Frederick J. Mulhaupt (1871-1938)
Frederick J. Mulhaupt (1871-1938)
Born in Rock Port, Missouri, in 1871, Frederick Mulhaupt apprenticed with a sign painter before studying at the Kansas City School of Design and eventually enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1890s. By 1904, he had established a studio at the Salmagundi Club in New York City and soon after departed for Paris to further his artistic studies. There he was introduced to the techniques of Impressionism still flourishing among both his fellow expatriates and European counterparts, which would later emerge in his own work. During several years abroad, Mulhaupt exhibited at the Paris Salon and explored the St. Ives region of England, where he sketched fishermen hauling their nets with the day’s catch, a theme carried over in his paintings of the wharves and sailors of Gloucester, Massachusetts, for which he is today best known.
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Upon his return to America, Mulhaupt settled again in New York while spending the warmer summer months in Gloucester beginning in 1907. In the early decades of the 20th century, Massachusetts’ Cape Ann was a magnet for artists seeking relief from the hot cities of Boston, New York, Chicago and beyond. The quaint New England villages had been attracting marine painters since the 1850s, but it was during the early 20th century that the Cape Ann School emerged, with Mulhaupt as its dean. In Gloucester, he discovered the town that he decreed “duplicates any views I care to paint.”[1] By 1922, he settled there permanently, working from his studio on Rocky Neck and eventually founding the North Shore Arts Association. Although he preferred to paint alone, Mulhaupt was remembered as a gifted teacher who encouraged his students to discover their own style. Fellow artist Emile Gruppe believed that “Mulhaupt got the smell of Gloucester on canvas. He captured the mood of the place – and that’s worth all the good drawing of a hundred lesser painters.”[2]
Working in oil, watercolor and pastel, Mulhaupt exhibited frequently at major venues including the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Highly regarded, he was often the recipient of exhibition prizes, including awards at the Allied Artists of America, the National Arts Club, and the Philadelphia World’s Fair in 1926. That same year Mulhaupt was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design.