Who is Frederick Gottwald?

Frederick Carl Gottwald (August 15, 1858 – June 23, 1941) was a traditionalist American painter who was influential in the proceed of the Cleveland School of art, sometimes called the “dean of Cleveland painters”. He taught at the Western Reserve School of Design for Women (later renamed to the Cleveland Institute of Art), and it has been said that he “contributed exceeding any extra person to Cleveland’s artistic development”.

Gottwald was born in Austria, to Frederick and Caroline Grosse Gottwald, and emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, as an infant. He first studied painting taking into account Archibald Willard in 1874, with whom he would found the Cleveland Art Club in 1876. He later moved to New York City to continue his training at the Art Students League of New York, followed by stints at the Royal Academy in Munich, the Académie Julian in Paris, and Cooper Union assist in New York. Upon his return to Cleveland in September 1885, he united the capability of the design assistant professor and would be allied with them for the bordering 41 years, including serving as director from 1889–91. His directorship was over and curtains with by a demotion to “headmaster” and there was such bad blood between him and his replacement, Newton A. Wells, that the two men ended occurring in a fistfight. Although Gottwald was allowed to remain at the hypothetical as an instructor, he never regained the turn of director. As an instructor, he taught a large number of Cleveland-based artists, such as Charles Burchfield, Henry Keller, Abel Warshawsky, and Frank N. Wilcox.

The 1890s were Gottwald’s most flourishing years as an artist. During this era he exhibited on the order of yearly at the National Academy of Design, and the Boston Art Club a few times. He next had two pieces at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. In 1897, he founded a summer art scholastic in Zoar which relocated to Chagrin Falls in 1899.

After his retirement from the university in 1926, he and his wife Myria Scott moved to Italy. They lived there for several years, returning to Cleveland in 1930, after which they retired to Pasadena, California in 1932. Gottwald died there in 1941.