Skip to main content
Francis Chapin
1899–1965
BirthplaceBristolville, Ohio, United States of America
Death placeChicago, Illinois, United States of America
BiographyChicago painter, printmaker, and teacher Francis Chapin is best known for his lively, boldly painted watercolor and oil images of Chicago neighborhoods that reflect the combination of realism and expressive style typical of the so-called regionalist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Chapin attended Washington and Jefferson College not far from his native Bristolville, Ohio. Following graduation in 1921, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago's famed school. In his sixth and final year there, he won the Bryan Lathrop Fellowship and, with fellow artist David McCosh (1903-81), traveled to France to study painting in 1928. Following his return to Chicago the following year, Chapin's work appeared in separate one-man exhibitions at the Art Institute and at the art gallery of Carson, Pirie, Scott, a major Chicago department store. In 1930, Chapin took up a position at the Art Institute teaching both painting and lithography (a fine art print medium), which he had recently studied with painter and printmaker Bolton Brown (1864-1936).
Chapin remained a lifelong resident of Chicago, but like many of his fellow artists in the Midwest he frequently traveled to paint in other locations, including Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the American Southwest. In 1932, he was invited by Iowa artist Grant Wood to teach lithography at his Stone City Art Colony and School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; he returned the following summer but thereafter became a regular instructor in the Art Institute's summer school, known as Ox-Bow, in Saugatuck, Michigan, where he served as director beginning in 1941. Chapin also taught at the University of Georgia, the Atlanta Art Institute, and the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis.
Specializing in watercolor and lithography, Chapin focused on urban and rural landscapes but also made portraits and images of the nude. He exhibited in the regular exhibitions at the Art Institute as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and other institutions, and he enjoyed three solo exhibitions in New York City galleries between 1932 and 1940. His bold, colorful renderings of urban and rural settings accorded with current taste for so-called regionalist art and its celebration of everyday American life. In 1942, Chapin was included in an exhibition of American artists from heartland states at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In the 1950s, he spent summers on Martha's Vineyard, a picturesque island off the coast of Massachusetts, serving as artist-in-residence at the Martha's Vineyard Art Association. Chapin won numerous awards and his works joined the permanent collections of several major American museums, including the Art Institute and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Chapin was a prominent member of the Old Town artists' community that flourished on Chicago's North Side in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Chapin remained a lifelong resident of Chicago, but like many of his fellow artists in the Midwest he frequently traveled to paint in other locations, including Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the American Southwest. In 1932, he was invited by Iowa artist Grant Wood to teach lithography at his Stone City Art Colony and School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; he returned the following summer but thereafter became a regular instructor in the Art Institute's summer school, known as Ox-Bow, in Saugatuck, Michigan, where he served as director beginning in 1941. Chapin also taught at the University of Georgia, the Atlanta Art Institute, and the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis.
Specializing in watercolor and lithography, Chapin focused on urban and rural landscapes but also made portraits and images of the nude. He exhibited in the regular exhibitions at the Art Institute as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and other institutions, and he enjoyed three solo exhibitions in New York City galleries between 1932 and 1940. His bold, colorful renderings of urban and rural settings accorded with current taste for so-called regionalist art and its celebration of everyday American life. In 1942, Chapin was included in an exhibition of American artists from heartland states at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In the 1950s, he spent summers on Martha's Vineyard, a picturesque island off the coast of Massachusetts, serving as artist-in-residence at the Martha's Vineyard Art Association. Chapin won numerous awards and his works joined the permanent collections of several major American museums, including the Art Institute and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Chapin was a prominent member of the Old Town artists' community that flourished on Chicago's North Side in the middle decades of the twentieth century.