Dorothy Loeb Biographical Chronology

By Catherine Loeb Schmit, 2011

Year / Month / Day / Event
1838 / 10 / 11 / Adolph Loeb is born in Bechtheim, Rhein-Hessen, Germany to Jakob and Ester Loeb
1843 / 2 / 28 / Adolph’s brother William Loeb is born in Bechtheim, Rhein-Hessen, Germany. (William’s son is Maurice, grandfather to author. Maurice is Dorothy Loeb’s first cousin)
1845 / 1 / 4? / Johanna Mannheimer. Birth: 1845 - Fellheim, Unterallgau, Bayern, Germany
1853 / 11 / 15 / Adolph Loeb arrives on the ship “Van Cluse” from Le Havre to New York
1865 / 6 / 12 / Johanna arrives in New York from Bavaria with her mother Charlotte Mannheimer (widow of Dr. Ludwig Mannheimer)
1869 / 6 / 20 / Adolph Loeb and Johanna Mannheimer marry in Chicago, IL
1873 / The railroad arrives in Provincetown making is accessible to tourists and artists.
1878 / 10 / 10 / Nettie Blanche Lazzell born on a farm in Maidsville, West Virginia. She studied at West Virginia Wesleyan and West Virginia University under William Leonard (who had studied at Academie Julian in Paris). Later she studied with William Merritt Chase at New York Art Students League. Charles Hawthorne was his teaching assistant who later opened his own school in Provincetown.
1882- 1883 / Adolph and Johanna take an extended vacation in Europe
1884 / Adolph listed s Secretary of Sinai Congregation in Chicago
1887 / Adolph and Johanna visit Johanna’s family in Germany where Dorothy is born.
1887 / 7 / 3 / Dorothy was born in Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany the youngest of 8 children of Adolph Loeb and Johanna Mannheimer Loeb of Chicago, IL, who were traveling abroad. Her other siblings are Esther, Bertha, Jacob A., Leonore, Ludwig, Eva, and Gertrude.
1890’s / Adolph has a real estate company
1899 / Charles Webster Hawthorne opened his Cape Cod School of Art. By 1915 had about 90 students.
1900 / E. Ambrose Webster opened his Summer School of Painting. He studies Monet’s later works and taught an advanced approach to color.
1900 / The U.S. Census showed 12 year old Dorothy living with older sister Esther and her husband Henry Greenebaum at 44th Street and Hyde Park Township in Chicago. Also living there were Esther’s 2 children Charlotte and Sarah, 3 siblings Jacob, Eva, Gertrude, and mother Johanna.
1903 / 3 / 15 / Dorothy’s father Adolph dies in Chicago, IL. Dorothy is 15 years old.
1909 / A Study in Primitive Forge (The Lost Mural)… Dorothy Loeb (21) created the immense and powerful mural for the newly established Albert G. Lane Tech in 1909. She won a contest sponsored by the Chicago Public School Art Society and commissioned by Kate Buckingham. It graced the stage of the school’s auditorium for many years. Lost for over 50 years, it was restored and re-commissioned in 2005
1908-1913 / Loeb and 4 other artists painted 11 murals at Lane Technical High School.
Year / Month / Day / Event
1910 / The U.S. Census showed Dorothy 21 still at Esther’s house but at 4346? North Hermitage. Esther has 4 children and mother Johanna (64) and 3 servants living there. Esther’s youngest were twin boys, Henry and Michael.
1910 / 6 / 17 / Dorothy Loeb (23) wins a Frederick Magnus Brand prize for Composition of $25 at the closing exercises of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The various prizes and honors for the work of the year have come to take the place of the academic diploma, the granting of which has been discontinued.
1910 / Dorothy completed the mural “Columbus Landing in America” for John M. Smyth Elementary School in Chicago, IL
1912 / Blanche travels throughout Europe and studies at Paris’s Academie Moderne and with Charles Guerin and David Rosen. Dorothy studied in Paris with Ferdinand Leger, Louis Marcoussis, and Henri Martin; and in Munich with Heinrich Knirr. She gained familiarity of avant-garde painting including cubism and futurism. Dorothy exhibited in France at the American Girls Club of Paris.
1913 / Blanche returns to West Virginia to start her own art school.
1913 / 11 / 25 / Dorothy boards the ship Martha Washington in Palermo, Italy. The ship originated out of Trieste, Italy.
1913 / 12 / 8 / Ellis Island - Doroty Loeb, age 26, arrives from port of Patras on the ship Martha Washington. The paperwork did say “Doroty”.
