artist
Mulhaupt was born in Rock Port, Missouri to German immigrant parents. He began his career as an editor to a newspaper in Dodge City, Kansas, and later moved to Kansas City where he worked as an artist's apprentice. He enrolled at the Kansas City School of Design and in the 1890's, began taking courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. While taking night courses at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mulhaupt, along with other night students helped to found the "Palette and Chisel Club". In 1904 Mulhaupt moved to New York where he lived at the Salmagundi Club, and shortly after, spent several years traveling in Paris. It is during his stay abroad that the focus of Mulhaupt's artwork changed to coastal views and harbor scenes. Once Frederick J. Mulhaupt returned to the United States, he moved back into the Salmagundi Club.
Frederick J. Mulhaupt became a founding member of the Cape Ann School, and despite the fact that he was not a native to Massachusetts or New England, he was regarded as the "Dean of the Cape Ann School." Gloucester, Massachusetts was a booming artistic center in the early 20th century and artists such as Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Willard Metcalf and Anthony Thieme flocked there. Mulhaupt moved permanently to Gloucester in 1922.
Description
Frederick J. Mulhaupt visited Gloucester, Massachusetts for the first time in 1907, upon his return from his studies in Paris. After having the opportunity to study across the United States and abroad, Mulhaupt decided that the landscape of Gloucester most inspired him, and he began to spend all of his summers there. Frederick J. Mulhaupt is often remembered for his depictions of harbor scenes in the Cape Ann area, but he was also known to have completed numerous autumnal and winter landscapes of this region. Winter near Gloucester, Massachusetts displays the textural qualities that Mulhaupt strove for in all of his paintings; the fallen leaves and peeling bark on the birch trees have been painted in a way that mimics the crispness of a winter day and creates the effect of three-dimensionality.
provenance
Private Estate, Massachusetts (estate collector and dealer)
Bonham's New York, 2008