Biography
Henrik Martin Mayer had a long and productive career as an artist. He also made some remarkable contributions as an academic administrator. Mayer was born in 1908 in Nashua, NH. He received his initial training in art under Maud Briggs Knowlton at the Manchester Institute of Arts and Sciences. Knowlton became the first director of the Currier Museum in Manchester and was one of the first two women artists to join the Monhegan Island artist's colony. Leaving New Hampshire, Mayer studied under the muralist Eugene Savage at the Yale University School of Fine Art, receiving his BFA in 1930. He received a Winchester Fellowship to study in Europe the following year.
In 1932 Mayer married Jessie Hull, who had been a fellow art student at Yale. He obtained a teaching position at the Cooper Union and was named lead designer for the Cosmopolitan Club, with his wife assisting him in the work. Husband and wife started working on murals at this time, and both would often bid on the same projects.
The couple moved to Indianapolis in 1934, where they remained until after World War II. Mayer became Assistant Director of the John Herron Art Institute, working under Donald Mattison, another Yale graduate who had studied under Eugene Savage. Notably, Mayer helped the Institute to navigate through the rocky financial waters of the Depression, while continuing to produce and exhibit his paintings, for which he received several prestigious prizes.
Mayer's most significant commission in this period was for the Marine Hospital in Louisville in 1936. The same year he completed a mural for the Lafayette, IN Post Office in a competition where his wife was the runner-up. (She received a commission for the Culver, IN Post Office in consequence.) Mayer completed another Post Office mural in Aurora, IN in 1938, the same year he won the Altman Prize at the National Academy of Design. Husband and wife spent their summers painting in Branford, CT, where Jessie had been born, or on Monhegan Island.
From 1946-1956 Mayer served as Director of the Hartford Art School. When Mayer began this work, the Art School was an independent institution inside the Wadsworth Atheneum. By the time he resigned his post, the Hartford Art School had merged with the Hartt School of Music and Hillyer College (which included a strong technical component) to form the new University of Hartford. Mayer helped design the building for the Art School at the new university.
Mayer served as Professor of Painting and Chairman of the Faculty at the Art School from 1956-1963. He continued his work in painting, murals, lithography and illustration, and completed commissions for a half dozen new murals in the 1950s. He died in New Haven in 1972.
Critical Analysis
Henrik Martin Mayer was a solid and versatile artist. He was not a trail-blazing modernist by any means, but he produced well-executed paintings in a style that was mostly representational. His compositions were engaging, well-suited to presentation in the many murals that he executed.
Murals
- Aurora, Indiana - Post Office: Down to the Ferry
- Lafayette, Indiana - Post Office: Rural Delivery
- Lafayette, Indiana - Post Office: Sad News
References
- Henrik M. Mayer, New York Times December 23 (1972).
- Henrik Martin Mayer (Smithsonian American Art Museum).
- Henrik Martin Mayer (Fine Estate Art).
- Henrik Martin Mayer (Fine Arts Collection).
- Henrik Martin Mayer (National Academy of Design).
- Henrik Martin Mayer Sold at Auction Prices (invaluable).
- Henrik Mayer (New Britain Museum of American Art).