1884 - 1949
Although born to farm life, Victor Higgins early demonstrated a strong drive to be an artist. At fifteen he left home for Chicago, where he worked and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Academy of Fine Arts for ten years. Carter H. Harrison, mayor of Chicago and an art collector, took an interest in Higgins and sponsored his study abroad. Higgins lingered in New York before leaving for Europe and there came under the influence of Robert Henri's realist style and Jay Hambidge's theories of dynamic symmetry.
Higgins arrived in Paris in 1910 and took up studies at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière under René Ménard and Lucien Simon. He moved on to Munich, where he studied with Hans von Hyeck. He returned to New York in 1913, in time to see the famous Armory Show before going back to Chicago. There Carter Harrison commissioned him and Walter Ufer, another Chicago artist whom Higgins had met in Europe, to paint landscapes of the Southwest; this occasioned Higgins's first visit to Taos, New Mexico. So taken was he with Taos that in 1914 he decided to settle there. Four years later he married the artist Sara Parsons. Their first home was on the property of Mabel Dodge, reigning patroness of Taos.
Although Higgins maintained Taos as his artistic headquarters, he continued to consider himself a Chicago artist. He regularly showed in the annual "Artists of Chicago and Vicinity" exhibitions, in which he won numerous awards in the late 1910s. During this period he painted the people and customs of Taos in a fairly traditional manner. Often he would make photographic studies of his subjects before beginning to paint. In the 1920s he came under the influence of Paul Cézanne and grew increasingly concerned with form and volume. His subject matter changed as well, with a new interest in pure landscape and in the figure in the studio.
Higgins's work was shown widely in the 1920s. A traveling exhibition in 1923 circulated to the Macbeth Galleries, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1928 Higgins exhibited flower, figure, and landscape paintings at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York. The following year he was included in Museum of Modern Art's second exhibition, Paintings by 19 Living Americans.
In a 1933 exhibition of work by Taos-based artists held at the Chester H. Johnson Galleries, Chicago, Higgins exhibited a group of studies of nude Indian women that critics recognized as marking a new development in his style. Large forms, rendered with a frank realism, were set against backgrounds developed in the broken planes of Cubism.
In 1941 an exhibition of Higgins's freely painted watercolors of the New Mexican landscape circulated from the University of New Mexico to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to the Ferargil Galleries, New York. In 1943 he painted a mural, The First Crossing at Rocky Ford, for the Rocky Ford, Colorado, post office. He also did murals for the Missouri state capitol in Jefferson City.
Higgins contributed intermittently to the Academy's exhibitions from 1918 through 1932; thereafter he participated in only the annuals of 1944 and 1945. He won the Benjamin Altman Prize in 1918 for Fiesta Day, acquired by the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, two years later; and the Altman prize again in 1932 for Winter Funeral (University of New Mexico, Taos), often cited as his masterwork. Perhaps in part because Higgins did not consistently participate in Academy exhibitions, fourteen years elapsed between his election as Associate and his election as Academician. In his definitive 1991 study of the artist, Dean A. Porter quotes Higgins's bemused reaction to the Academy's action, given in a June 9, 1935, letter to his brother John responding to John's congratulations on the election:
[block quote:]
I hope that I am going to be surprised about that and find that it means a lot more than I think it does. I say this without disdain, however. For I really appreciate the honor. But it is strange for how little these gestures have to do with the making of the thing they mean to honor by recognition. All painters I think, should be born Academicians and when they show signs of arriving somewhere they should be publicly expelled. But that would be recognition after the act-and toned with the sure brush is the present method. Anyway it should have been done a long time ago.
[end of block quote]
Higgins did not present the requisite diploma work to confirm his election, and the status of full Academician was posthumously conferred by a Council resolution of April 24, 1950.
RP
Higgins arrived in Paris in 1910 and took up studies at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière under René Ménard and Lucien Simon. He moved on to Munich, where he studied with Hans von Hyeck. He returned to New York in 1913, in time to see the famous Armory Show before going back to Chicago. There Carter Harrison commissioned him and Walter Ufer, another Chicago artist whom Higgins had met in Europe, to paint landscapes of the Southwest; this occasioned Higgins's first visit to Taos, New Mexico. So taken was he with Taos that in 1914 he decided to settle there. Four years later he married the artist Sara Parsons. Their first home was on the property of Mabel Dodge, reigning patroness of Taos.
Although Higgins maintained Taos as his artistic headquarters, he continued to consider himself a Chicago artist. He regularly showed in the annual "Artists of Chicago and Vicinity" exhibitions, in which he won numerous awards in the late 1910s. During this period he painted the people and customs of Taos in a fairly traditional manner. Often he would make photographic studies of his subjects before beginning to paint. In the 1920s he came under the influence of Paul Cézanne and grew increasingly concerned with form and volume. His subject matter changed as well, with a new interest in pure landscape and in the figure in the studio.
Higgins's work was shown widely in the 1920s. A traveling exhibition in 1923 circulated to the Macbeth Galleries, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1928 Higgins exhibited flower, figure, and landscape paintings at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York. The following year he was included in Museum of Modern Art's second exhibition, Paintings by 19 Living Americans.
In a 1933 exhibition of work by Taos-based artists held at the Chester H. Johnson Galleries, Chicago, Higgins exhibited a group of studies of nude Indian women that critics recognized as marking a new development in his style. Large forms, rendered with a frank realism, were set against backgrounds developed in the broken planes of Cubism.
In 1941 an exhibition of Higgins's freely painted watercolors of the New Mexican landscape circulated from the University of New Mexico to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to the Ferargil Galleries, New York. In 1943 he painted a mural, The First Crossing at Rocky Ford, for the Rocky Ford, Colorado, post office. He also did murals for the Missouri state capitol in Jefferson City.
Higgins contributed intermittently to the Academy's exhibitions from 1918 through 1932; thereafter he participated in only the annuals of 1944 and 1945. He won the Benjamin Altman Prize in 1918 for Fiesta Day, acquired by the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, two years later; and the Altman prize again in 1932 for Winter Funeral (University of New Mexico, Taos), often cited as his masterwork. Perhaps in part because Higgins did not consistently participate in Academy exhibitions, fourteen years elapsed between his election as Associate and his election as Academician. In his definitive 1991 study of the artist, Dean A. Porter quotes Higgins's bemused reaction to the Academy's action, given in a June 9, 1935, letter to his brother John responding to John's congratulations on the election:
[block quote:]
I hope that I am going to be surprised about that and find that it means a lot more than I think it does. I say this without disdain, however. For I really appreciate the honor. But it is strange for how little these gestures have to do with the making of the thing they mean to honor by recognition. All painters I think, should be born Academicians and when they show signs of arriving somewhere they should be publicly expelled. But that would be recognition after the act-and toned with the sure brush is the present method. Anyway it should have been done a long time ago.
[end of block quote]
Higgins did not present the requisite diploma work to confirm his election, and the status of full Academician was posthumously conferred by a Council resolution of April 24, 1950.
RP
