Sprinchorn, Carl (1887-1971)

Born in Broby, Sweden, Sprinchorn traveled to the US in 1903 at age sixteen to study with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art, continuing his study through 1907. An early exhibition at the Union League in 1908 made a deep impression upon one critic, who called “Winter Day” and its ferryboat on the East River an image “we shall never forget—the dreariest, wettest canvas we ever saw, and therein is its power...It is realism pushed to the eleventh degree” (“Around”). After a period managing the Henri Art School, Sprinchorn taught at the Art Students League in Los Angeles and then traveled to Paris before returning to the New York art scene. His work appeared in the famous Armory Show of 1913, at the 1914 World’s Fair, and numerous group and solo shows. “But in 1919,” Sprinchorn later wrote, “chance brought me to the Maine woods,” and it is for his paintings of rural life there that he is perhaps best known, first during the 1920s and then periodically between 1937 and 1952. Against this desire to grow as an artist were what Sprinchorn termed “almost continuous economic sieges,” and Sprinchorn’s abilities as an administrator—which resulted in his working as director of the New Gallery for a period. His work was respected by contemporaries like Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, and the avant-garde Stettheimer sisters, and has grown in reputation since then. 11 works at the Portland Museum of Art. 4 works at the Farnsworth Museum of Art. 8 works at the Brooklyn Museum. 3 works at the Memorial Art Gallery. 1 work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 16 works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1 more image at FAP.

Works Consulted: “Around the Galleries,” New York Sun 14 Jan. 1908: 6; Chris Huntington/Charlotte McGill, Carl Sprinchorn Admiration Society 

Works in the New Deal Collection at GVCA by Carl Sprinchorn: