COMMUNITY COMMENT

WALTER STUEMPFIG
American
The Philosopher
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Dora Koch
1980.7

Barkley L. Hendricks is Professor of Art at Connecticut College.

Walter Stuempfig will always be one of my favorite instructors at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. During the weekly critiques he gave students, he once told me about the painting I brought in for his review, “Get that **expletive deleted** out of my sight. It reminds me of that goddamned French painter Leger.”

Walter took strong exception and dislike to my geometric basketball paintings but in the same critique, he heaped praise on me for the portrait I did of Buck, one of the kids from the Amos playground where I was employed by the Philadelphia Department of Recreation.

My last conversation with Mr. Stuempfig was when I was completing my first year in the MFA program at Yale. It was a very deeply profound dialogue shared between two artists.

The light and the figure in The Philosopher are good examples of painting techniques that I was privy to during my student years with Walter Stuempfig as my instructor. Walter was an American icon in my mind and he taught me a great deal about painting.