Lucius Alfred Crowell

Lucius Crowell was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1911. A realist painter who enjoyed depicting the everyday world with a touch of romanticism, he was well-known for his seemingly unstylized execution.

A graduate of the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, he attended Williams College before studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and then independently with Franklin Watkins and Arthur B. Carles.

He continued his studies at the Barnes Foundation, L’Académie Scandinave, and L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He also studied ceramics at the Philadelphia College of Art and the Tyler School of Art at Temple University.

Crowell was with the US Army Engineers in France in World War II and then traveled and painted in Europe, Morocco, and Greece. He later spent a year painting in Rome.

Lucius Crowell, the teacher, taught art for over 20 years beginning at the Kent School in Connecticut and later at the Chester County Art Association, the Birchrunville Art Center, and in Wilmington, Delaware.

His works were well-received and his major exhibitions included those at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the National Academy of Art in Washington, DC, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Alliance and a one-man show at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

A 1950 article in the New York Times stated: “Judging by Lucius Crowell’s paintings at the Ferargil Gallery, it would seem that Philadelphia is at present the stronghold of contemporary romantic realism.

And in 1960, the Chicago Tribune described his work as “painted quietly, sensitively, and with a perception that lifts them into the realm of the “magic realism” of Andrew Wyeth“.

His commissions included several murals. Crowell’s work is in numerous permanent collections including the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Drexel University College of Medicine, Lambert College, Temple University, University of Pennsylvania Law School, University of Delaware, Columbus Gallery of Fine Art and the Northfield Museum. His painting of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania is included in the US National Library of Medicine.

The artist died at his home in Charlestown Township, Pennsylvania in 1988.

This website offers a small sample of his extensive work.