Cortland Butterfield
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Photograph of Cortland Butterfield by Jack Rosen, photo courtesy James A. Michener Art Museum archives | | |
PAINTER
BORN: 1904, Newark, New Jersey
DIED: March 24, 1977, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania
Cortland Butterfield was one of the leading portrait artists of his time. The subjects of his naturalistic works in watercolors and oils ranged from people he met in his daily life to performing artists, including luminaries such as Pablo Casals and Margot Fonteyn. Always fascinated by faces, he used the sketches he had made as an art student in Greenwich Village as the basis for his well-known paintings of rabbis. An outgoing individual, he was very generous in helping other artists in the New Hope area. He also helped found the American Opera Repertory Company, and later donated his portrait of Pablo Casals to the music school. Family members served as a great inspiration to him. An uncle who performed as a clown in an English circus was the start of his many clown paintings. His aunt, Carrie Butterfield, was a landscape painter who sparked his interest in painting at the age of nine and encouraged his painting efforts throughout his youth. With a painting technique rooted in the tradition of the Spanish Masters such as Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco, Cortland Butterfield established himself as a modern master of the portrait.
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