1913 / Dorothy returns to Chicago and lives at 4346 Hermitage Ave. She continues her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago working under Birge Harrison.
1913 / Armory Show introduced Modernism and made a rift in the art world.
1914 / 8 / 22 / Provincetown Art Association was organized in the Nautilus Club Room. First exhibit is 1915 in the north room of the Town Hall, as well as the next 5 exhibits. 1915 there were 147 members. 1917 there were 289 members. 1958 more than 400 members. The Ninth annual exhibit was at the Museum which is the Art Center.
1915 / Blanche Lazzell starts summering in Provincetown and attends Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art. She establishes a studio in Provincetown. Six artists form the Provincetown Printers, developing a unique method of woodcut printing, making single block or “white line” prints. By 1918 they established a gallery.
1915-17 / Dorothy’s initial art studies had taken place at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she exhibited in 1915-17 and again in 1929. Ross Moffett also attended classes at the Art Institute in 1911 until 1913. Paintings from the 1913 Armory Show came to Chicago, providing Dorothy with influence of Henri Matisse. It is possible she followed Ross Moffett and his roommate, Henry Sutter to attend Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art (founded in 1899) and attended by Blanche Lazzell. Dorothy also studied privately with Thomas Woods Stevens.
1912-17 / Dorothy exhibits at “Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago and Vicinity Artists”, Art Institute of Chicago. Dorothy taught at Hull House on Halstead Street in Chicago during at least part of this time period.
1916 / 8 / 27 / Boston Globe headline reads “Biggest Art Colony in the World at Provincetown”. More than 300 artists, 25 year round. The 1916 catalogue advertised 5 art schools: The West End School of Art, George Elmer Browne; A Summer School of Painting, E. Ambrose Webster; The Cape Cod School of Art, Charles W. Hawthorne, with assistant Oscar Gieberich and director Harry N. Cambbell; A Modern Art School, Bror J. O. Nordflet etc and a Class in Color and Monochrome Etchings, George Senseney. Only the first 3 lasted more than 2 years.
1916 / Expatriates in Paris return fleeing war. Influx of poets, novelists, journalists and playwrights; and artists from Greenwich Village brought bohemian lifestyle.
Year / Month / Day / Event
1916 / The Art Association sent out a traveling exhibit of 43 paintings and 25 prints.
1918 / The Art Association bought the Bangs property. In 1920 bought the adjacent property and tore down the Bangs House.
1918 / Blanche took a studio on the waterfront in Provincetown, rebuilt it in 1926, and produced her art from there for 40 years. It was torn down in 2002. To escape WWI artists flocked from European capitals to Provincetown. Among the new artists was B. J. O. Norfeldt, a printmaker. He honed down the multi-block printmaking to a single block with different color elements separated by deep lines that left a white outline around each section of the print. The Provincetown Printers were born. Lazzell added her own modernistic cubist design elements, resulting in distinctive and bold prints. For the remainder of her life she painted and printed with vibrant strength and flow.
1920 / The U.S. Census in 1920 showed Dorothy living in Manhattan where she rented
1920’s / Provincetown Painting Classes begun by Ross Moffett and Heinrich Pfieffer were Modernist in approach.
1923-1924 / In a 1923 sojourn in Paris where Blanche Lazzell studied with Fernand Leger, Andre L’Hote and Albert Gleizes, she met Loeb who was also studying with Leger. Dorothy also studies with Louis Marcoiussis. (It is possible that they had met beforehand and traveled to Paris together.) Lazzell painted Loeb in the nude during those classes and that painting is included in the current show.
1920’s / Dorothy is a Socialist as were many artists, authors, and intellectuals. A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, authorized “Palmer’s Raids” to route out the “Reds” and Socialists. Dorothy at one point was a target.
1923-1949 / Dorothy worked in Provincetown area
1923 / The Art Association trustees appointed Charles A. Kaeselau acting director, a former student of School of the Institute (as was Ross Moffett.)
1923 / Loeb first showed at the Provincetown Art Association with ‘My Neighbor’s Barn” Over the years she was influenced by Matisse and by the cubists. Her work continued to show impressionistic leanings mixed with more abstraction. Loeb produced monotypes as did Ross Moffett. Moffett’s Adam & Eve resembled those of Dorothy Loeb. (Monotypes are a combination of painting and printing which results in only one good impression.) Loeb’s monotypes were lyrical bordering on mystical. The allegorical prints abound with creativity, fantasy, and a fertile imagination.
