Wood’s Quarry, Walter Stuempfig, 1962, oil on canvas, 80 x 40 in. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Forbes

According to Auseklis Ozols, who for the past 30 years has been director of the New Orleans Academy of the Fine Arts and who was a student of Stuempfig’s in the ‘60s, there are three aspects of painting that Steumpfig stressed to his students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. “He emphasized the need to have a thorough knowledge of the technical aspects of painting, a concern for the aesthetics of a well organized and composed picture, and an ability to express one’s deepest emotions through individualized brushstrokes,” Ozols explains. “He would constantly ask his students ‘What does that painting mean? What is it about the subject that you love?’”

While Ozols despairs that few art teachers today have Steumpfig’s ability to inform and inspire their students, he is quite pleased that a large group of Steumpfig’s paintings are currently being exhibited and studied. The Forbes Galleries in New York is presenting a selection of the 100-plus paintings by the artist that were acquired by Malcolm S. Forbes (1919-1990), the legendary publisher of Forbes magazine, and his children. The exhibition will remain on view in the Forbes Building at 60 5th Avenue in New York until early November.

Strathmere, n.d., Walter Stuempfig, oil on canvas: 36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in. The Forbes Collection, New York

Stuempfig trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he later taught in the studios once used by Thomas Eakins, Thomas Anschutz, and Cecelia Beaux. “He spent his creative life exploring the depths of tradition as the tides of the modern artwork moved towards abstraction and expressionism,” according to the Forbes Gallery curatorial staff. “His reaction to non-objective art could be explosive, his praise for academic rigor no less emphatic.”

The curators assert, “He painted his local environs and its inhabitants in a style blending direct observation with a palpably solitary ambience that came to be described as the vision of a romantic realist. Stuempfig’s strongest passions throughout his career were the Pennsylvania countryside, the seashore, the derelict beauty of the urban landscape, architecture, and the human form.”

City Park, Gay Wright, Auseklis Ozols, oil, 48 x 48 in.

Although Stuempfig did not teach courses in landscape painting, he regularly invited students to join him in the countryside surrounding Philadelphia, where they painted directly from nature. “He used to take us out to an abandoned quarry where we could all paint, and Walter would come around to comment on our pictures,” Ozols remembers. “He was passionate about painting directly from nature and never used photographs. I know people like to think that plein air painting is something new, but Walter always pointed out that great artists of the past did sketches and studies outdoors and used those to inform their studio paintings.” For more information, visit www.forbesgalleries.com, www.auseklisozols.com, or www.noafa.com.