Vance - Fred Nelson

Source: Indianapolis Star 13 August 1933 Sun p 4

Nashville, Ind Aug 12 – Miss Marie Goth of Indianapolis has been awarded the Fred Nelson Vance prize for her portrait of Governor Paul V. McNutt, the outstanding canvas in the Brown County Art Association’s midsummer exhibition. Mrs. Joseph Vance of Crawfordsville, mother of Fred Nelson Vance who died here about five years ago, awards $50 each year for 10 years as a memorial to her son. Mr. Vance was one of the colony of artists here for a number of years. The committee of awards was composed of Adlph R. Shulz, Carl Graf and Edward K. Williams local artists.

Article with his picture – Source: Indianapolis Star Sun 6 Sept 1903

A young Indiana artist, who is rapidly making a name for himself in Paris and who can justly be proud of his record because all he is he has made himself is Fred Nelson Vance, the 21 year old son of Mr. and Mrs. Goerge Vance of Crawfordsville. Three years ago the young man went to the Chicago Conservatory of Art and there he rose rapidly in his studies. Naturally gifted as an artist, he made great headway in his chosen line – mural decoration. He received a number of prizes for proficiency and was regarded by his teachers as being especially promising. It was at the urgent solicitation of his Chicago instructors, who foresaw a brilliant future for Vance, that he made extra efforts which enable dhim to go to the great French art center. In Paris, he has been a typical Bohemian, living in the Latin quarter and studying under the famous Julian. Of Julian he takes drawing afternoons he takes color study under Jean-Paul Laurens, and his evenings are devoted to black and white studies at Vitti’s studio. At all of these schools he is regarded as the best draftsman attending. The Julian school offers monthly prizes, one of 100 frances and another of 50 francs and in both of these classes the young American artist has been successful. In Paris all of his time has been devoted to his work and though he has received many flattering offers to do outside work in mural decoration, he has always refused, desiring first to become thoroughly proficient before engaging in practical work. In Chicago, however, he was the first assistant of the artist who decorated the interior of the Field Museum and some of his work there received high praise from all artists who have viewed it. During the spring, Vance made a trip through Italy, visiting Rome, Venice, Florence and a number of other cities in Italy. In Rome he spent several weeks studying the old masters in the galleries of the Vatican. While there he was fortunate enough to get to see the Pope a few weeks before the latter’s death. During the summer he spent considerable time at the “Village of Roses,” a small French town on the British channel. There Vance was much patronized by the wealthy English. He was wined and dined by the swell set of the little summer resort, which is somewhat historic as the former home of Victor Hugo. While there he was the guest of some New York friends. Early in the summer he spent some time on the famous and picturesque Breton coast where he made a number of sketches which he has sent home for exhibition. Vance will remain in Paris for a number of years yet and at the conclusion of his course of studies he will probably return to this country to take up active work in the field, which he has chosen and which offers great opportunities, as the newer system of mural decoration is coming into vogue rapidly.

Source: Life of Ezra Pound by Noel Stock p 40

By November 1907 he was moving about among the townsfolk: he met the editor of the local paper and searched for signs of intellectual life. A student by the name of Emanuel took him to the studio of Fred Nelson Vance, an artist whose work he had seen and liked. Born in Crawfordsville in 1880, Vance studied painting first in Chicago and later at various academies in Paris and as a pupil of E. Vedder in Rome. He lived at the corner of Plumb and Jefferson Streets, Crawfordsville and also had or was connected with an art shop. He painted mainly murals. Having lived in Paris he was regarded, apparently, as rather “advanced” company. “Have just met the town artist returned from 72 Notre Dame Des Champs,” Pound wrote to a friend, “so I guess I am fer hell and gone.” He told his family: “Vance proves human and paints pretty well, especially mural stuff.” He was one of the “few royal fellows’ celebrated in the poem, “Rendondillas,” among the notes to which appeared the following: “Vance, an American painter, chief works: Christ appearing on the Waters (Salon, Paris ’03) and the new bar-room in San Diego. When the magazine, Blast with its calliope pink cover appeared in 1914-15, with contributions from Pound, Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, etc. Vance displayed copies in the art shop window. But the painter and his friends wer enot enough to reconcile Pound to Crawfordsville or its countryside. “I assure you,” he wrote to Hessler in Nov or Dec, “that Indiana is the last or at least sixth circle of desolation.” He had a crying need he said for civilization – mere degenerate decadent civilization, as represented by cocktails, kissable girls …

