Schick, Paul R. Palms Along the Sea. Oil on canvas, 24 by 30 inches. Society of the Four Arts exhibition label on back, March-April 1940.
Paul R. Schick made Palm Beach his home in the years just before World War II. Schick was an active member of the Florida Federation of Art, the Palm Beach Art League and the Society of the Four Arts. He entered the US Army in 1943 and served in the Pacific until the end of the War, returning in 1946 to the San Marino, California area, near Los Angeles. Schick traveled extensively about the United States from San Marino to Phoenix, Arizona, across the country to Redding, Connecticut and Palm Beach, exhibiting, lecturing on art, and painting what he called “Landscape Americana”, the landscape scene from California to Palm Beach. Six of Schick’s Florida scenes were hung in the Governors’ lounge of the Florida Building at the 1940 New York World’s Fair, one winning a bronze prize for the best representative work of Florida. In November 1940, The Studio Guild in New York City, in cooperation with the American Artist Professional League, in celebration of National Art Week, November 1-7, selected Florida artists for display in New York store windows. The artists included Schick, Celine Baekeland, Jane Peterson, Hugh McKean, Aleen Aked and Lois Bartlett Tracy. In January 1941 the Palm Beach Art League honored Schick with a dinner and reception, followed by a two-week exhibit at the Hotel Royal Worth. The Palm Beach Post, January 21, 1941, commented on the exhibit, “The 21 paintings…show the Florida landscape in varying moods, and include the piney swamplands and the beaches. Highly atmospheric, the paintings represent a typical Schick technique and color sense, with the moss-hung woods scenes in the main in low key, the beach scenes more brilliant. One of the outstanding numbers is one of pines and palmettos, of distinct charm and atmosphere, which won the first prize in the Florida National Exhibit at the World’s Fair in New York last summer.” On his return from the Pacific in 1946, at a lecture and exhibit in Meriden Connecticut, Schick defined art, “as an expression, a language, having four components, color, draftsmanship, and that certain something which makes you stop and look…and is indefinable…a harmonious arrangement of color.” Born: 1888, Bellaire, Ohio. Membership: Florida Federation of Art; Palm Beach Art League; Society of The Four Arts; Salmagundi Club, New York City. Exhibits: Florida Federation of Art 12th Annual, Society of The Four Arts, Palm Beach, December 1938, Tropical Tranquility and honorable mention, professional, Florida scene, Florida Pines; Society of The Four Arts, December 30, 1938, Florida subjects, Cotton Woods, Palms by the Sea, Florida; San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939-1940; Florida Federation of Art, annual convention, Orlando, 1939; Society of The Four Arts Members Annual, and later Sarasota Art Association, January 1940, Road Through The Pines; Winter Park Woman’s Club, January 1940; Daytona Beach Casino, March 1940, thirty-six paintings; Palm Beach Art League, March-April 1940; Florida Federation of Art Annual, Bradenton, December 1940; Society of the Four Arts, 3rd Annual, January 1941, Florida scenes; Miami Woman’s Club, 12th Annual, February 1941; Art League of Manatee County, at Sarasota Terrace Hotel, February 1941, one-man exhibit; Hotel Biltmore, Miami, March 1941, one-man exhibit; Studio Guild, Fifth Avenue, New York City, March 1941, annual spring members exhibit; Palm Beach Art League, 24th Annual, March 1942; Norton Gallery and School of Art, July 1943.
