Artists by Name

M

• MacRae, Elmer

  Elmer MacRae

  1875 – 1953

  American Impressionism was considered a reaction to complacency in the appreciation of art in America.  At the turn of the century there were three major forces influencing art in America.  The first was the genteel school of Boston genre painting of Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson, the second the radical impressionist stream of John Twachtman and Childe Hassam, and the third the academic tradition of William Chase.  MacRae, who studied under Twachtman, convinced his teacher in 1900 to move his summer artists’ school from another location in Greenwich to the barn at the Bush-Holley House.  MacRae, along with Twachtman and Hassam, attempted to promote public awareness of modern movements in art by preparing a number of important exhibits in New York.  The group collaborated with others in the production of the acclaimed Armory Show of 1913.

• Manchester, William

  William Manchester

  1922 – 2004

  William Manchester was a biographer who used his novelist’s skills to fashion meticulously researched portraits of power, among them Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill and, perhaps most famously, John F. Kennedy. In Connecticut, Manchester was a writer at Wesleyan University for two decades as well as an editor at Wesleyan University Press in its early years. Following the publication of ‘The Death of a President,’ Manchester was able to build a striking modernist house for himself and his wife, on the outskirts of Middletown.

• Margolies, Ethel Polacheck

  Ethel Polacheck Margolies

  1907 – 1993

• Masson, Andre

  Andre Masson

  1896 – 1987

  Initially interested in Cubism, Masson became a Surrealist artist in the circle of Joan Miro and Jean Dubuffet in Paris. He spent the years during World War II in exile in Connecticut.

• Matter, Herbert

  Herbert Matter

  1907 – 1984

  According to Rachel Carley: “A design consultant to Knoll International and former student of Fernand Leger, Herbert Matter, who had an equally distinguished career in photography, photomontage and filmmaking, introduced the first photography classes at Yale. In 1950 Matter directed Works of Calder, the first color film to showcase the artist’s sculptures, for the Museum of Modern Art. In 1954, as corporate design director for the New Haven Railroad, he also designed the railroad’s “NH” logo with its distinctive elongated serifs. One of the most identifiable graphic design motifs in America, the logo is still in use today.”

• McCloy, William Ashby

  William Ashby McCloy

  1913 – 2000

  An accomplished painter and sculptor, William Ashby McCloy’s work evolved from a Regionalist figurative style, learned in the Midwest working with John Steuart Curry, early in his career, toward an increasingly abstract one in later years. He taught at Connecticut College, where he was also Art Department Chairman.

• McCullough, Suzanne

  Suzanne McCullough

  1916 – 2018

• McCutcheon, Albert

  Albert McCutcheon

  1901 – 1990

  WPA artist

• McKenna, Rollie

  Rollie McKenna

  1918 – 2003

  American photographer Rollie McKenna did more to create the image of Dylan Thomas than anybody except Thomas himself. She took portraits of many poets and artists of the 1950s and 60, and was associated with James Merrill’s circle in Stonington.

• McManus, James Goodwin

  James Goodwin McManus

  1882 – 1958

  WPA artist who painted local landscapes and identifiable scenes in the Lyme area. His style ranged from Impressionistic to Regionalist.

• Mecklem, Austin Merrill

  Austin Merrill Mecklem

  1894 – 1951

  Though the majority of Mecklem’s work was not in Connecticut, he was commissioned during the WPA to portray the characteristic Connecticut Valley crop, shade tobacco, for the Portland Post Office in 1942.

• Meek, Clifton

  Clifton Meek

  1888 – 1973

  WPA sculptor and cartoonist, whose readings became the basis for the Village Room, a coffee house and forum in which new ideas were discussed in Silvermine.

• Meredith, William

  William Meredith

  1919 – 2007

  Influenced by the work of Robert Frost, William Meredith’s poetry offers observations of the human condition and is imbued with concepts of fairness and morality. His academic career in Connecticut was from 1955 to his retirement in 1983. From the 1960s, when he bought ‘Riverrun,’ he found inspiration in the landscape around him.

• Merrill, James

  James Merrill

  1926 – 1995

  Merrill was one of his generation’s most acclaimed poets, considered peerless among his contemporaries who were writing in meter and rhyme.

• Miles, Emily Winthrop

  Emily Winthrop Miles

  1893 – 1962

• Miller, Arthur

  Arthur Miller

  1915 – 2005

  Renowned and controversial American playwright and left-leaning intellectual, whose works are routinely produced in theaters all over the world. He authored well over thirty plays, three of which won awards, including a Tony and Pulitzer Prize for ‘Death of a Salesman.’

• Mitchell, Clifford

  Clifford Mitchell

  1925 – 2005

• Monson, Edith Dale

  Edith Dale Monson

  1875 – 1977

• Morath, Inge

  Inge Morath

  1923 – 2002

  Morath excelled at portraiture, photographing in the 1950s and 1960s artists like Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti and Louise Bourgois, and writers such as Saul Steinberg and Philip Roth. She also documented many of Arthur Miller’s most important plays. Her intimate images of life in northwest Connecticut attested to the work and friendships of the circle of artists in the area.

• Motherwell, Robert

  Robert Motherwell

  1915 – 1991

  Motherwell was a founding figure in the development of the abstract expressionist movement in the 1940s, and throughout the rest of his life he was a thoughtful spokesman and advocate for abstract art. His philosophical underpinning can be glimpsed in works that spoke to political themes, such as the ‘Elegy to the Spanish Republic’ series, or explored artistic output within defined parameters, as with the ‘Lyric Suite’ and ‘Open’ series. He began the Daedulus Foundation in 1981 to carry forward his life’s work of teaching about and supporting modern art.