New Rochelle artist colony

The New Rochelle artist colony was a community of artists, actors, musicians, playwrights and writers who settled in the city of New Rochelle, New York during the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, New Rochelle had more artists per capita than almost any city in the United States, and newspaper headlines were referring to the community as "Greenwich Village without the Greenwich."

The colony included the dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle, actor Francis Wilson, writer Augustus Thomas, and artists Robert I. Aitken, Edward Kemble, Rufus Zogbaum, Alton Tobey and Julian Hawthorne. Ellen Emmett Rand, F. Tolles Chamberlain, Alonzo Klaw, H. R. Stanton, Herman Lambden, Sophie Schuyler Day, Montague Castle, Martha B. Bintiff, and A. Phimister Proctor were some of the other lesser known artists.

The New Rochelle artist colony was best known for its number of prominent American illustrators. In the early 1920s more than fifty percent of the illustrations in the country's best-selling publications, and 90% of the illustrations in The Saturday Evening Post, were produced by artists from the city.

Norman Rockwell was a member of the community. Clyde Forsythe, who shared Frederic Remington's former studio with Rockwell early on, convinced him to submit cover ideas to the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell later created over 320 covers over the course of his career. Forsythe also introduced Rockwell to his second wife, Mary Barstow, who was a nationally syndicated cartoonist. For Rockwell, living in New Rochelle in the 1920s in the presence of its many illustrators and artists encouraged his intuition that illustration was a worthy use of artistic talent. Among the most gratifying signs that he had indeed become a serious contender in the art world was the respect shown him by New Rochelle's coterie of famous illustrators.

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