LEMOINE, JEAN GABRIEL

Jean Gabriel Lemoine was an art critic for L'Echo de Paris at the time that he corresponded with abstract painter Morgan Russell (1886-1953). Lemoine also wrote for Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Revue Belge d'Archeologie et d'histoire de l'Art and Beaux Arts Magazine . Morgan Russell studied at the Art Students League in New York with James Earle Fraser and Robert Henri from 1906 to 1907. His first trip to Europe in 1906 was sponsored by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and he returned to Paris in 1908 and joined the Academie Matisse. He settled in Paris and did not return to the United States until 1946. In 1911 he studied with Canadian color theorist Ernest Tudor-Hart. Also at this time he met fellow artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright with whom he developed the theories of Synchromism. In 1913 he and Macdonald-Wright exhibited together as Synchromists at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, Paris, where they attracted the attention of French critics, including Lemoine. Russell continued to paint abstract works until 1930 when he began painting large-scale religious works.

From the guide to the Jean Gabriel Lemoine papers relating to Morgan Russell, 1921-1923, 1964, (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)