Lucile E. Blanch, née Lundquist,, was an American painter and Guggenheim Fellow. She was noted for her murals, commissioned by the government during the Great Depression years of the 1930s to create a more uplifting environment.
Early life and Education
Lucile E. Blanch was born in 1895 in Hawley, Minnesota to Charles E. and May E. Lundquist. She was variously known as Lucille Blanch, Lucile Lunquist Blanch, Lucile Lundquist-Blanch, and Lucille Lundquist-Blanch. She studied at the Minneapolis School of Art with her future husband Arnold Blanch, and other notable artists like Harry Gottlieb and Adolf Dehn. From 1918, she studied on a scholarship under Boardman Robinson, as part of the Art Students League of New York. She also studied with artists like Kenneth Hayes Miller, Frank Vincent DuMond and Frederick R. Gruger. While in New York, she married her husband, Arnold Blanch, and they traveled to France to continue their art studies.
Career
Lundquist and her husband later moved to Woodstock, New York where they helped build the Woodstock Art colony. They divorced in 1935.She was friends with Eugenie Gershoy, who sculpted her at work. After her move to Woodstock, New York, Blanch began exhibiting work in local group shows as well as with the New York Society of Women Artists and the Whitney Studio Club. As Lucile and her husband Arnold were building their reputation as Woodstock artists they supported themselves by selling tapestries they wove, as well as running a small cafeteria. They eventually would become key figures in the revitalization of the Woodstock Art Colony. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933, and from that point on her art was collected and was shown in a number of important galleries, notably the Whitney Museum. From 1932 to 1943, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Whitney Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. had were collecting her work. After her divorce to Arnold Blanch, Lucile taught at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida from 1935 to 1936. In 1937, she was given a solo exhibition at the Milch Galleries. Also in 1937, her work appeared in an exhibition of American oil paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Arts which showcased realistic scenes along side surrealist and abstract work. In 1939, she participated in an annual contemporary American watercolor show yet again at the Whitney Museum of American Art which included seventy artists who were invited to send two watercolor or pastel works each. Later in 1939, Blanch participated in an exhibition by the American Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers - their first since 1932. The exhibition began May 16, 1939 and continued until June 10 that same year.
Murals
Murals were produced from 1934 to 1943 in the United States through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the Section of Fine Arts, of the Treasury Department. The murals were intended to boost the morale of the American people suffering from the effects of the Depression by depicting uplifting subjects the people knew and loved. Murals were commissioned through competitions open to all artists in the United States. Almost 850 artists were commissioned to paint 1371 murals, most of which were installed in post offices. 162 of the artists were women. The murals were funded as a part of the cost of the construction of new post offices, with 1% of the cost set aside for artistic enhancements. In 1938 Lucile Blanch painted an oil on canvasWPA commissioned mural titled Osceola Holding Informal Court with His Chiefs in the United States post office in Fort Pierce, Florida. The mural is on display at Fort Pierce City Hall. In the town of Appalachia, Virginia, she painted the mural Appalachia, also oil on canvas in 1940. The tempera mural, Rural Mississippi-from Early Days to Present was completed in 1941 for the Tylertown, Mississippipost office. In addition, she painted murals in the post offices of Flemingsburg, Kentucky and Sparta, Georgia. The Flemingsburg mural was completed in 1943 as an oil on canvas, titled Crossing to the Battle of Blue Licks'', while the Sparta post office project consisted of three panels. The oils on canvas depicted an antebellum plantation house, the granite quarry near Sparta and the third showed local Hancock County scenery. Blanch was one of the few artists who actually painted WPA murals in the same town for which the work was commissioned and accepted input from local residents prior to the painting process.
Blanch began her career focusing on realist subjects, but she increasingly became an abstractionist. By 1928, Blanch's style was set apart by color and humor. Her choice of subject at this time coming primarily from circus performers and animals shown depicted in bright spot lighting.
Awards
In 1931, Blanch was awarded Medal of First Award for Graphic Arts at San Francisco Art Association's annual exhibit. In 1933, Blanch was given a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to enable creative work in painting abroad for one year. The average monetary value of the fellowships given that year were $2,500 each. In 1934, received a prize for her work at the Wanamaker Regional Exhibition in New York.
