Roy%20C.%20Nuse  (1885   -   1975)  Works

Roy C. Nuse (1885 - 1975)

Roy Cleveland Nuse was a highly regarded Pennsylvania Impressionist landscape painter, portraitist, and teacher. Born in Ohio, Nuse spent most of his adult life in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, first on a farm near Pipersville and after 1925, in the village of Rushland. He began his artistic training at the Cincinnati Art Academy with Frank Duveneck from 1905 to 1912. He transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1915 where he studied under Daniel Garber. The Academy awarded him all of their major student awards: the Toppan and Thouron prizes in 1918 and two Cresson Traveling Scholarships in 1917 and 1918 respectively. He was a distinguished member and president of the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Nuse was a dedicated teacher, holding positions as an instructor of painting at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Oberlin College, Beaver College, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1925 to 1954. Nuse occasionally gave private lessons, one of which was Dr. R. C. Magill of New Hope.

His earlier works display a broken brush stroke impressionist style and his palette is similar to that of his teacher, Daniel Garber. His later work was more smoothly finished and realistic. Most of the figures in his paintings are family members or neighbors and the scenes are usually painted within close proximity to his home in Rushland, Pennsylvania, less than ten miles from New Hope.

Nuse exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Washington Arts Club, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, the Carnegie Institute, the J. B. Speed Memorial Museum, the Philadelphia Art Club, the Toledo Museum of Art, the New Jersey State Museum.

Sources:

• New Hope for American Art by James Alterman
• Philadelphia Inquirer, January 29, 1975
• Ellen F. Slack, “Roy C. Nuse: A Biographical Sketch” in Roy C. Nuse: Figures and Landscapes, James A. Michener Art Museum, 2002. p. 59-76