Thomas Hart Benton

John Steuart Curry

Charles Albert Morgenthaler

Frederick E. Shane

Grant Wood

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American Regionalism: Visions from the Heartland

Frederick E. Shane

American, 1906–1992

Fred Shane was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Beginning in 1932, he was a professor of art at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and he was appointed Chairman of the Art Department in 1958 until his retirement in 1971. Shane became an associate of Thomas Hart Benton after they met in 1935, and like Benton, Shane focused his aesthetic attention on rural America, representing the ordinary citizens of mid-Missouri and the Midwestern landscape.

The Aesthetes

The Aesthetes probably portrays academics with whom Shane socialized when he was a University of Missouri professor. The painting represents the liveliness of academic gatherings while gently parodying “aesthetes” engaged in intellectual discourse. The central figure seems to be speaking or performing for five companions in a domestic setting.

Preliminary study for The Aesthetes

This study for the painting The Aesthetes illustrates the artist’s working methods. Shane would often make several preparatory drawings for his paintings before settling on his final design. Once the composition was determined, Shane would transfer the drawing on to a gessoed canvas stretched over a masonite panel.

Portrait of Mrs. Kate Robinson

Most of Shane’s early works were portraits. He preferred to paint the likenesses of working class people rather than members of high society. In the depression-era Portrait of Mrs. Kate Robinson, the artist made no attempt to glamorize the suffering and hardships of his subject’s life. Shane depicts the elderly, working-class woman wearing neat but well-worn clothing as she stares out into space with a stoic, steadfast expression.

Portrait Study (Mrs. Kate Robinson)

This drawing of Mrs. Kate Robinson was originally a study for a projected figure composition of a man and woman eating in a restaurant and was completed after Shane's Portrait of Mrs. Kate Robinson.

Like most of Shane’s portraits, the drawing represents an everyday person rather than a glamorized likeness. In the introduction to the book Drawings by Fred Shane (which includes this drawing), author Sidney Larson describes the aesthetic power of Shane’s portraits:

A Shane portrait is not merely a topographical description of a face, but is composed of selected facets of a complex personality, reflecting the experiences and character of artist and model—a creative fusion of form, insight, and character.

Frederick E. Shane
American (1906–1992)
Portrait Study (Mrs. Kate Robinson)
n.d.
Conté crayon
(75.5)
Gift of the artist

The Mummified Indian

A common theme in Shane’s work is the vulgarity of roadside tourism. In The Mummified Indian, the artist added a morbid slant to the tourist theme. Produced during the first half of the twentieth century, the print features awkward tourists wearing cameras and strange hats, and gawking at a mummified Native American inside a glass case.

Preliminary Drawing for ‘Missouri Musicians’

In the 1940s, Fred Shane was one of several artists commissioned by the Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney Department Store in St. Louis to paint images of life in the state of Missouri. The store gave the artists complete freedom to choose their subjects, and Shane chose to depict local musicians performing outside, surrounded by a few rural spectators. The models for the musicians and dancers shown in the picture were probably from mid-Missouri.

Farm in the Rockies

From 1925 to 1926, Shane studied at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. The mountain landscape held a particular attraction for him, and he continued to vacation in the region after he moved to Missouri. The lithograph Farm in the Rockies presents a celebration of humanity’s relationship with nature in rural America.

Cripple Creek

Cripple Creek depicts the effects of economic depression on a rural Colorado community. The town, previously a prosperous mining center, was abandoned during the 1930s. Shane represents the effects of economic devastation, picturing the deserted, dilapidated buildings and the scarred, deforested hills of the landscape.

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Frederick E. Shane
American (1906–1992)
Cripple Creek
1946
Lithograph
(83.66)
Gift of Mrs. Elmer Ellis