6. Caleb Arnold Slade

Caleb Arnold Slade (1882-1961) was a versatile American painter of European, North African, and New England land and seascapes, religious and allegorical scenes, and portraits. Born in Acushnet, Massachusetts, Slade maintained a home in the area until his death in Truro in 1961. He was the younger son of a Quaker merchant and intended to follow a life in business like his father but dropped out of Brown University in 1903.[1] With financial support from his family, he began his art education at the Art Students League in New York City under F. V. Du Mond and Louis Loeb and in Paris at the prestigious L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and later at the Julien Academy under Jean-Paul Laurens, Marcel Baschet, and Francois Schommer.[2] In 1906, while a student at the Art Students League, Slade married Irene Elizabeth Wells (1885-1966), an Attleboro stenographer, and the couple migrated between the United States, France, Italy, Tunisia, and Palestine.

Slade quickly made his reputation and by the eve of World War I, his work had been exhibited in the Paris Salon and in London. One of many American artists living in France at the outbreak of war, Slade’s painting of a ghostly Christ appearing before a dying French soldier, I Am the Resurrection, was copyrighted and reprinted in magazines and newspapers across the United States. Slade volunteered for service with the U.S. Army painting camouflage and upon his return stateside, exhibited one-man shows in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City. His work attracted the attention of collectors such as Isabella Stewart Gardner and John Wanamaker. In later years, Slade became a sought-after portraitist of such public figures as Vice President Charles Dawes, Iowa Senator Smith Brookhart, and notorious Idaho Senator William Borah (unverified reports also claim he was to paint Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son James, despite Slade’s stance as a “stalwart Republican”). Today, C. Arnold Slade’s work can be found in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.[3] 

[1] Previous bios of Slade claim that he was an only child, but he had an older brother Emerson (1876-1949), see "United States Census, 1900", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M95J-N4J : 10 March 2022), Emerson A Slade in entry for Caleb Slade, 1900.; additionally, previous bios claim Slade graduated from Brown University, but he does not appear with his graduating class in the 1904 yearbook, in fact he is listed in the 1903 Ye Liber Brunensi not with his class roster, but in a separate list titled “Sometime Members” with the quote “What a falling off was there!” implying he had dropped. See, "Liber Brunensis 1903 " (1903). Liber Brunensis (Yearbook). Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library, 82. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:613762/.

[2] “C. Arnold Slade,” Fine Arts Journal, Vol. 30, No. 5 (May, 1914), 214-20.

[3] Ibid.; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 16, 1916, 72.; “Washington Observations,” Evening Star (Washington, District of Columbia), February 6, 1928, 8.; Buffalo (New York) Evening News, January 8, 1930, 20.; The Des Moines Register, February 2, 1930, 66.; The Kansas City Star, April 10, 1938, 11.