Identity:

Halsey Cooley Ives was a painter, teacher and art adminstrator.

Life:

Ives was largely self-taught. Early in his career, he worked as a draughtsman before turning to art teaching in St Louis, Missouri, from 1879.

He also organised major art exhibitions in Chicago (the Fine Art Section of the World's Columbian Exposition, Department of Fine Arts, Chicago, 1893) and the St Louis Universal Exhibition in 1904. Ives visited Europe in connection with the Chicago exhibition in 1892; although JW does not appear to have been able to meet him, he was very interested in the progress of the exhibition and sent some major works including Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket (YMSM 181).

In 1903, Ives and Joseph Pennell asked JW to serve as chairman of the selection committee to select the work of American artists in Britain for the St Louis Exhibition. JW accepted although he became too ill to take up the role.

Later Ives became first director of the St Louis Art Museum.

Bibliography:

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-1961; Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 3rd ed., 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1909, vol. 2, p. 296; Falk, Peter H., Who Was Who in American Art. Artists Active 1898-1947, Connecticut, 1985.