biography of Natalie VAN VLECK (1901-1981)

Birth place: NYC

Death place: Woodbury, CT

Addresses: NYC (1912-28); Woodbury, CT (1928-on)

Profession: Painter, craftsperson, framemaker

Studied: ASL with Agnes Richmond (1914-19), Geo. Bridgman (1919), Robert Henri (1920), and Max Weber (1921-22).

Exhibited: Brownell-Lambertson Gal, 1932 (solo); Town of Woodbury, 1937, 1938 (loan exhibitions).

Work: Flanders Nature Center, Woodbury, CT

Comments: Van Vleck was among the earliest American women modernists, working in a cubist style in the early 1920s. Around 1924, she established a "Wood Carving" studio on 45th Street where she carved picture frames, screens, panels, cabinets, boxes, and other carved objects. She painted in Mallorca (1922), the Caribbean (1924, 1926, 1929), and spent the winters of 1930-32 on the island of Moorea near Tahiti. Her cubist-style paintings and woodblocks of the early 1920s evolved toward a form of regionalism, yet her works from Tahiti are unique in their rhythmical style, recalling the jungle fantasies of Henri Rousseau. In 1928, she settled at her family"s farm in Woodbury, CT and designed and built her own English-style studio there; she designed every fixture, and even welded her own modernist aluminum furniture. She stopped painting in 1934, most likely because she devoted her full time to developing her 200-acre farm. Known as a woman of enormous energy, she single-handledly developed a successful turkey business, raised prize Hampshire sheep, and built an orchid greenhouse. In 1963 she fulfilled her dream of chartering her farm as the Flanders Nature Center, a land trust which maintains nature trails and conservancy programs.

Sources: Peter Falk, Natalie Van Vleck, A Life in Art and Nature (Madison: Sound View Press, 1992); Art in Conn.: Between World Wars.