Artist

Ross Moffett

born Clearfield, IA 1888-died Provincetown, MA 1971
Media - J0105754_1b.jpg - 89792
Ross Moffett, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0105754
Also known as
  • Ross E. Moffett
Born
Clearfield, Iowa, United States
Died
Provincetown, Massachusetts, United States
Nationalities
  • American
Biography

Born in Clearfield, Iowa, Ross Moffett began studying art at the Cummins School of Art in Des Moines in 1907. The following year he studied briefly at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before transferring to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with John Vanderpool and Harry Wallcott until 1913. He also studied with Charles W. Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1913 and attended classes at the Art Students League in New York in 1914.

After serving in the U.S. Army and traveling in Europe, Moffett returned to Provincetown and in 1924 established the Provincetown Painting Class with fellow artist Heinrich Pfeiffer. During the 1930s Moffett completed several mural projects for the WPA Federal Art Project and later received a commission, with Louis Bouché, from the National Academy of Design for the Eisenhower Memorial Foundation in Abilene, Kansas, which was completed in 1956. Moffett was awarded many prizes, notably the French Gold Medal at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1927. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, the American Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers, and the National Society of Mural Painters.

Joann Moser Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1997)