 George
Claire Tooker
born: Brooklyn, NY, US; 5 August 1920
lives in: Hartland, Vermont, US
Born and raised until age seven in Brooklyn, New
York and then in Belleport, Long Island in upper middle class surroundings.
His mother is of Cuban/Spanish extraction; his father is Anglo-American.
The family is a church going Episcopalian family.
In his early teens George takes art lessons from
the painter Malcolm Frazier, a friend of his mother, and then he attends
Phillips Academy, a prep school, in Andover, Mass. in preparation for
college. He doesn't really want to go to college -- he wants to go to
art school, but the family insists on a college education.
He goes to Harvard University where he studies
English Literature, but spends much of his time doing what he wants to
do: painting with his roommate, Francis Faust.
At the beginning of the Second World War his family
expects him to enlist in the services, so he does. During boot camp he
is found to be medically unfit and discharged with ulcerative colitis.
He is subsequently drafted, and again he is found medically unqualified.
During the war he studies at the Art Students
League in New York City, and in 1943 with Reginald
Marsh. He also studies with Kenneth Hayes Miller and Harry Sternberg.
Tooker stops attending church when he begins art school. However religion
remains a major influence on his art.
In 1946, he becomes both the student and a close
friend of Paul Cadmus.
Cadmus encourages Tooker to work with tempera rather than the transparent
wash technique taught by Marsh.
Tooker adopts a method of using egg yolk thickened
slightly with water and then adding powdered pigment, a medium that is
quick drying, tedious to apply, and hard to change once applied.
In 1949 he travels for several months in France
and Italy with Paul Cadmus looking at art.
In the early 50s he moves to New York; there Tooker
finds his life partner, another artist -- William Christopher (1924-1974).
Bill and George share a loft in Chelsea; in 1953 after a fire in an adjoining
lumber yard, they move to Brooklyn Heights and renovate a brownstone.
They support themselves by making and selling furniture.
In 1951 George has his first one-man exhibition
at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York .
In 1960 Bill and George again move. This time to
Vermont. They build their home using an old barn as the structural base.
This short biography continues in Part
2 of the Tooker Gallery
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