Prominent 19th century American painters like Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt were well known to the public of their day. Their canvases were often cinematic in scale. They were the blockbusters of their time. 

Around the time that Church visited the region, a group of artists met in Buffalo to discuss the formation of an art organization. Those present included: William Beard, Thomas Le Clear, Joseph Meeker, Lars Gustav Sellstedt and Mather Wilson. Although their initial efforts were abandoned, in 1862 the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy was founded (today’s Buffalo AKG Art Museum), making it the sixth oldest public art institution in the United States. After the American Civil War, the population of Buffalo grew rapidly and artists came to to the city to teach, paint portraits or to create commercial art—each with their own story. This economic success was not sustainable, however.

The artist most dedicated to Buffalo in late 19th and early 20th century was Lars Gustaf Sellstedt. Having emigrated from Sweden in 1842, he taught painting and served as the president of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy from 1876 until 1877. Sellstedt would later publish Art in Buffalo in 1910 at the age of 91, a definitive history of art in the city during the 19th century.

Other important artists of this early period include William John Wilgus, Charles Caryl Coleman, William Graham, Burr Nicholls, Frank Penfold, Raphael Beck and Annie Crawford. Wilgus was primarily a portrait painter working in Buffalo from 1837 until his death at the young age of 34 in 1853. Coleman and Graham, along with Penfold, Nicholls and Beck, spent most of their time abroad. 

Around the turn of the century, there were a remarkable number of artists in the region who later established national reputations. Among them were Edward Dufner, John Carlson, Charles Reiffel, Ami Farnham, David Erickson, Reginald Cleveland Coxe and George Bridgman, among others. Each of these artists left to build their careers elsewhere. 

In 1891, the Buffalo Society of Artists (BSA) was formed amidst controversy. One of the major reasons for its creation was the arrogant assertion by Ralph H. Plumb, the president of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, that "There is no art in Buffalo.” Local artists deeply resented this remark. Further, they believed the academy was not responding to the needs of the local artistic community and regarded the gallery as "only a showroom for wandering collections."

Buffalo has always had a great tradition of art education, which began when the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy opened its first school in the mid-1880s. After various mergers it was renamed the Art Students League, the School of Fine Arts and then the Albright Art School. Important instructors at the school in its early years included Frank Penfold, Florence Julia Bach and Urquhart Wilcox. A graduate of Yale University, Wilcox came to Buffalo in 1897, studying at the Art Students League before becoming an instructor at the school. He taught in various capacities before becoming acting director of the School of Fine Arts in 1910, and director 1920, maintaining a traditionalist position and keeping the school on a very conservative path.

The early 20th century was characterized by the rapid growth of impressionism in American painting. Although there were not many impressionists in Buffalo, there were some who created outstanding works in the style. Chief among them were Alexis Fournier, Grace Beals, Claire Shuttleworth, Calogero Scibetta and Edward Duffner.

The dawn of the 20th Century marked a high point of sorts for the city of Buffalo—with a catch. The Pan American Exposition was held in the city from May until November, 1901, and employed countless artists and craftsmen in the building and decorating of the temporary city. The official logo for the event was created by Raphael Beck, who though born in Pennsylvania settled in Lockport and established a studio in Buffalo. 

Buffalo’s art scene in the early 20th century was dominated by number of important women painters. Evelyn Rumsey Carey, an artist and patron of the arts, was also involved in Pan American Exposition. She designed the official poster for the Pan Am using the figure from her painting, The Spirit of Niagara. Later, she designed one of the most important posters for the Women’s Suffrage movement. Alice Russell Glenny also created work for the Pan Am. Her designs for the Exposition Board of Women Managers included one for the Temple of Music brochure. 

Evelyn Rumsey Lord, the niece of Evelyn Rumsey Carey, was also a notable. Her obituary claimed that her painting, The Yellow Parasol (c. 1912), was in the 1913 Armory show that defined the entry into modernism for American artists.

Another outstanding female artist of this period was Mildred Green. Born in Oneida, NY, she worked as illustrator, commercial artist and painter. Along with Eugene Dyczkowski and Alexander Levy, she consistently painted the Western New York landscapes and the Buffalo harbor. 

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw continued growth for the city of Buffalo, but perception of that growth began to change. Perhaps the greatest artist of this period was Claire Shuttleworth, a Buffalo native. She studied at the Art Students League before furthering her studies in New York City, France and Italy under various masters. Upon returning to Buffalo, she found her muse in the flowing waters of the Niagara River. 

Progressive ideals also flourished in the village of East Aurora, where Elbert Hubbard founded the Roycroft community in 1895. While many painters worked on the Roycroft Campus, two from this early period where most significant—Alexis Jean Fournier and Sandor L. Landeau. Fournier was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and Sandor L. Landeau in Hungary. In 1915, Landeau moved to East Aurora at the suggestion of Fournier, whom he had met in Paris in the 1890s. 

