Lawrence Porth began his career as an artist during World War I when he met Norman Rockwell, who was stationed with Porth as a navy seaman training at Charleston, South Carolina. Rockwell saw Porth’s work and encouraged him to study seriously. Porth served as a wireless operator on the USS Belknap. On one of seventeen cruises on the Belknap, Porth noted an old English fishing schooner off the coast of England, crossing the path of a Navy ship sailing from Plymouth, Massachusetts to Plymouth, England. His painting of the scene, Return of the Mayflower, became a Navy recruiting poster.
With the end of the war Porth began training to become a professional artist. After study at the Art Institute of Chicago he won a scholarship to the Louvre in Paris, where he learned to restore Old Master paintings. Porth returned to the United States and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago. He came to Florida in the 1940’s, working at the Ringling Museum as an art restorer. Later he came to Tampa as an art instructor at the Peter Eikland School of Art, and the Elise Frank School of Art. Porth opened the Tampa Academy of Fine Arts and helped to organized the Tampa Realistic Artists as a protest to the exclusion of representational art by the Tampa Art Institute. Porth received a commission to paint Mrs. Doyle Carlton, the wife of Florida Governor Carlton. He occasionally signed his paintings with an affection, “Van Porth”.
In 1952 Porth assisted Norman Borchard in organizing the Florida State Fair art exhibition. He served as a judge at the International Art Exhibit at Florida Southern College, Lakeland in 1954, and received a citation from the President of Florida Southern College. In 1955 Porth went on a three month lecturing and painting tour of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and the Great Smokie Mountains. Porth’s appeal to the students at Florida Southern was, “To paint lovely things-there is enough sordidness about us.”
Porth, Lawrence. Tampa, After the Rain, Sunrise, My Back Yard. 1952. Oil on canvas, 24 by 30 inches. Exhibited Florida International Art Exhibit, Florida Southern College, 1952.
Born: 1896.
Died: 1972.
Education: Art Institute of Chicago; American Academy, Chicago with Phil Lyford; Academy Julian, Paris, scholarship, with Laurens; Fontainebleau and Louvre with Francis Gorquette.
Membership: Tampa Realistic Artists, founder and president; Tampa Art Institute; Students’ Art Club, Tampa; Art League of Manatee County, 1955-56; All American Art Society of Illinois; Gibbs Art Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina.
Exhibits: Porth Studio, 7802 Brooks Street, Tampa, 1951, one hundred watercolors and oils; St. Petersburg Operetta, March 1952; Art League of Manatee County, March 1952; Tampa Art Institute, Plant Park, March 1955; Art League of Manatee County, All Members Exhibit, October 1955, 209 Ninth St. W. Bradenton, oils, Rocks and Rhododendron, From Here to Eternity (both signed Van Porth); Tampa Realistic Art Gallery, 238 East Davis Blvd, April 1957, one man show; Clearwater Art Group, 9th Annual Member’s Show, March 1958, judge; Students’ Art Club, Tampa, January 1959; Brandon Art Center, February 1960; Tampa Academy Art League, Blair Art Studio, August 5, 1961; Tampa Academy Art League, May 1961, December 1-31, 1961, Clingman’s Dome; First State Bank, Lakeland, October 1965; Gibbs Art Gallery, Charleston; Students Art Club, Tampa.
Lawrence Porth. Magnolia Gardens, Tampa, 1947. Oil on canvas, 27 and one quarter by 31.
