Karl Anderson was the oldest of 7 children born to a harness-maker in Morning Sun, Ohio, near Oxford. He was the brother of the writer Sherwood Anderson, whose book Winesburg, Ohio depicted the town of Clyde, where the Anderson family moved in 1884. There Anderson learned crayon portraiture from a local house painter and achieved some local renown with his skill in this medium. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with John Vanderpoel and James Earle Fraser with fellow students J.C. Leyendecker and Frederick Karl Frieseke, both of whom played significant roles in Anderson's career. Through Leyendecker he gained a position at the J.C. Mantz and Company engraving firm, the first of a number of commercial appointments. In 1900 he studied in Paris, and in the following year he took plein-air classes from George Hitchcock, whose work emphasized bright outdoor sunlight and influenced much of Anderson's future work. There followed a series of jobs at commercial illustration punctuated by trips to Europe in the years 1909-1912. This included a stay at Giverny, undertaken at Frieseke's urging and another major influence on Anderson's work. In 1912 he settled in Westport, Connecticut, where he remained as a painter and teacher, achieving the status of the "Dean of Westport Painters".Frederick Carl Frieseke, 1910Good Housekeeping cover, 1906
Critical Analysis
Anderson's stay at Giverny produced an impressionist style evident in a number of his paintings. These included "The Idlers", which earned him broader recognition and the patronage of Charles G. Dawes, a future American Vice-President. He participated in the ground-breaking Armory Show of 1913, but his work did not turn toward the modernism that this show embodied. Rather he moved toward a gauzy mythological style, which proved to be popular in its own right.
