Collection, 1993), 48.
[2] Duncan Phillips, “Original Painting of Today,” Formes 21, no. 21 (January 1932), 197.
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