Henry Varnum Poor

Henry Varnum Poor was born on September 30, 1887, in Chapman, Kansas. From 1896-1905 his family lived in Kansas City, Missouri, where his father, A.J. Poor, was a member of the Kansas City Board of Trade. In Kansas City, Poor attended the Manual Training School, where he studied drafting, carpentry, and other industrial arts.

Poor moved with his mother and his siblings to Palo Alto, California, and in 1910 he graduated from Stanford University. After graduating, he traveled to Europe where he studied art with Walter Sickert at the Slade School of Art in London and at the Académie Julian in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens and Lucien Simon. Poor returned to California and taught at Stanford from 1911-1914, and then at the California School of Fine Art from 1915-1918.

During WWI he served as a camoflager in France and was transferred to the regular war art staff before the armistice was signed. Here he produced watercolors, drawings and lithographs from the war.

After the war, he moved to Rockland County, New York, in 1919 and designed and built his home and studio called "Crow House." In the 1920s, he focused on applied arts, especially painted pottery and handcrafted bathrooms. He returned to painting in 1929, and began experimenting with traditional fresco painting in the 1930s, completing mural commissions for the Works Progress Administration.

In the late 1930s he received commissions to illustrate several books, including Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Call of the Wild by Jack London. He also wrote and illustrated his own book called Artist Sees Alaska, published in 1945, and another one titled A Book of Pottery in 1958.

In 1946 he co-founded the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and was its first president. From 1952-1955 he was a guest professor of painting at Columbia University in New York.

Poor was a member of several organizations, including the National Academy, San Francisco Art Association, the California Art Club, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

He died on December 8, 1970, in New City, New York.