Arts and Letters

It is three years, almost to a day, since Jonas Lie was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That is not a very long period and it was curtailed by his death on January 10th of the present year. But it was long enough to secure for him a firm place in the warm regard of the Academy. All his traits as a man and an artist peculiarly fitted him for membership in a forward-looking organization like this, which is faithful to tradition but accepts it as an inspiration rather than as a formula and would take from the past only those basic principles which promise progress in the present and in the future. When Lie was elected president of the National Academy of Design in 1934 he said to an inquirer: "The Academy must necessarily be conservative. It must stick to the tried and proven. Nevertheless there are certain changes which I think would be for the advancement of the organization." He made them, living up to the liberalism which he thus proclaimed.

Jonas Lie was born at Moss, in Norway, in 1880, the son of a civil engineer. He was named after his uncle, a poet and novelist, with whom he lived and studied in Paris until he was twelve years old. At thirteen, his father having died, he came to the United States and aided in the support of his mother and sisters by working as a designer in a cotton factory for nine years. In the evenings he frequented the classes of the Art Students' League and the National Academy of Design. His first picture, "The Grey Day," was hung in an Academy exhibition when he was only nineteen. Thenceforth his success was rapid. It was in 1913 that he painted a memorable series of pictures showing the Panama Canal in the course of its construction. Twelve of these canvases were presented by an anonymous donor in 1929 to the Military Academy at West Point, in honor of Gen. Goethals, the builder of the canal. There are many public places in which his pictures hang. One of his works is in the White House, a picture of the Amberjack which as a close friend of Mr. Roosevelt he gave to the President in 1933. The list of his paintings in public museums and of the various artistic and other bodies to which he belonged is too long to be recited upon this occasion.

He was an American through and through but it must have been partly an inheritance from his native Norway that enabled him to fill his pictures with lucent air. He painted them in various parts of the world, in Brittany but far more in New England and in the Adirondacks. Wherever he painted them, he gave them the tang of nature studied at close quarters, the atmospheric quality which is half the battle. He had color, too, good color, and American art was made the richer by his luminous, vivid impressions. A favorite motive of his was a stretch of water dotted by the white sails of boats and seen through a frame supplied by gleaming birch trees. He made it beautiful and did so, moreover, not only through the charm inherent in his vision but through a fine technical authority.

He was an able executive as well as an able artist and the National Academy owed him much through his tenure of the presidential office. His administration offered conclusive evidence that conservatism, which he practised in his art, in no wise connotes a narrow point of view. On the contrary, he was a singularly openminded leader, hospitable to the younger generation, the friend of genuine art, no matter where it originated. Also he was a tireless worker, positively heroic in his labors, for example, over the special exhibition that the Academy presented à propos of the World's Fair, in 1939. He made substantial sacrifices of energy in the preparation of that admirable project. And his sympathies extended beyond the interests of the institution which had placed him at its head. He was, in his time, an efficient member of the Municipal Art Commission and he gave his services to many another instrument for our artistic betterment.

Endowed with an engaging personality, Jonas Lie was an always welcome and helpful spokesman for good taste and progress. He had humor, candor, and an ingratiating mode of approach to a subject. His life as an artist was full of triumphs, but they never softened him. When illness came he faced its difficulties with courage. He was cut off untimely, in his fifty-ninth year. A wide circle of his fellow artists who rejoiced in his talent, and a large public long finding enjoyment in his work, must join with the Academy in regrets over his passing.