James Ormsbee Chapin and the Marvin Paintings: An Epic of the American Farm

Abstract

James Ormsbee Chapin and the Marvin Paintings: An Epic of the American Farm This dissertation re-examines the early career of James Ormsbee Chapin (1887-1975), and his most celebrated group of works known collectively as the Marvin Paintings. A pioneer in unconventional depictions of the American scene, Chapin made a significant contribution to the iconography of American art in the 1920s with a series of portraits depicting members of the Marvin family and images of them tending their New Jersey farm. Later critics praised these works as anticipating the works of the Regionalists triumvirate Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood. The methodology employed in this study consists of primarily of oral history and archival information culled from a variety of sources that lends support to the biographical analysis of Chapin's life up to 1930, as well as a critical analysis of the Marvin paintings and their reception.