Carl Sprinchorn (Swedish-American, 1887-1971)
At the age of 15, Sprinchorn traveled from Sweden to New York City to enroll in the New York School of Art and studied under Robert Henri. Sprinchorn is best known for painting North-Central Maine, where he came to admire lumberjacks, campfires, and the Maine woods. His “Self” Portrait on Hotel Stationery uses thick lines of graphite, alluding to the abstracted, yet figurative, characteristics of his art. The support material of everyday stationary shows that Sprinchorn was an artist who drew prolifically.
Sprinchorn taught at the Arts Student League in New York and served as their director. In 1915, he was chosen to exhibit at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, California. He showed in 1920 with other Swedish-American artists at the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the American Swedish Historical Museum. His works reside in the collections of various museums, but most notably, the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York.
