Born in West Orange, New Jersey in 1887, James Chapin studied art at Cooper Union and the Art Students League in New York. In his early twenties, he became an award-winning pupil at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. His work is represented in an impressive roster of museums and galleries including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Art Institute, the Norton Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Harn Collection, the Fogg Museum, and the San Diego Art Institute. Included among Chapins’ numerous awards is the Logan Prize from the Chicago Art Institute. Many legendary Americans such as writer Robert Frost, composer George Gershwin, and financier John D. Rockefeller collected Chapin’s work.
The artist’s sensitivity for mankind is evident in his famous series of paintings depicting the Marvins, a farm family who lived near the artist in rural New Jersey during the 1920s and ’30s. His insightful and heroic depiction of “Ruby Green Singing” (a young black singer) is the single most popular painting held in the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida. His late work created during the 1960s and 70s exhibits the depth of the artist’s concern about war and society’s injustices.
“I worked, off and on, at this painting of my friend Robert Frost over a period of about 8 years.
Based on a drawing I made in Amherst in 1917, the portrait itself, as it developed seemed to be looking progressively younger and to relate more to a time before I knew Robert. So, I arbitrarily assumed 1905 as an approximate, and appropriate, date for the portrayal, at a time when the Frosts were living on the farm in Derry, N.H.
The birch grove setting evolved from memories of many day-long walks with Robert in the Franconia area, where after Derry, the Frosts had gone to live.
My first meeting with Robert Frost was around 1915, following his return to the United States from England.”
From the notes of James Chapin