John Matthew Black

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(1875, Crown Point, IN - 1972)

John Matthew Black was the son of immigrants who had settled in the Crown Point farming area of Indiana. He contentedly worked on his family’s farm as a child and young man, indulging his creativity by teaching himself to play the violin.

In 1901, Black decided to explore fine arts and entered a five-year training program at the Art Academy in Chicago, studying under J. Francis Smith. During those years, he worked as an apprentice at an engraving house and later at the Gunning Sign Company in Chicago designing stencils.

Black was awarded the silver prize upon his graduation in 1906 from the Art Academy in Chicago. Afterwards, he met up with a fellow art student to manage an orange grove in California, while simultaneously creating art part-time. After two years he returned to Crown Point, when he was asked by his practical father, “What are you going to do with your art?”[1]

In 1910, Black bought forty acres in Bayfield County in Wisconsin and raised livestock. Unfortunately, Black did not find much time to paint. He married in 1919 and moved to a larger, seventy-five-acre farm south of Bayfield and raised two sons.

Black was affiliated with the Milwaukee Journal Gallery of Wisconsin Art. He was part of the Wisconsin Regional Artist Association (WRAA) and Wisconsin Rural Arts Program (WRAP).

Black had a one-artist show at the Douglas County Historical Museum in the late 1940s. He exhibited at Hoosier Salon at Marshall Field in Chicago, the Southern California Artists’ Exhibit, the Milwaukee Art Institute, and Bayfield Library. He exhibited regularly with the Rural Artists.

Source: John Rector Barton, Rural Artists of Wisconsin (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1948), 21- 26.

Museum of Wisconsin Art, http://wisconsinart.org/archives/artist/john-matthew-black/profile-535.aspx 

Photo credit: John Rector Barton, Rural Artists of Wisconsin (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1948), 21.