Aptly described as “poet in color,” Leon Dabo1 won international acclaim for his landscapes and river scenes.2 As noted by the English critic John Spargo, his canvases were painted
idealistically, with a poet’s vision of subtle and hidden things . . . Dabo is a spiritual impressionist . . . a seer gazing at the secrets of the great universal life and striving to reveal theme through color and line . . . He loves Nature in all her moods, but he loves best of all her serenity, so . . . his pictures are delicate, ethereal visions of Nature’s vast, universal simplicity, beauty and peace.3
Dabo was born in France, one of eight children of Ignace Scott Dabo, an artist who specialized in architectural decoration. By 1871, the family had settled in Detroit, Michigan, and it was there that Dabo and his brother Theodore (1866-1928) apprenticed under their father. After Ignace’s death in 1883, Dabo moved to New York, where he was engaged in decorative work for the J. & R. Lamb Studios, operated by his friend, the architect Charles Rollinson Lamb. It may have been through his connection with Lamb that Dabo met the celebrated muralist and stained glass artist John La Farge, who set an important example for his own decorative work.
In 1886, Dabo traveled to Europe. While in Paris, he took classes with Pierre Galland and Puvis de Chavannes at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and studied painting and drawing at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He also received instruction in mural design from Pietro Gagliard in Rome and copied the work of the old masters in the galleries of Florence and Venice. Dabo’s travels also took him to London, where he visited the studio of the American expatriate painter James McNeill Whistler. Although such an encounter is undocumented, Whistler’s “art for art’s sake” philosophy, his lyrical technique and his predilection for delicate colors came to play a key role in the development of Dabo’s own aesthetic development. Dabo later considered himself an expert on Whistler, authenticating the master’s works, writing articles on his style, and describing visits to his London atelier.
Dabo returned to New York in 1892, resuming his career as an architectural decorator and eventually establishing his own firm with his brother in Brooklyn. During the 1890s and early 1900s he executed a variety of commissions for civic and religious institutions, including the St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church and Holy Cross Church in Brooklyn and the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library in Watertown, New York.
In his spare time, Dabo was active as an easel painter. He initially worked in a tight, academic realist manner, however after assimilating a variety of influences, ranging from that of the aforementioned Whistler to the work of the French Impressionists and Japanese masters such as Hiroshige and Hokusai, he developed an approach uniquely his own--characterized by an emphasis on subtle nuances of light and atmosphere, luminous color effects and an innovative handling of space--which he applied to landscapes and views of the Hudson and East rivers in New York, as well as the Hackensack River in New Jersey. His penchant for low-keyed colors and his ability to evoke feelings of tranquillity allied him with Tonalism, a manner of painting that was popular in the United States from the mid-1880s until around 1915.
Despite the innovative aspect of Dabo’s work, his paintings were often rejected by conservative-minded juries in New York and elsewhere in the United States. In fact, he received his initial recognition abroad, holding successful one-man shows in London, Paris, Berlin, Dresden and Florence. On the domestic level, a turning point in his career occurred in 1905, when the aforementioned Lamb, chairman of the Arts Committee at the National Arts Club, invited him to exhibit his work there. The show attracted favorable reaction from New York critics and brought Dabo into the public eye. His paintings subsequently attracted the patronage of such eminent collectors of contemporary American art as William T. Evans.
Dabo exhibited intermittently at the National Academy of Design, the National Arts Club, the Brooklyn Society of Artists, the Hopkin Club of Detroit, and the Society of Pastellists. His professional memberships included the National Academy of Design, the National Arts Club, the National Society of Mural Painters, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in London, Les Amis des Arts and the Society des Amis du Louvre. Dabo was also elected Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France. He was also a founding member of the American Association of Painters and Sculptors, the group that organized the groundbreaking Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) in 1913.
In addition to landscapes and seascapes, Dabo also painted still lifes of flowers which prompted comparison with those of Odilon Redon and Henri Fantin-Latour. During the 1920s, he often gave lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Columbia University, focusing on topics such as art education and the work of specific artists such as La Farge and Whistler.
Dabo continued to paint up until about 1955. He died in New York City on November 7th 1960. Examples of his work can be found in important public collections throughout the United States and abroad, including the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Musées Nationaux, Paris; the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Imperial Museum of Art, Tokyo; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among many others.
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1. Dabo’s birthdate also appears, incorrectly, as 1868.
2. Bliss Carman quoted in John Spargo, “Leon Dabo, Poet in Color,” Craftsman 13 (December 1907): 261.