1924 / Blanche Lazzell, age 46, of Morgantown, West Virginia, arrives at Ellis Island from La Havre on ship Suffren.
1926 / Loeb and Lazzell were among 30 signatories on a petition to the Art Association asking for equal exhibition time, space and prominence for the modernists who had been pushed aside in favor of the traditionalists since the association’s inception in 1914. They were on the committee in charge of the exhibit and served on the jury.
1926 / Who’s Who in American Jewry - p 367: artist: b July 2, 1887; ed. Art Institute of Chicago, Munich, Paris, Awarded Tuesday art and Travel Club European Scholarship. Works include decorations in Lane Technical High School and Smith Public School, Chicago. Dorothy taught art at the art Institute in Chicago, and at Hull House. Address: Hermitage Ave., Chicago, IL
1927 / The ‘First Modernistic Exhibition’ was scheduled for July 1927, and Loeb and Lazzell, along with Lucy L’Engle, Agnes Weinrich and Ellen Ravenscroft, plus seven male artists formed the jury and hanging committee. For 10 years the moderns and traditionalists hung in separate but equal summer shows until finally merging in 1937.
Year / Month / Day / Event
1927 / Contemporary and Early Provincetown Art …... …In 1927, Dorothy Loeb was included as a “star” by Nancy W. Paine Smith in her “Book About the Artists”
1927 / Dorothy painted South Truro landscape so may have lived there at this time.
1927-1928 / Dorothy produces a lot of brightly colored watercolor paintings, mostly abstract florals and landscapes. Eight are titled “Fantasy Landscape”. Loeb’s paintings are looser than Blanche Lazzell’s, more organic and fanciful. (Cape Cod Times 1/26/02) Her unusual colors were scorned as crude and defiant and generally were too avant-garde for the traditional conservative Bostonians.
1928 / Exhibition “American Painters Today”, Worchester (MA) Museum (or 1938?)
1929 / Exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied 1915-1917. Listing in 1929 American Art Annual notes that she studied in Munich.
1920-1929 / Some time during this period Dorothy taught art at Hull House in Chicago. Per Cheryl Ganz, author of “Pots of Promise: Mexicans and Pottery at Hull House”, “Through teachers attracted to the settlement, students were exposed to several of the styles of the modernist movement. Dorothy Loeb studied in Paris under Fernard Leger and her work reflected the influence of Matisse.”
1929 / American Art Annual Biographical Directory American Artists, Vol XXVI 1929, Dorothy Loeb, Litchfield, Conn., summer Provincetown, MA., P., E. - Pupil of AIC; studies in Paris and Munich. Member: Provincetown AA
1931 / 11 / 26 / Dorothy spent the summer in Paris, sailed for New York 11/18. Loeb has spent many summers in Provincetown.
1932 / 6 / 30 / Dorothy Loeb, well-known artist, returned from Chicago to her Provincetown summer home, Avellar Cottage. Miss Loeb spent the winter in Paris.
1933 / 7 / 2 / Dorothy’s mother Johanna Loeb dies in Chicago, IL, (a day before Dorothy’s 46th birthday).
1933 / 7 / 6 / Modernist Exhibition “Other artists whose work are arousing interest are…Dorothy Loeb”
1933 / 7 / 7 / Provincetown Art Association holds Sixth Annual Modernist Exhibit. The Provincetown Advocate reads “A goodly number of modernists are represented, among which such prominent names stand out as Dorothy Loeb…” “Dorothy Loeb is well represented with 4 pictures; 3 of which are landscapes, done in true Modernistic manner, and the forth is a study of a feminine figure, Girl and Jug. - Dorothy Loeb has contributed her interpretation of the seaside in her boats. - On the balcony etchings and prints may be viewed. Blanche Lazzelle… Ross Moffett... Dorothy Loeb… have contributed their work.”
1933 / Blanche moves to Morganstown, W.V. to work for the Public Works of Art Project
1933-34 / Dorothy worked on a mural “Man and the Social Sciences” for the Hall of Social Sciences in the Century of Progress Exposition of Paintings and Sculptures in Chicago. Also exhibited at AIC. She painted the transportation mural “Post Office”.
1934 / 8 / 16 / “Auctions of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints will be held in Town Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings.” The pictures are from the studios of prominent artists of Provincetown among who are …Dorothy Loeb…” “Richard Cox will be the auctioneer on Saturday evenings.”