Arthur K. Houlberg (1895–1949)
Arthur K. Houlberg painting at Saugatuck, circa 1919. Photograph courtesy Barbara Houlberg.
The eldest son of Danish-immigrant parents, Arthur Klindt Houlberg was born in Chicago, where his father, a professionally trained decorative painter, owned a house-paint store on the city’s Northwest Side. Houlberg studied at the Art Institute of Chicago’s school beginning in his mid-teens, when he was already painting landscapes in oils; meanwhile, he worked as a newspaper artist. Following military service in France during World War I, he returned to the Art Institute, and in 1919 he attended the Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck (now known as Ox-Bow), in Saugatuck, Michigan, studying under his Art Institute teacher Frederick Fursman. In the spring of 1920, Houlberg was represented by two canvases in an Art Institute exhibition of student and faculty work from the previous summer’s program. The following year, he participated for the first and only time in one of the Art Institute’s regular annual exhibitions, showing the painting Wash Day (circa 1920; Ox-Bow, Saugatuck, Michigan) in the Chicago and Vicinity exhibition. In 1921, he earned an Arthur O. Goodman Prize for four of seven paintings he showed in the exhibition of the Art Students’ League of Chicago.
Most of Houlberg’s relatively few extant paintings are outdoor figural works and landscapes. They reveal his affinity for impressionism, with its broad handling of paint and preoccupation with the figure posed out-of-doors to emphasize bright light and color. Notwithstanding the promising beginning of his career as a painter, Houlberg abandoned the field for the commercial work he had pursued while an art student. Along with Edgar Rupprecht, a fellow student in the Saugatuck summer school, he worked on the syndicated Buster Brown cartoon strip, and he also taught art at Chicago’s R. T. Crane Manual High School. Houlberg eventually took a position in an advertising agency, moving from there to magazine publishing. He served as an editor, illustrator, cover artist, and photographer for Chicago Club Magazines, producing members’ publications for private clubs that included the Lakeshore Athletic Club, the South Shore Country Club, and the Medinah Athletic Club. Long an avid amateur photographer, he took up that medium seriously and belonged to the Fort Dearborn Camera Club. In 1936, Houlberg and his family moved to northwest-suburban Crystal Lake, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Arthur K. Houlberg, A Saugatuck Friend, circa 1919
Oil on canvas, 35 by 39¼ inches
Arthur K. Houlberg’s portrait of an elderly woman seated outdoors is a study in natural light effects, particularly in the juxtaposition of dappled shade and glaring illumination. Placed off-center in the composition, the sitter rests placidly in a simple blue wooden chair, her bent arm resting on a tabletop. Overhead is a canopy of foliage painted in broad strokes of rich greens and blue. The whites of the woman’s hair and dress and the tablecloth dominate, with accents of blue in her belt and beaded necklace matching those of her chair. The gold centers of the cut flowers on the table link the foreground to the warm colors of the background, where a patchwork of light greens, yellows, and white convey the blinding brilliance of full light.
This is one of several paintings Houlberg made as a student in the Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck (now known as Ox-Bow), on the Lake Michigan shore in southwestern Michigan. It clearly reflects the influence of Frederick Fursman, principal instructor in the program and a teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago. At Saugatuck, Fursman encouraged his students to take advantage of summertime conditions and the school’s idyllic setting to paint the figure posed outdoors; his own such work in the late 1910s focuses on the flattening effects and color distortion of the model in shadow, set against a brightly lit background. Around 1918, Fursman also began painting character studies of local, often elderly, Saugatuck “types.” These likely influenced Houlberg’s selection of an elderly woman for this work. Its close-up focus emphasizes the subject’s individuality, which the artist further captured in a related photographic snapshot. Houlberg thus reinterpreted the woman-in-a-garden theme so popular in the previous decade among American impressionist painters, whose treatments invariably featured rather generic pretty young women as complements to the fresh outdoor light and color of their settings.
In the Art Institute’s spring 1920 exhibition of paintings made the previous summer by Saugatuck students and instructors, Houlberg was represented by two canvases, one of which was titled Mrs. Norman. That may have been this work, especially if Houlberg followed Fursman’s practice of titling his character portraits for their individual sitters. No record has come to light of the title A Saugatuck Friend, which is likely a later invention.