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Often referred to as a "twentieth-century mannerist painter" Frank Ashley is best known for his contemporary genre subjects, especially his fresh, lively renderings of the urban scene. Working in a vigorous realist style that fuses the solid draftsmanship of the Old Master tradition with expressionistic color, Ashley has established his own special niche in the history of American figurative painting.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1920, Ashley studied at the University of Minnesota from 1938 to 1941. Intent on pursuing an artistic career, he attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago from 1945 to 1946 and the Minneapolis Art Institute from 1947 to 1948. In the fall of 1948, he enrolled at the Art Students League in New York where he studied under Reginald Marsh, a noted figure painter whose distinctive realist style was influenced by Old Master painting. During his two years at the League, Ashley worked as an assistant instructor in Marsh's class. He also supported himself by working as a "bathtub" artist, matching colors to repair chipped tubs.
Inspired by Marsh's example, Ashley went on to paint images of urban life, focusing on themes such as bustling city streets as well as on musicians and other habitués of Manhattan's working class bars and cafes. In 1950, he joined the Little Studio group in New York, exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and won First Prize at the American Veterans Show in New York.
After moving to San Francisco in 1955, Ashley added beachgoers and thoroughbred racing to his repetoire of subjects. In many of his paintings, Ashley combines elements of fantasy, reality and satire to express a mood, idea, atmosphere or to make a comment on society. A painter who works in both oil and watercolor, Ashley has also painted and sketched in France and Italy.
Ashley's work has been featured in major exhibitions throughout the United States, including the Legion of Honor Invitational at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1962-64). He won the Grand Prize at Art USA, held at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1958 and the Speckels Award at the Legion of Honor Invitational in 1964. Ashley's first solo exhibition was held at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in 1957. Since that time, he has had one-man shows in galleries in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Carmel, California.
Ashley is represented in public and private collections throughout the United States, such as those of Syracuse University, San Francisco State University, the Pacific Racing Association and Wells Fargo Bank. He currently resides in Monterey, California.
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