Following the First World War, a period of economic prosperity and industrial growth brought renewed opportunities for artists in Buffalo. Alexander Levy arrived in 1909 to work as art director for the Matthews-Northrup Company before moving to the Larkin Soap Company in 1913, which was at the pinnacle of its corporate growth. Levy was arguably the leading Buffalo artist of the period.

The economic prosperity of the 1920s also brought other important artists to Buffalo. Charles E. Burchfield moved to the city in 1921 to work for the M. H. Birge & Sons Wallpaper Company. Burchfield completed at least 18 works in oil between 1920 and 1938, but eventually abandoned the medium, arguing that working in watercolor was “just as simple as breathing.” 

Also emerging during this period was Eugene M. Dyczkowski. Born in Philadelphia, he attended the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy in 1922. While there, he studied under Bach, Green and Wilcox. Along with Levy and Arthur Kowalski, he was one of the leaders of the BSA at the time.

The Great Depression had a devastating effect on the local art community. Virtually no paintings could be sold, and artists joined the thousands of unemployed. In Buffalo, tensions caused by the Depression led to a debate over the validity of recent trends in modern art, perhaps best described by Alfred Barr in his catalog for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. He wrote that:

The pictorial conquest of the external visual world had been completed and refined many times and in different ways during the previous half -millennium. The more adventurous and original artists had grown bored with painting facts. By a common and powerful impulse they were driven to abandon the imitation of natural appearance.

The opposite position can be summarized in a quote by the well-known art critic and painter Kenyon Cox in 1911. Cox defined the “classic spirit” as a search for perfection, a love of clearness, reasonableness and self-control, and above all the love of permanence and of continuity. 

A number of local artists criticized the conceived conservatism of the BSA and, led by a group of socially prominent women, formed the Patteran Society in direct opposition to it. The group’s founding members included Mildred Green, Arthur Kowalski, Evelyn Rumsey Lord, Harold LeRoy Olmsted, Anthony J. Sisti, Virginia E. Tillou, Martha Visser't Hooft and James J. Vullo, among others.

Levy and his supporters were extremely bitter. Gordon Washburn, the new director of the Albright Gallery, sided with the Patteran insurgence and terminated the long-standing annual BSA exhibition. The conflict was not just between traditional and modern positions. The breakdown also fell along lines of artists who worked commercially and those who produced work solely for aesthetic purposes. The former were badly hurt by the Depression and resented the criticism directed at them.

A related conflict concerned the relationship between the Albright Gallery and the local artist community. In 1932, the gallery’s board of directors refused to hold a BSA-sponsored auction at the gallery to raise funds for 150 unemployed artists. Ten years later, this conflict reasserted itself when, in 1943, the gallery deaccessioned 142 works, largely by American Impressionists like Frank Benson and Daniel Garber, as well as a painting by the famous Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned on a promise of recovery with a “New Deal” for the American people. Among the variety of social programs created as part of the New Deal, the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP) was announced on December 12, 1933, and by January of the following year 18 artists were enrolled in Buffalo. Within a year, at least 75 people were employed in Buffalo to produce 12 major murals and other public works to celebrate “the American Scene.”

Raphael Beck, still an active member of the arts community in Buffalo, painted local history murals for School 81 on Tacoma Avenue. Carlo Nisita, who immigrated with his family from Italy in 1903, completed two murals at the old Grosvenor Library. Nisita, a veteran of World War I, had studied at the Buffalo School of Fine Arts and would later found the art department at Vila Maria College. Eugene M. Dyczkowski painted murals for Burgard High School on Kensington Avenue and for the Fort Niagara Officers Club in Youngstown, NY. Many more murals were painted by John Rummell, Anthony J. Sisti and others.

Highly regarded as both a painter and a teacher, William B. Rowe was Buffalo’s most influential painter during this period. He completed a mural at his alma mater, Bennet High School, in 1935 titled, New World Symphony. Rowe was also a major figure at the Art Institute of Buffalo, a school founded in 1931 with support from the WPA.

From its inception, the Art Institute sought to cultivate an environment of informality, democracy and camaraderie among the Buffalo arts community.  It sought to stand in contrast to the Albright Art School, a more traditional, expensive and elite institution.  The institute’s teaching staff included an amazing variety of talented artists, including nationally known painters such as Charles E. Burchfield, Isaac Soyer and Edwin W. Dickinson. Its permanent faculty, however, was dominated by a remarkable group of regional painters that included Robert Blair, David Pratt, Donald Whitney Burns and James J. Vullo.

One of Buffalo’s greatest painters, Edwin Dickinson attended the State Normal Training School of Practice in Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo State) in 1904. He studied art at The National Academy of Design (1911), the Art Students League of New York (1911-1912) and the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown (1912-1914).

