American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 25

George Biddle (American, 1885–1973)
(Still Life with Flowers), 1970

Color monotype, 9 1/4 x 11 in.
Collection of The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York. Gift of
the Baker/Pisano Collection, 1998.13.1

George Biddle graduated from Harvard College in 1908 and
Harvard Law School three years later. He then left to study
art at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he met and became
friends with Mary Cassatt (both descended from Main Line
Philadelphians). In 1928 he went on a sketching trip through
Mexico with Diego Rivera. At the onset of World War II,
he was appointed by his Groton School classmate and friend
President Franklin D. Roosevelt to be chairman of the War
Department Art Advisory Committee (WDAAC). As such
Biddle traveled through various war zones during World War
II and published his recollections in a book, Artist at War
(1944). His oeuvre reflects his broad travels and includes many
different styles, subjects, and media including monotype.
NOTES:
Brandon, Art and War, 70.
Morgan, Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists, 41-42.

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