Paul Froelich

"Each day means a new start of search. There is no answer for the final result. The creative impulse does not let one in on its activity."
-Paul Froelich, Art Alliance Bulletin, October, 1965

Artist Paul Froelich was a well regarded painter, art teacher, advertising art director, print maker and free-lance illustrator. He entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts while he was still a teenager and won two Cresson Traveling Scholarships in 1914 and in 1915, enabling him to study in Europe for more than two years.

While in Europe, he studied 12th-and-13th century stained glass, which influenced his design of the stained glass windows of the Swedenborg Cathedral in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Froelich's painting covered a broad spectrum of media, including oils, watercolors, monotypes and gouaches. His style showed experimentation throughout his life, with his early works being more naturalistic, portraying landscapes, still lifes, and genre scenes. He was particularly interested in depicting race horses and horse riding. His later works are characterized by near abstraction, such as his Homage to Braque and Picasso, which includes aspects of cubist works in a semi-abstract still life.

Education and Training
Liberty Todd School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1911
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1912 to c. 1919
Cresson Traveling Scholarships, studied in Europe for two and a half years ( England, Holland, Belgium, France and Germany), 1914-1915

Teachers and Influences
Daniel Garber, Hugh Breckenridge, Henry McCarter, Joseph Pearson
Influenced by George Seurat, Paul Cezanne, George Braque, Pablo Picasso

Connection to Bucks County
Paul Froelich and his wife, Elizabeth, came to New Hope in 1931 from Philadelphia. They found a farmhouse on Meeting House Road, near the Solebury Meeting House on Sugan Road in New Hope. They intended to only spend their weekends there, but after they had repaired a hole in the living room floor, they found that they didn't want to go back to the city. Instead, they bought some more land and pushed a creek over to make room for a studio in the rear of the house. The couple enjoyed horseback riding and jumping and expressed regret that the old paths were being blocked as the county slowly became less rural.

Colleagues and Affiliations
Froelich taught art in New Hope and exhibited at the Phillips' Mill Community Association.

Major Solo Exhibitions
Art and Crafts Guild, New Orleans, Missouri
Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, Massachusetts
Philadelphia Museum School of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1947
Museum School of Art, (now University of the Arts), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1955
Ludington Memorial Library, Ardmore, Pennsylvania, 1954
Retrospective Exhibition, Gallery 1015, Wyncote, Pennsylvania, 1961
Philadelphia Museum College of Art (former Philadelphia Museum
School of Art), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, n.d.

Major Group Exhibitions
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1917, 1923, 1924, 1932, 1935, 1939-1942, 1944, 1945, 1951, 1953, 1954, 1958, 1960
Corcoran Gallery of Art , Washington, D.C., 1941
Art Alliance, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1953
50th Anniversary Retrospective Art Exhibition, Phillips' Mill Community Association, New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1979
Buffalo Museum, Buffalo, New York
Carnegie Art Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois
Cincinnati Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio
Cleveland Museum, Cleveland, Ohio
Woodmere Art Gallery, (now the Woodmere Art Museum) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Major Collections
Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, New Hampshire
Delgado Museum, New Orleans
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Museum of Art, (Rosenwald Collection), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Teaching and Professional Appointments
Associate Director, Division of Drawing and Painting,
Philadelphia Museum School of Art (now the Philadelphia Museum College of Art), Philadelphia, 1940 to the 1960s
Guest Instructor, Summer School at Chester Spring, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1949
Assistant Art Director, N.W. Ayer Advertising
Art Director, Gray and Rogers, 1949
Instructor, Philadelphia College of Art (former Philadelphia
Museum College of Art), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Doctor of the Fine Arts, Honorary, Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, 1967

Major Awards
Thouron Prize for Composition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1913, 1914, 1915
Cresson Traveling Scholarships, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1914, 1915
Fellowship Watercolor Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Louisiana Oil Landscape Prize
Pennell Gold Medal for Lithography, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Pennsylvania
Watercolor Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
YMHA, Artists Selection Prize, 1959

Affiliations and Memberships
Philadelphia Print Club