Green Covered Dunes (original title: Cloudy Day on the Dunes)
Hermon Dubois More enjoyed success as an artist, curator, and museum director. He drew the most acclaim as the second Director of the Whitney Museum of Art, assuming the role in 1948 after the passing of founding Director Juliana Force. His involvement at the Whitney began in 1930 when he was appointed one of three founding curators, serving alongside fellow artists Edmund Archer and Karl Free. Before the Whitney, More had directed the Davenport Municipal Art Gallery in Iowa (1928-1929), and previously was an instructor and director at the Tri City Art League.
He descended from the Robert More family of Scotland, which now comprises over 16,000 members. His father, Charles Herbert More was born in 1857, and became a successful businessman in retail granite, with offices in New York and Chicago. He had three sons. Hermon was the eldest, born 1887 in Medford Massachusetts. After studies at the Chicago Art Institute, he taught at the Chicago School of Applied and Normal Art. From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, he gained further skills in New York at the Art Students League.
Aside from his artistic aspirations and achievements, More was a patriot. During World War I, he served in France as a volunteer for the Ambulance Corps. For his efforts, the Chicago Fourth Presbyterian Church donated an ambulance which they shipped to Paris ahead of More’s arrival. After serving just four months, he suffered exposure and developed sciatica. He spent a month in a French Hospital, then returned to the United States on the advice of his doctors. He also applied his artistic skills in the service of his county as an anatomical illustrator for the Army Medical Corps. In 1923, he married miniaturist painter Edna Amelia Robeson (1883-1966) from Davenport, Iowa.
Though his painting Green Covered Dunes is undated, it must have been created by 1916 as the Union League Club Art Committee purchased it that year. The painting was selected to hang in the 1917 Exhibition of Work by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity at the Art Institute, and More received praise as one of the "young painters whose work gives good promise." [p. 2, Edward Watts Russell, American Art News, February 10, 1917]. The composition shows a low horizon, and more than half the canvas filled with an expansive sky of fluffy white clouds. Rolling green hills complement the attractive palette. In his concept and aesthetic construction, More shows his knowledge of the Dutch Old Master landscapists such as Jacob Van Ruisdael, however he has imparted his own impressionistic touch.
He often summered in Woodstock New York, and in 1924 he exhibited work at the show organized by the Woodstock New York Art Association. Further to his artistic ambitions, in 1935 he had a landscape painting selected to hang in the juried Whitney Second Biennale Exhibition of Contemporary Painting. As a scholar, he published widely on Contemporary American artists and was a vociferous defender of the avant-garde. In 1952, he curated the solo show on Edward Hopper presented in one of four rooms at the American Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.
Sally Metzler, Ph.D., Director of the Art Collection
