Chapin, James (1887 – 1975)

New York artist, James Chapin,  is credited by some critics as the founder of American Scene painting before the spotlight centered on the so-called regionalists.  His painting, “Cows in a Barnyard” is regarded a seminal regionalist work.

Chapin was a pupil at the Antwerp Royal Academy and Society of Independent Painters of America.  In 1924, he rented a log cabin on the farm of the Marvin family in northwestern New Jersey, whose bucolic setting became the dominant influence in his early artistic career. In 1929 he returned to Manhattan, where he painted many other phases of life in the United States, often concerntrating on the characters of America’s pastime, baseball. He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and in the summer was associated with Millard Sheets in teaching in the Fine Arts Department of Claremont College in California.

His work is included in virtually every important collection of American regionalist paintings.