Henry Varnum Poor
(1888 – 1970)
Henry Varnum Poor
was a farm boy who wanted more from
life. Although he was interested in art,
his father encouraged him to study
economics in college. However, by the
time he was a Stanford junior, he had
switched his major and was well on his
way to becoming the artist he was
destined to be.
He was born in Chapman, Kansas,
September 30, 1887. His family came
originally from Andover, Maine where
Poor’s grandfather had a mill and was a
blacksmith. He had a keen intelligence
and a sensitivity to the artistic, which
was nurtured by his artist mother.
He graduated from Stanford University as
a Phi Beta Kappa and a four-letterman in
athletics. His training in art was at
Stanford, where he later returned to
teach and at the Slade School in London
and at the Academie Julien in Paris. His
Stanford experience and early training
in California also included ceramics and
building.
He was a veteran of both World Wars.
During World War I, as a member of the
AEF (American Expeditionary Force), he
saw service at the French front and was
at St Mihiel when the armistice was
signed. He was chief of the Army’s art
unit for the Alaskan Theater with the
rank of major during World War II and
later wrote and illustrated “The Artist
Sees Alaska”, a book about his
experiences.
Poor moved to Rockland County in 1920,
when he and the late Shakespearean
actor, Rollo Peters, bought some 40
acres of land. It was then he built his
house from red sandstone, which he
quarried and hauled from his own pit and
from sturdy chestnut trees he felled and
hewed in the front yard. He later
designed homes for Maxwell Anderson,
Milton Caniff, John Houseman and Burgess
Meredith. The houses had a natural
feeling that wed them to the land they
were built on. His signature throughout
the houses was in ceramic murals and
tiles.
Poor’s ceramic work began after a
disappointing reception of his paintings
at Kervorkian Galleries in New York.
Independent research into the technical
problems of ceramic art, a willingness
to experiment with old and new
techniques and importantly, a need for
some financial success, led him to
phenomenal achievements in clay. Poor
always considered his clay work as
significant as his painting and probably
anticipated the coming revolution in
clay art in America. The book that Poor
wrote “From Mud To Immortality” is
considered a definitive work on the
subject.
Through the ‘30’s Poor kept working in
both media with a kind of
cross-fertilization happening as the
paintings included a kind of scratched
line in the paint much like the
sgraffito on his ceramics. It was a
testament to his skills that his
painting never devolved to the merely
decorative and the ceramics never became
overly worked and busy with painterly
aspects.
As a muralist, Poor painted 12 murals in
true fresco (painting pigment into wet
plaster) for the Department of Justice
building in Washington and a large
mural, “Conservation of American
Wildlife”, for the Department of the
Interior building. There were murals for
the rotundas of the Pennsylvania State
College administration building and the
Louisville Courier-Journal building and
ceramic murals for Mt. Sinai Hospital,
New York and Deerfield, Mass. Academy.
Henry Varnum Poor was one of the
founders and the president of the
Skowhegan School of Painting and
Sculpture and a member of the Artists
Equity Association. He was also a member
of the Federal Commission on Fine Arts
and an artist-in residence at the
American Academy in Rome and one of the
founders of the American Designers
Gallery.
Poor’s painting was finally recognized
during the ‘40’s and work was purchased
by Museum’s such as the Metropolitan in
New York and the Whitney. Interestingly,
his early painting was criticized for
being too “avant garde” and ironically,
at the end of his career, too
conservative. Over all, his work
steadily gains in appreciation. West
Valley Art Museum in Surprise, AZ owns
over 40 works by Poor, the bulk of which
were donated to the Museum by his nephew
Charles Stone.
George Palovich, curator, West Valley
Art Museum |
 Ethnographic Artifacts
John Dawson
Dorothy Knop
Thomas Moran
George Resler
Henry Varnum Poor
Fine Art Prints
Elaine Rothwell
Fritz Scholder
Arthur Secunda
Japanese Woodcuts
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