American, 1903-1959

John Whorf was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts. His father, Harry C. Whorf was also an artist, who exposed him to commercial art and graphic design. He received official training at the age of fourteen under Shermann Kidd in the St. Botolph Studio and also the Boston Museum School. In 1917 in Provincetown, Whorf was inspired by a popular teacher, Charles W. Hawthorne, who painted in a bold and painterly style. He would become influenced by Provincetown’s growing art colony and become attracted to the Cape Cod landscape. He would become one of the most esteemed watercolorists of the first half of the twentieth century with his luminous painting style similar to that of John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer.

EDUCATION:
1938 Harvard University Boston, Massachusetts, USA

EXHIBITIONS:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
American Watercolor Society, Inc. New York, New York
Boston Society of Watercolor Painters
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California
Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri
Milch Gallery, New York, New York
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana
New Rochelle Art Association, New York
Philadelphia Watercolor Club
Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts
1924 Grace Horne Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
1930 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1930 Oakland Art Gallery, California
1931 Mills College, Oakland, California
1934, 1939 California Water Color Society
1934 XIX Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1939, 1943 The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
1933, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1945 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
1949 Vose Galleries, New York, New York

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland
Brooklyn Museum, New York
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut
New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana
Pitti Palace, Florence, Italy
RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island
Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio
University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

MEMBERSHIPS:
American Watercolor Society
The Beachcombers Club
Florida Watercolor Society
National Academy of Design
Provincetown Art Association

AWARDS:
1928 Receives the Logan Medal at the Eighth International Water Color Exhibit at The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois