Carl Nordell, Sarasota, Fort Myers. The Inca Tree, Landscape. Fort Myers 1941. Signed lower right. Inscribed verso, painted on the estate of Thomas A. Edison, Fort Myers, Fla. 30 by 36 inches.
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Carl Nordell’s family immigrated to Westerly, New Jersey in 1892. Nordell began his art education at the Rhode Island School of Design. Nordell’s interest in American Impressionism prompted his enrollment at Art Students’ League in New York City, followed by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Edmund Tarbell and Joseph R. DeCamp. In Boston he won the Paige Traveling Scholarship for travel in Europe. Upon his return in 1911 he opened a stutio in Boston at the Fenway Studio. Nordell was in every sense an important American artist who did work, and live, and paint in Florida. In 1931 Nordell was an instructor at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota and was present with the school’s faculty on October 2, 1931, when John Ringling presented his, and Mable Ringling’s, 700 masterpieces and the grounds of the Ringling, to the Ringling School of Art. (It was only much later, after Ringling’s death, that the Ringling family was able to gift the Museum and collection to the State of Florida.) Nordell spent the winter season of 1941 in Fort Myers painting local scenery and on March 3 gave a talk at the Art Center, in Edison Park on Tamiami Trail, on “Basic Principles in Painting or See for Yourself,” illustrated with drawings. Nordell had a studio in Westfield, New York but in 1945, with declining health, moved to San Fernando, California. Born: September 23, 1885, Copenhagen, Denmark. Died: June 6, 1957, San Fernando, California. Education: Rhode Island School of Design, 1905; Art Students’ League with George Bridgman and Frank Vincent DuMond; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with Edmund Tarbell and Joseph R. DeCamp; Academie Julian in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens. Exhibits: Boston Art Club, October 1911, eighty-seven watercolors; Contemporary American Paintings, Corcoran Gallery Washington, D. C. December 1912, W.A. Clark Forth Award, $500 for Femme Nue. (First Award to Childe Hassam for New York Window.); Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco 1915, silver medal; Buffalo Guild of Allied Arts, March 1916, one man exhibit of watercolors; Boston Art Club, one man exhibit, 1918, fifty works of art; Salmagundi Club, New York City, 1932, Shaw purchase prize; Rollins College Art Studio, Winter Park, January 1932; Salmagundi Club, Annual Exhibit, New York City, February 1941, Shaw purchase prize for figure painting, Breakfast Hour.
