George Biddle

George Biddle 1885-1973, American painter and writer on art, b. Philadelphia. After studying abroad Biddle settled in the 1930s in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he devoted himself to paintings of social import. During World War II he served as chairman of the War Dept. Art Commission and later held important offices in several national artists' organizations. Biddle painted the frescoes for the Dept. of Justice Building, Washington, D.C.; his major works include Mother and Child (Denver Art Mus.) and Winter in Tortilla Flat (Whitney Mus., New York City). He is the author of the autobiographical An American Artist's Story (1939), Artist at War (1944), Yes and No of Contemporary Art (1957), and Tahitian Journals (1968).

Bibliography: See M. Trotter, Catalogue of the Lithographs of George Biddle (1950).

Biddle, George (1885–1973). American painter and lithographer. Originally he trained as a lawyer, but in 1908 he turned to painting, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in his native Philadelphia, then between 1911 and 1914 in Munich and Paris (at the Académie Julian). He served in the US Army in the First World War, then travelled widely (he spent two years in Polynesia) before settling permanently in the USA in 1932. Biddle was a man of strong social conscience and he was inspired by the idea of art for the masses expressed by the Mexican mural painters. In 1933 he helped to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the need for government sponsorship of the arts—a need that was met two years later with the Federal Art Project. Biddle himself was employed by the Project, painting a mural for the Department of Justice Building in Washington (1935). He wrote an autobiography, An American Artist's Story, published in 1939.