Richard Treaster - "Basket & Ribbon" Realist watercolor painting of basket and ribbon

Richard Treaster • American (1932-2002)

Basket & Ribbon C: 1975 • Watercolor on Paper 15-3/4” x 16-1/4”

“My father used to lick his brushes after dabbing them in paint.” David Treaster remembers this small quirk and is sure, ingesting metal-based paints contributed to the dementia that eventually killed his father. If so, it would be a fitting end for a man whose life was his art.

Richard Treaster didn’t live a big life that left lots of footprints to follow. Biographies give little but the basics – pictures of his art, listings in May Show Directories, a few scattered comments in Cleveland Institute of Art Alumni newsletters. To learn more we tracked down one of his sons, David.

He remembers a solitary man who painted every day and, beside his family, had two great loves; art and gardening. And, he gardened to create subject matter for his art. As David remembers, “He loved art, but absolutely, flat out hated the business of art. He believed in living an understated life and the power of negative space. The two were related in his mind.” During the Korean war, Treaster was in the U.S. Air Force where he specialized in Cartography, the science of maps, and soaked in the understated elegance of the Asian culture around him. Both were lifetime influences on his life and art.

(story continues below break)

INTERESTING STORIES FROM OUR SPONSORS

But even a quiet man leaves some clues to help us understand his life. His art was the art of a craftsman, highly realistic and absorbed with perspective and other technical matters. He was always working on sketches and treatments to perfect his craft. It absorbed his life until dementia stole the skills he’d honed for almost seven decades.

David remembers a man who patterned his life around his art even choosing a home with an attic window facing north to better light his studio space. He remembers a man who loved to read Thoreau and listen to classical music. He emulated the great American realists Eakins and Sargent. He was a quiet man, but somehow the art world found him and his later work was filled with commissions from some of the countries leading corporations: Smuckers, Progressive, Ford Motor Company and Cleveland Clinic to name a few.

The great Impressionist, Claude Monet once said; “I am good at only two things, gardening and painting.” To men like Richard Treaster, that was enough.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Given in loving memory of Richard Treaster by Marian Treaster and family 2005.11

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“This guy was an artists artist. Always painting. Never pausing for vacations of days off. He worked his entire life to perfect his craft.”

2.
“One of his artistic passions was the use of negative space and the study of persepctive. Both are important to this work.”

3.
“He was a Cartographer in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. This explains his repeated use of maps in his work. Plus he always knew where he was going.”

4.
“As a teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Art he was surrounded by modern art, but always stuck to his roots in Realism. Except for one time, according to his son. That painting is long lost.”

Treaster Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1932

Born in Henrietta Township near Lorain, Ohio. He grew up on a family farm just outside Oberlin where he loved to draw and paint the natural world all around him. His brother still lives near the farm where they were raised.

Early 1950s

Joins the U.S. Air Force and is sent to war in Korea. His specialty is Cartography, the science of maps.

Maps became frequent subjects of his later art. He enjoys learning about Asian culture. It fits neatly with his natural reticence and influences his later art. Meets a St. Louis girl, Marian, who eventually becomes his wife.

1961

Graduates from the Cleveland Institute of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA).

1962

His water color painting, Attic Discards, receives a Jury Award at the annual May Show sponsored by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

1966

Begins a 14-year career teaching painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Selected as one of only 50 living painters for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s show: 200 Years of American Watercolor.

Early 1970s

Purchases a home in Lakewood with wife, Marian. They live there the rest of his life, raising a family with 2 sons and a daughter.

1980s

Begins doing commissions for corporations set up by his New York Representative, Judith Selkowitz. He becomes nationally known for his paintings of still lifes with maps and nautical charts, a fascination since his Air Force days. Becomes successful enough to leave his day job teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

1990s

Continues to paint and garden at his Lakewood home.

2002

Dies from the effects of dementia.

2005

Canton Museum of Art stages a retrospective of his work in a show titled: The Simple Life Through the Eyes of Richard Treaster.