Source: Indianapolis Star Thursday 2 Sept 1926 p 9

Fair Art Awards Announced – Oil Paintings – Any Subject Second, Fred Nelson Vance; Landscape 1st, Fred Nelson Vance; Decorative Panel for Definite Space Third, Fred Nelson Vance

Source: Nashville, Indiana Brown County Democrat, Thursday 18 Aug 1938 p 1 – The new fall exhibit of the Brown County Art Gallery Association was hung Monday. This show will remain in the galleries until November. In a few days a selected jury will meet to award the annual Fred Nelson Vance Memorial prize for the outstanding picture of the year, displayed in the galleries here. This prize was established several years ago by Mrs. Vance, mother of Fred Nelson Vance in memory of her son who was a member of the Brown County Art Colony.

Source: Indiana Art Collector: https://indianaartcollector.com/artists/fred-nelson-vance-1880-1926/

Fred Nelson Vance 1880-1926 - Fred N. Vance was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana in 1880. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Academy of Chicago, in Paris at the Academy Julian and for a time with Max Bohn at Etaples, France. Returning to Indiana, Fred Vance worked with his father, George Vance as a mural decorator. Among the most important pieces of his work was the decoration of the grill room at the US Grant Hotel of San Diego, California. He also had charge of an art school in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1912. There he married Mary Sabiston. They then moved to Indianapolis from Crawfordville. During WWI Vance saw service in France and Italy and acted as interpreter for the YMCA department. His work there kept him for some time after the armistice. Vance was the president of the Alliance Francaise in Indianapolis in 1924. He also served the Indiana Artists Club as secretary during the presidency of Randolph L. Coats. At the time of his death, he was a member of the board of directors of the Indiana Artists Club. Fred N. Vance was represented in the Lieber exhibition sof the Brown County group. Two of his paintings are now in the traveling exhibit of Brown County paintings from the 1927 Hoosier Salon in Chicago.

Source: Nashville, Indiana Brown County Democrat Thursday 13 Jan 1927 p 1

“Last Sketch” painted a few days before his death in Nashville. – The memorial exhibition of paintings by Fred Nelson Vance, Nashville artist, whose death occurred here very suddenly Sept 21 is attracting much attention at the Pettis Gallery in Indianapolis. Brown County furnished scenes for most of the paintings, which include both large and small canvases. A little cabin scene entitled, “Last Sketch,” was painted by Mr. Vance a day or two before he died. There are as many as ten cabins in his landscape compsoitions. “A Brown County Cabin,” one of the best of the cabin scenes is a picture which Brown County Artists admire very much and many had guessed it would take a prize at the last Indiana state fair, but it did not. However, three of Mr. Vance’s paintings did win prizes at the fair. Among the other titles in the exhibition are, Morning Light, Homeward, The Old Walnute, After the Rain, Glimpse of the Valley, Old Copper, The Old Barn and Hills of Brown County. There are 16 paintings in the exhibit which Mr. Vance made during the summer just before his death.

