James Ormsbee Chapin

American Painter & Illustrator James Chapin painted people and landscapes in the early and middle twentieth century. His art is significant for showing human warmth, heroism, and complex character in ordinary people. James Chapin is one of America's leading painters. He holds the Temple Gold medal for the best painting by an American given by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the $1,000 Prize for Portraiture award by the Art Institute of Chicago. Twenty years ago, Chapin created a series of paintings of a family in lower New Jersey named Marvin. These character portrayals are hung in the leading museums in the country. He has executed numerous portraits of prominent public figures. His works have been acquired by many private collectors and for the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he taught portraiture, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Duncan Phillips Memorial Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Newark Museum, Amherst College, Dartmouth, and others. Chapin was born in West Orange, New Jersey in 1887 and studied at Cooper Union, the Art Students League and abroad at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium where he received the First Award and Gold Medal.