Hervey White

Hervey White
Hervey White, lithograph by Bolton Brown, c. 1920. Courtesy Woodstock Artists Association and Museum
Born	1866 Iowa
Died	1944
Nationality	American
Occupation	Artist, entrepreneur

Hervey White (1866–1944) was an American novelist, poet, and community-builder. He was one of the original founders of the Byrdcliffe Colony in , then went on to create a more radical artists' colony, the Maverick. Both Byrdcliffe and the Maverick are part of what is today called the Woodstock Art Colony.

White was born in Iowa and raised on a Kansas farm. A scholarship to Harvard University, where he read the works of the socially conscious art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), solidified his burgeoning libertarian ideals. Pinpointing White's anti-patrician identity, artist and Byrdcliffe cofounder Bolton Brown (1864–1936) would describe White as "far prouder of hailing from a ranch in Kansas" than from Harvard. After graduating and traveling through parts of Italy, White moved to Chicago and worked for Hull House, a settlement that provided a creative and educational environment for poor residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. In its spirit of democratic cultural outreach, Hull House acted as a model for White's Maverick Colony. While at Hull House, White wrote his first novel, Differences (1899).

In 1902 White joined forces with Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead (1854–1929) and painter-lithographer Bolton Brown to found the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony in , conceived as a utopian community of studios, workshops, and artistic gatherings which would nurture creative freedom in the idyllic setting of the Catskill Mountains. Byrdcliffe was based on models provided by the Arts and Crafts movement in England, including Ruskin's own unsuccessful artists' colony, St. George. However, shortly after the colony's establishment, Brown and White each parted ways with Whitehead—White by choice, while Brown was terminated. Each found the aristocratic but reform-minded Whitehead's version of democracy too rigorously structured.

In 1905, White purchased a farm just outside Woodstock with Fritz van der Loo and Carl Eric Lindin, intended as a rustic haven for the three friends and their families. It quickly transformed into an intellectual meeting place and was named the Maverick; artists, writers, and musicians took up residence in minimalistic houses, usually little more than shacks, built on the property. White's short-lived marriage to Byrdcliffe printmaker Vivian Bevans ended in 1908; White's homosexual leanings, addressed overtly in his writings, are a possible cause. White would go on to build the Maverick into a thriving community with makeshift studios, a printing press, and a steady output of publications devoted to literature and the visual arts, most notably The Wild Hawk and The Plowshare.