Gwathmey had studied one year, each, at North Carolina State College, ***, and at the Maryland Institute, Baltimore, before entering on a period of four years of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, which he completed in 1930. The Pennsylvania Academy twice awarded him Cresson Traveling Fellowships. Before settling in New York in the early 1940s, and joining the faculty of Cooper Union, Gwathmey had taught at Beaver College, Glenside, Pennsylvania, and at Carnegie Technical Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Like many artists who came to maturity in the 1930s, Gwathmey was a social activist in his life and in his art. A member of Artists Equity, he worked to establish artists' rights, but his commitment to social justice extended to all workers, as he demonstrated in 1949, when he joined picketers protesting sweatshop conditions in New York. In his paintings Gwathmey eschewed the political agressiveness of many of his contemporaries in expressing his feeling for men and women who earn their way by physical labor. Often drawing on his Southern heritage for specific subject matter, he instead presented images of monumental dignity.
Among the numerous prizes awarded Gwathmey were those conveyed by the Academy for paintings included in its annual exhibitions: the Isidor Gold Medal, 1971; Saltus Gold Medal, 1977; an Obrig prize, 1978; and an Altman prize, 1979. He was represented in New York by the ACA Gallery until 1961, and thereafter by the Terry Dintenfass Gallery.
Following his retirement from Cooper Union in 1965, Gwathmey asked his son, architect Charles Gwathmey, to build what proved to be a seminal example of contemporary domestic design. He resided in this home, in Amagansett, New York, on Long Island, to his death.
Gwathmey was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters 1973, the same year in which he was elected an Associate National Academician. As an incoming Associate, he completed the National Academy's biographical questionaire, supplying the following in response to the section for "general remarks."
I was fortunate enough to live in Manhattan for twenty-six years and to have taught at Cooper Union from 1942-1965, with a schedule of two evenings and one full day. We now live in Amagansett with a view of the ocean in a house of distinction designed by our son. Complete sympathy and encouragement, and financial help during the post-school days from my family. I've fortunately had teaching jobs from the first year out of school.