Source: Indianapolis Star, Sunday 20 Dec 1925 p 48 written by Lucille Morehouse

Fred Nelson Vance is holding his first one-man show in Indianapolis, the display consisting of 28 oil paintings, all of which, with one or two exceptions are recent works. Nearly all are landscape compositions, the greater number of the motives having been secured in Brown County with one or two in Michigan while all are tinctured by the artist’s imagination. Two flower subjects and two studies of sea coast complete the group displayed in the Pettis Gallery on the fifth floor of the New York store. The exhibition opened last Monday to continue through Jan 2. When the show was two days old two of the larger canvases had been sold – a good start toward a merry Christmas. To put a decorative note into landscape composition seems a natural thing for Mr. Vance to do. Not in the manner in which most artists look at decoration from the formal side and by way of making conventional patterns, but in a way that is more individualistic and more expressive of an artist’s personality. There is that which borders on, but does not quite reach, a sort of fairy-like fantasy. It is not whimsical nor grotesque. It is not fantastic, but just “Vancistic.” It is a question whether it was better for Mr. Vance to go on and develop this style and perhaps reach a point where he might do something very fine, just on the border-line between the real and the unreal, something with too much of fancy to be realism and yet hardly to be classed as pure idealism. It might be well for him to give himself free rein, taking car enot to shy off into mannerism and to let imagination lead him into new lands. Certainly it would be well also for him to turn, occasionally, in the other direction and choose rugged landscape motives and put just as much strength of design and strength of color into his work, just as much good sound construction out of “good red earth” as he can drive his brain to do. This would develop versatility. And it is no small thing for an artist to be versatile. The fact that Mr. Vance does some of his better work in quiet-toned color meant that the rainy weather did not work to his disadvantage as it did to some others in the Brown County art colony. Among the smaller canvases (the sizes range from 28 x 34” down to 13 x 16”) there are some charming little scenes in cloud and mist. In nearly all of Mr. Vance’s work there is a good handling of distance. Whether the air is laden with mist or glowing with sunshine, you feel that it is true to nature. And when atmospheric effects are true to nature in a painting they are pretty certain to be true to art. Cloud effects are generally satisfactory, and, in some instances, Mr. Vance has achieved some very fine results in his paintings of skies. To be noted among several good examples are: The Hidden sun with its wide expanse of gray sky and Moonrise, with its lovely poetic quality and feeling of mood. In one or two cases the earth and sky seem to lack in harmonious relationship as in the large picture, entitled, Between Showers and the small, Flying Clouds. Many artist have painted Brown County cabins, but, none, I feel sure, has put a more artistic one into a landscape than the old log house, long, low and with sloping red roof, that forms the center of interest in the picture entitled, In Brown County. The artists imagination made a thing of beauty of that shadowy roof – it might be old-world tile, but I’ll wager it was in reality rusy tin that had been painted with red barn paint by an early Borown County settler. The golden glory of an early autumn beech tree, in full lead and in the middle distance of a hill landscape, has been caught with rare artistic feeling in The Hill Top – which might, by the way, bear a more appropriate title. Artists would probably agree that one of the best handled of the realistic landscares is the sunlit roadway with trees, One Afternoon. A close second is the Hill Country. Ther eis also good work in Along Greasy Creek, its foreground interesting with a circling line of yellow wild flowers, its middle distance taking in hill and dale. Nocturne and Clairde Lune are two little night scened that have much charm. Deep Woods, painted just after the first heavy frost, is one of four canvasses that hang on the east wall, each especially characteristic of this artist’s brush. A Bit o’ Brown was displayed at Lieber’s last year in the group show by Brown County artists. Surf and Sky is rich of hue but does not represent water as successfully as is done in the little Marine which was painted on the north coast of France, several years ago, when Mr. Vance was a student in the Julian where he continued art training which was begun in the art institute of Chicago. Crawfordville, by the way was the artist’s birthplace. He is richer than most artists in the ownership of homes, as in addition the Crawfordsville home, he owns a home at 2014 Broadway and, last summer built a tudio home in Brown County in the Nashville location where several members of the artist group have their homes. Mr. Vance has a class of private art pupils, organized last year, who meet weekly at the home of Mrs. Harry Barker at Carmel. The traveling Indiana artists’ exhibition sent over the state from the Herron Art Institute includes two of his pictures; two were shown in this fall’s exhibition by Brown County artists at Liebers and two were displayed in the Hoosier Salon in Chicago last spring.

Source: Indianapolis News 28 Nov 1906 Wed p 3

F. Nelson Vance of Crawfordsville is one of the Indiana artists that is bringing credit to the state. After spending three years at the Chicago Art Institute, where he received several prizes for proficiency, he went to Paris to study. There he lived the typical artist life, with rooms in the Latin Quarter, and studying under Julian. From this artist he took drawing from Jean Paul Laurens, color and from Vitti, black and white. In the Julian school there are competitive examinations each months with 100 francs as first prize and 50 francs as second. Of these prizes he won several. While abraoad he spent some time in the famous galleries studying the old masters. He went with a party of friends to The Village of Roses, a small French town largely patronized by the French and English; then went to the Breton coast. In all of thes places he sketched, painted and studied. His specialty is mural decoration. He painted one of the panels for the Kansas City Courthouse, which brought him prominence, and he worked on four panels, paintings that are in the Blackstone Library in Chicago. At an exhibit in the Julian studio he captured the highest award given to an American painter in the exhibit. His exhibit in Chicago included 70 oil paintings, water colors, monotypes and old world pencil sketches, landscapes and portraits. One of Mr. Vance’s subjects that won him recognition, both in Paris and this country is a Cuban model, an anatomical study that is admirable done. Mr. Vance is the son of Mr. and Mrs. George Vance of Crawfordsville and grandson of CB nelson of the Marion Soldier’s Home. He is now at his home in Crawfordsville.

Painting of tree -- https://www.cowanauctions.com/lot/indiana-landscape-painting-by-fred-nelson-vance-9969

Source: WWI Registration – Fred Nelson Vance