With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Arthur Covey
Education/Curation, Painting/Drawing
1877 – 1960
- Biography/Description of Work
A mid-westerner, Covey studied for three years at the Chicago Art Institute under Frank Duveneck, graduating in 1899. During the early twentieth century, from 1900-1901, Arthur Covey became a staff artist and art editor at Indianapolis Press and Cleveland Plain Dealer. A year later, he taught at the Chicago Art Institute and set up his own studio until 1904 when he traveled to Germany to attend the Royal Academy in Munich. Covey became an assistant to the British mural painter, Frank Brangwyn, from 1905-1908, when he returned to New York City. He completed his first commission in 1916, murals for the Wichita Library in Kansas. In 1921, Covey married children’s book author and illustrator, Lois Lenski. He won a medal of honor from the Architectural League in 1925 for murals he painted for the Kohler Company, and served as president of the National Mural Painters Society from 1926 to 1929. Shortly after Lenski and Covey’s son, Stephen Covey, was born in 1929, they moved to Harwinton. From 1929 to 1942 Covey taught at the National Academy Schools in New York. In 1936 he was commissioned by the WPA to paint murals in Bridgeport and Torrington, and in 1938-39 he created brass and redwood murals for the Contemporary Arts Building at the New York World’s Fair. In the 1950s, the Coveys moved to Florida where Arthur Covey died ten years later in 1960.
- Sources view
- Ransom, David F. Burlington-Harmony Hill Roads National Register Historic District Nomination. April 1996, National Park Services. Archives of American Art - http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/arthur-sinclair-covey-papers-7531/more#section_1 – accessed 1/12/2016. Roger Plaskett - Municipal Historian for the Town of Harwinton.
- Associated Resource(s)