The Pool at the Biltmore Hotel, 1926. Oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches, signed lower left.
Here is a painting by Walter Bowman Russell, The Pool at the Biltmore Hotel, 1926, that I purchased, what seems a lifetime ago, from my old friend Mike Turbeville. Many Florida collectors will remember Mike as The Florida Picker. I’ve had it in my collection for over thirty years. It’s the only Russell painting done in Miami that I’ve seen. Perhaps this article will help turn up another.
Walter Bowman Russell invented the concept of condominium and brought it to Miami Beach in 1925. A multi-talented genius gifted in painting, sculpture, philosophy and business, his art, his work in Florida, is long forgotten. It was Russell who predicted back in 1926 that the east coast of Florida would be lined with hotels, “a glorious Venice.” Russell was right, but it’s far from “glorious.”
Russell was born in Boston to Nova Scotian immigrants. He left school at age 11 and went to work. Russell put himself through the Massachusetts Normal Art School and then, in 1894, moved to New York City to begin a career as illustrator, portrait artist, sculptor, writer and builder. By 1897 he was art editor of Collier’s Magazine. The following year he was a war correspondent-illustrator in the Spanish-American War. Teddy Roosevelt later commissioned him for a portrait of his children. Russell is credited with developing the concept of co-operative ownership of apartments, the beginning of condominiums. The Hotel des Artistes at 1 West 67th Street in New York City, designed by him in 1917, is still one of the finest apartment buildings in the city.
In the 1930’s Russell was employed by Thomas Watson of IBM as a motivational speaker. He later turned to sculpture and won commissions for portrait busts of Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, George Gershwin, the Mark Twain Memorial in 1934 and the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Four Freedoms Monument in 1943. A highly spiritual person, beginning in 1926 with his book, The Universal One, he published a series of ten books defining his ideas about the relationship between man, matter, energy, God and the universal one, that is now termed Russell Cosmogony.
Russell first came to Miami Beach in the fall of 1925 to promote his concept of, “A co-operative home in the Isles of Enchantment” called Villa Biscayne, on Miami Beach. Full page advertisements appeared in the Miami Daily News with architectural drawings of the project, and in January Russell presented his plans, and a clay model of a cultural art center building, to the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. A Societe d’Esthetique was formed to sponsor the project with Russell as president and Carl G. Fisher, George E. Merrick, Addison Mizner and Dewing Woodward, were members. The Orlando Sentinel, January 2, 1926, “That the East Coast will someday be a continuous Venice is the opinion of Water Russell, noted architect for the $12,000,000 Villa Biscayne at Miami Beach. At a banquet of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce recently Mr. Russell express this idea, ‘I see not only Miami Beach but the entire wonderful strip from here to Palm Beach as completely finished. I see a Riviera that the people of the old world will flock to and see and enjoy the environment of culture which such beauty must engender. I see marvelous color in Spanish and Italian architecture, and thousands of motor boats and gondolas and tens of thousands of little craft. I see Miami and Palm Beach as both extremities of a glorious Venice….’”
Russell returned to Miami Beach the following season and the Daily News January 17, 1927 noted his return. “Indicative of the fact that winter season is on full tilt in Miami, Walter Russell is preparing to open his Miami Beach studio for an exhibition of pictures Feb. 1. He will show, he says, a number of portraits including well known Miami people, landscapes with local interest, marine scenes and allegories, and architectural concepts in oil, clay and bronze. Mr. Russell has painted into his Miami scenes biases of color typical of Biscayne Bay and the ocean with its coconut palms catching the glow of setting sea. One of his new pictures is a colorful portrayal of the Miami Biltmore swimming pool. Miamians who have been painted by Mr. Russell include E. H. Thomas, Mr. and Mrs. I. C. Elston, the daughters of Egbert Halbberton Gold and Walter Kohlhepp. A clay bust is being done of Clayton Sedgwick Cooper by Mr. Russell who will make models of all the regents of the University of Miami. These casts will be placed beside portraits of the regents in the university hall of fame. On each Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon, Mr. Russell’s studio at 1818 Michigan Avenue is open to friends and visitors.”
In 1928 Russell painted, The Spirit of Miami. The Villa Biscayne was never built and the Société d’Esthetique was renamed the Society of Arts and Sciences with Russell as president. In the Spring of 1928 Russell was in Tallahassee as the guest of Senator William C. Hodges. In a talk before the senior class of Florida State College for Women, Russell revealed that he left school at the age of 11 and went to work as a cash boy. He never attended high school, and he found this lack of a high school education a great encumbrance. “After a long life I have come to the conclusion that everyone is a genius, every living soul that lives has genius within it to some extent…You, within you have the greatest possibility of the genius in the world but it remains for you to bring it out….to leave an emotion in someone’s heart is greater than can be chiseled from marble or painted on canvas.” (Tallahassee Democrat, April 12, 1928)
Russell later bought the 52 room Swannanoa Palace on the top of a mountain in Afton, Virginia. Here Russell founded and was professor of a University of Science and Philosophy. In 1963 when he died, at age 92, Water Cronkite in the national television evening news on CBS, referred to him as, “the Leonardo da Vinci of our time.” All of his books are still in publication and can be found on the internet.
Born: May 19, 1871, Boston. Died: May 19, 1963, Waynesboro, Virginia. Education: Massachusetts Normal Art School; Academie Julian; Albert Munsell and Ernest Major in Boston; Howard Pile; Jean-Paul Laurens in Paris. Exhibits: Turin International exhibition, 1900, representing the United States, his painting The Might of Ages won awards; January 25, 1927, James H. Dinwiddie home, 2103 Alhambra circle, Coral Gables, with members of the Garden clubs, Housekeepers’ club and the Miami Beach Woman’s club in attendance; January 27, 1927, winter exhibition at his Miami Beach studio, 1818 Michigan Avenue; Miami Woman’s Club, February 15, 1927.
