Henry Strater, The Ogunquit Art Colony, The Ogunquit Musuem of American Art

We recently posted a bit about Professor Quirk's efforts to bring art to the Lehigh University community through an annual exhibition. (We are amazed that Lehigh's Museum has not yet put on a retrospective of his work given his importance to the institution's development.) In this post we will highlight one of the painters who had a work in the 17th exhibition- Henry Strato, and how his life overlapped with Quirk's in several interesting ways. 

Interestingly, Henry Strater's profile has parallels to Waldo Pierce in that both were painters who spent time in Maine, had large families and were close to Ernest Hemingway.  

Henry Strater came of age in the Lost Generation after the first World War.  He attended Princeton, where he met F. Scott Fitzgerald;serving as the inspiration for the character Burne Halliday in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "This Side of Paradise."

"I was the model for Burne Halliday, I regret to say," Strater once said. "Why? Well, I was pretty much of a wild Indian."

He later went to Paris in the 1920s to study at the Academy Grande Chaumiere and with Edouard Vuillard. There his path crossed with Ernest Hemingway, beginning a life long relationship that would include fishing and a few portraits. 

Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Henry H. Strater

A Strater portrait of Ernest Hemingway later was used for the cover of Carlos Baker's biography of the Nobel-winning writer.

He also illustrated the controversial "Cantos" of poet Ezra Pound.

Island Lillies by Henry H. Strater

Happy Birthday Adam by Henry H. Strater

Strater was a versatile painter  and his portraits, watercolors and other realistic works are or have been displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, the Detroit Institute of Arts. Lehigh University Art Gallery and the Ogunquit (Maine) Museum of American Art, a small museum he built in the art colony where he had spent his summers since 1925. You can learn more about the Ogunquir Art Colony through the book "A Century of Color" by Louise Tagard.

Henry Strator painting in Ogunquit Maine

Born in Louisville, Ky., he died at 91 in Palm Beach, Florida in 1987.

The interesting parallels with Quirk are many. First, both had homes in coastal Maine (Ogunquit and Saco) and Arizona (Verde Valley and Prescott). Both painted and would effectively create art museums that would continue as their legacies. Both studied art in Paris and would paint a variety of subjects including maritime scenes.  We don't know the details of their relationship, but it is fair to assume that they knew each other; to what degree we do not know.