Having become dissatisfied with Urquhart Wilcox’s conservatism, the board of the Albright Art School hired a new director, Philip Elliott, to modernize its curriculum in 1941. A graduate of Yale University, Elliott also studied in Paris where he met his future wife Virginia Cuthbert. Under his leadership, the school brought great talent to Buffalo to teach, first at the Albright School and later at the University at Buffalo when the two merged in 1956.  

In 1947, Seymour Drumlevitch and Harriet Greif also moved to Buffalo to teach at the school. Drumlevitch had been a protégé of Joseph Hirschhorn, who donated his collection to the Smithsonian Institution. A decade later, Elliott hired Sheldon Berlyn and a few years later Harvey Breverman. In addition, he brought visiting artists such as Peter Busa, Chet La More, Lawrence Calcagno, Ralston Crawford and John Szarkowski to teach at the school. 

Philip Elliott was closely associated with two of the most remarkable painters in Buffalo’s history. Virginia Cuthbert, and Martha Visser't Hooft were close colleagues and best friends. Before coming to Buffalo, Cuthbert was a well-known painter in Pittsburgh.  

Visser't Hooft began as a surrealist painter and later moved into a more abstract style. She was also a friend of Mabel Dodge Luhan and frequently painted in New Mexico. It was here that she became friends with Georgia O’Keefe.

In the 1940s, both exhibited at Contemporary Arts in New York, a gallery owned by Emily Francis. When that gallery closed, Cuthbert moved to the Frank K.M. Rehn Gallery, the same gallery that represented Charles Burchfield. Visser't Hooft, on the other hand, did not show in New York after that. 

The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the “G.I. Bill,” afforded opportunities to many veterans before ending in 1956. Joseph Orffeo studied at the Albright Art School for two years before serving in World War II in 1943. He continued his training at the Art Institute of Buffalo upon his return in 1946. David Pratt, a painter, instructor and designer was first introduced to art while working as a restorer, carver and framer at the Carl Bredemeier Gallery for several years. Pratt also took classes at the Art Institute of Buffalo from 1935-1940 with William B. Rowe. After service in World War II, Pratt taught at the institute, and in 1949 became its director. Though in his 30s, Robert Blair also served in World War II, creating a series of watercolor paintings that chronicled his experience. 

Following the end of the Second World War, a new vanguard of painters emerged in Buffalo and with the escalation of the Cold War, the problems of the world found their way into painting.  By the mid-1960s, abstract expressionism dominated the Western New York art scene. The Albright Art Gallery became an important venue for collecting and exhibiting contemporary abstract art. This, along with the changing faculty at the University at Buffalo, encouraged important Buffalo artists to experiment with abstraction, some sticking with it for longer periods. Seymour Drumlevitch, a celebrated abstract expressionist, continued in that vein while Harvey Breverman made abstract expressionist works before focusing on the figure. As the landscape of art continued to change, many more artist worked in this vein thru the 1970s, including Dorothy Shea, Sally Potenza, Elizabeth Tower and Gloria Banning.

The activities of this period created a proliferation of art galleries in Buffalo. The most successful of these were Martje More’s Gallery Without Walls (Martha Visser't Hooft’s daughter), The Nina Freudenheim Gallery and Goodman Galleries. 

The 1960s also brought a new set of problems associated with the civil rights movement and the U.S. entry into the Vietnam War. One Buffalo artist who best expressed the frustration of this period was Elizabeth Tower.  Along with her husband, she established the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation in 1990 to give back to the community. Additionally, Allan D’Arcangelo was motived to paint based on the political conversation around the war in Vietnam. 

By the late 1960s, while Cuthbert, Visser't Hooft, Pratt, Vullo, Blair and others continued to work in a semi-representational style, the landscape of art in Buffalo and elsewhere began to change, with painting no longer dominating the field. Installation art, media art and other forms became a more central while older forms receded to the margins.

Today, there is a growing national awareness of the quality of American regional historical art. Recent exhibits, catalogs, books and articles all reflect this interest. Cities such as Cleveland, Denver, Seattle and, above all, Chicago exhibit this growing recognition of historical regional artists, as does virtually all of California.

Nonetheless, a number of factors, some of which are unique, have contributed to the neglect of Buffalo’s historical painters. First, several of the best artists—like Philip Elliott, Seymour Drumlevitch, Mildred Green and others—devoted most of their time to teaching and thus did not make a serious effort to exhibit nationally. Furthermore, the Buffalo economic elite of 1900, as in 2019, generally refused to buy regional art.  They preferred (and largely still prefer) to shop in Europe, New York, Toronto or at art fairs. In addition, between 1950 and 2000, Buffalo was in a long period of economic decline. This decline was accompanied by a lack of interest in the history of the region.

Things began to change in 1987, when the Albright Knox celebrated the region’s art history with the exhibition, The Wayward Muse. Even more important, however, was the prior founding of the Burchfield Art Center in 1966 with a mandate to celebrate Charles Burchfield and other outstanding artists in Buffalo. The history of the organization is replete with exhibitions that celebrate the great artists of the region.