Jean Louis Liberte, American (1896 - 1965)

   Jean Louis Liberte graduated from The Cooper Union in New York City in 1916 and then studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller at The Art Students League, where he later taught from 1945 until 1965. He also studied at The National Academy of Design and The Beaux-Arts Institute. In 1960 the National Academly elected him full Academician. He was a recognized authority on the technical aspects of casein painting.

During his lifetime, Liberte exhibited widely and won many prizes, including the W.A. Clark Prize at The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1945. His paintings are in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Tel Aviv Museum, among others. In the year of his death a complete retrospective was held at The Art Students League and a short time later another retrospective was held at The Butler Institute of American Art.

Although his first love was for the earthy works of Jean Francois Millet - he added the name "Jean" to his given name of Louis at his confirmation in memory of Millet - Liberte was also influenced by the early dark works of his teacher, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and by the great Romanticist, Albert Pinkham Ryder. In 1945, Liberte was termed a "Night Blooming Artist" by Harry Salpeter in one of his profiles of American artists for "Esquire Magazine". This was due to the fact that, unlike most artists, Liberte loved to paint at night.

One of our earliest Romantic Expressionists, the best known paintings of Jean Louis Liberte are coastal night scenes, but even his figural works appear to have been painted by moonlight.