A Finding Aid to the Alfred Vance Churchill Papers Regarding Lyonel Feininger,
1888-1944
, in the Archives of American Art
AAA.churalfr
Author
Finding aid prepared by Erin Corley
Biographical Note
Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), also known as Léonell Feininger, was born in New York City in 1871 to German violinist Karl Feininger and American singer Elizabeth Feininger. He spent his childhood in New York City and became interested in art at a young age. Although born in New York, Lyonel Feininger lived and worked mostly in Germany.
In 1887 Feininger's parents took him to Germany to study violin, but he began taking drawing classes at the Hamburg Kunstgewerbeschule (College of Arts and Crafts) and subsequently moved to Berlin to study art at the Königliche Akademie under Ernst Hancke. During this time he met and befriended a fellow art student, Alfred Vance Churchill, who later became an art historian and curator. They would exchange letters and artwork for many years. For a brief time Feininger studied at the College St. Servais in Liège and with Filippo Colarossi in Paris, but returned to Berlin to study at the Akademie der Kunste with Karl Schlabitz.
Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for several German, French and American magazines and illustrated two comic strips "The Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the
Chicago Tribune.
During this period he married Clara Fürst and they had two daughters, Lore and Marianne. He also exhibited drawings at the annual Berlin Secession and the Great Berlin Art Exhibition.
Feininger separated from his wife after starting an affair with Julia Borg. He and Julia traveled to Paris where he became greatly influenced by the French avant-garde. When they returned to Berlin in 1908, he gave up illustration in favor of painting. He and Julia were then married and they had three sons, Andreas, Laurence, and Theodore Lux.
Feininger became a member of the Berlin Secession and exhibited his paintings, primarily landscapes inspired by French cubism. Around 1912, Feininger became affiliated with the German expressionist groups Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, and the Novembergruppe in 1918, where he met Walter Gropius. When Gropius established the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany in 1919, Feininger became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop. He taught there and continued to develop his painting, and in 1925 he formed the Blue Four with Alexei Jawlensky, Paul Klee, and Vasily Kandinsky. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1926 he became an artist-in-residence and stayed there until it closed in 1933.
After the Nazi's declared Feininger's work "degenerate" in 1937, he moved to California where he taught at Mills College. He settled permanently in New York and had great success exhibiting his work in the United States, which culminated in a joint retrospective in 1944 with Marsden Hartley. Lyonel Feininger died in 1956 at the age of 84.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into 4 series:
Series 1: Letters to Alfred Churchill, 1890-1920 (Box 1; 5 folders)
Series 2: Printed Material, 1895-1898, 1917-1944 (Box 1; 6 folders)
Series 3: Scrapbook of Artwork, 1888-1913 (Box 1-3; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 4: Photographs, circa 1890, 1911, 1926 (Box 1; 2 folders)
Scope and Content Note
This small collection of Alfred Vance Churchill papers regarding Lyonel Feininger measures 0.9 linear feet and dates from 1888 to 1944. Found here are 36 long and detailed letters from Feininger, a painter and illustrator, to his friend Alfred Churchill (many letters from 1890 are illustrated), and a scrapbook compiled by Churchill containing 117 sketches by Feininger, a photograph of Feininger, clippings, and 47 sketches and reproductions by Churchill. There are also additional loose clippings and magazines, an exhibition catalog, three photographs of Feininger and one of his children.
Provenance
Material on reels D5 (frames 363-612) and 468 donated by Marie Churchill, whose husband, Alfred Vance Churchill, was a close friend of Feininger.
Separated Material
The Alfred Vance Churchill papers regarding Lyonel Feininger included approximately 23 photographs of works of art by Feininger. These items were removed from the collection upon receipt and added to Photographs of Works of Art, Collection One, and microfilmed on reel 468.
Related Material
The Archives of American Art also has several collections related to Lyonel Feininger, including Letters to Beatrice Lippincott (Garvan) from Lyonel and Julia Feininger available on microfilm reel 4909, and a 1939 letter from Feininger to Alfred Neumeyer, available on reel 2804. The archives also has additional collections of loaned papers available only on microfilm: Lyonel Feininger papers loaned for microfilming by Feininger's friend, H. Francis Kortheuer and available on reel D5 and D29, and Sketches by Feininger loaned for microfilming by Fred Werner and available on reel D5.
The most complete Lyonel Feininger Archive, donated by the Feininger family, is located at Harvard University. The Alfred Vance Churchill papers, 1828-1948, are located at Smith College Archives.
Processing Information
The Alfred Vance Churchill papers regarding Lyonel Feininger received a preliminary level of processing at some point after donation. Material was microfilmed in the order that it was donated on reels D5 and 468. The collection was fully processed by Erin Corley in 2006 and digitized in 2007 with funding provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Image assets for this folder have not been fully processed.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
