Harold Weston

Harold Weston (February 14, 1894 - April 10, 1972) was an American modernist painter whose work included impressionism, realism and abstraction, as well as a highly regarded political activist.

Harold Weston was born February 14, 1894 in Merion, Pennsylvania, to S. Burns and Mary Hartshorne Weston. A twin brother, Edward, died at the age of six months. The family was well-off financially. At the age of 15, Harold spent a year traveling in Europe and attending school in Switzerland and Germany. It was in Europe that Harold Weston began to draw.

After his return to the United States in 1910, Harold Weston was stricken by polio. His left leg was paralyzed. But Weston refused to take the advice of doctors who declared that he would never walk again. Through a regime of physical conditioning and the use of leg braces and a cane, Weston learned how to walk (albeit with a pronounced limp). He began to hike, clinging to trees as he went up and down hill.

Weston entered Harvard University in 1912 and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Fine Arts in 1916. Weston continued to hone his graphic art skills, serving as editor of the Harvard Lampoon and contributing a large number of original cartoons and artworks to the magazine. In 1914, he studied under the American painter Hamilton Easter Field at the Summer School of Graphic Arts in Ogunquit, Maine.

Unable to enlist due to his paralyzed leg and with World War I looming, Weston volunteered with the YMCA, serving as a hospitality liaison with the British Army in Baghdad in the Ottoman Empire. He encouraged soldiers to draw and paint to pass the time, and organized Baghdad Art Club in 1917 as a means of exhibiting and promoting their art. Because of this work, he was appointed Official Painter for the British Army in 1918.

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