This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  William Howard Calfee. Born February 7, 1909 in Washington, D.C. Died December 15, 1995 Chevy Chase, Maryland. Sculptor, Painter, Muralist.
Studied: Academie Julian, Paris, with Paul Landowski; Ecole des Beaus-Arts, in Paris; Carl Miles, Crandbrook Academy of Art, Michigan.
Member: Washington Art Guild.
Exhibited:
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 1936-1938, 1960; Museum of Modern Art; southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester (solo); Boston Museum of Art, Corcoran gallery, 1949, 1951; WMAA, 1966; His first solo exhibition opened on December 7, 1941, at the Franz Bader Gallery, Washington D.C and later in the 1970's. His work can be found at the PMA, Museum of Modern Art, PMG, Cranbrook Academy of Arts; Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Boston Museum of Art.
During the Great Depression he produced eight murals and two sculptures, commissioned by Secretary Fine Arts, US Interior and Treasury Department, 1936-1941, including murals in the United States Post Office in Selbyville, Delaware, "Chicken Farm" 1942; Phoebus, Virginia, "Chesapeake Fishermen" 1941; Petersburg, Virgina; Two murals in Tazewell, Virginia, "Mining" 1940 and "Sheep, Mother & Child, Cow" 1940, Harrisonburg, Virginia "Country Fair, Trading Courthouse, Square", and Bel Air, Maryland, "First Performance of Edwin Booth" painted in 1938. It has been moved to the "new" post office on Blum Court.; and the font, alter & candlesticks at the St. Augustine Chapel, Washington D.C. 1969.
He taught at the Phillips Gallery, Washington, D.C.. He was chair of American University's art department from 1946 to 1954. In 1949 he was an instructor in mural technique, Centre Art, Port au Price, Haiti. In 1951 he was a guest association professor painting, UC Berkley.
Publications: collaboration design and author of introduction in Tradition and Experiment in Modern Sculpture. He was co-founder of both the Watkins Memorial Collection and the Jefferson Place Gallery. In the 1970s he and Patricia Friend established the Kensington Workshop, a private studio in which they taught painting. His last major public commission for which the budget was $55,000, was for a monumental abstract sculpture that he completed in 1981 in front of the Rockville Civic Center, in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art have 650 items in there archives which include correspondence, undated and 1966-1982, mostly letters from friends, including Jack Tworkov, Karel Yasko, and others; photographs of Calfee's studio, of his work, of his designs for a Harrisonburg, Virginia WPA mural, and of paintings by Mary Orwen; notebooks, poetry and essays on numerous subjects, 1954-1981, some with illustrations; an illustrated travel diary, 1977, covering a trip to Italy, and other accounts of travels to France, Greece and Turkey; art works, 1937-1955, including many sketches for the WPA mural; one blueprint for the WPA mural; exhibition announcements, 1962-1965; and clippings, 1940-1981. Also included is a complete set of the periodical, RIGHT ANGLE, published by the American University, 1947-1949; and miscellaneous printed material. Donated 1977-1982 by William Calfee.
There is also an interview of Adele S. Brown and William H. Calfee conducted by Liza Kirwin at Calfee's home in Chevy Chase, Md., for the Archives of American Art, January 11, 1995. Brown and Calfee speak of their roles in Phillips Studio House. They recall Law Watkins, Karl Knaths, Duncan Phillips, Bernice Cross, Robert Franklin (Bob) Gates, Marjorie Phillips, Alice Acheson, John Marin, George Groves, Harold (Hal) West, Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Kenneth Noland, Jack Tworkov, Caresse Crosby, Prentiss Taylor, and many others. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Sources include:
Who Was Who in American Art. Social Security Death Index.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Jimmy Wayne's Post Offices and New Deal mural photographs on flickr online.
Information courtesy of GriffinsGallery.com
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