Joseph Frank Currier

Joseph Frank Currier (or J. Frank Currier, or Frank Currier) was an American artist born November 21, 1843.  Joseph Frank Currier began his formal training in Boston in the mid-1860s with Samuel Lancaster Gerry, one of the artist-founders of the Boston Art Club.  In the summers of 1867-68 Currier was in Deerfield, MA studying painting with George Fuller.

J. Frank Currier left the US in April 1869 to study in Antwerp at the Royal Academy.  During the summer of 1870 he traveled to, and painted in Ecouen, France.  In 1870 Frank Currier decided to enter the Royal Academy in Munich where he studied from 1870-72. Currier left the Academy and for the next 26 years lived in Munich and several outlying areas: Polling and Schleissheim. 

J. Frank Currier painted in oils, watercolors and pastels.  He created drawings in pencil and charcoal; including a series created in charcoal with a unique wet technique.  

Joseph Frank Currier exhibited in Germany, London and in the US from 1875 until his return to Boston. In 1878 Frank Currier exhibited watercolors and drawings at the Water Color Exhibition in New York where his work was so radically different from his peers that he was called an 'Impressionist'.  This term was used to describe him again in the art magazine, 'Critic' in 1881. Currier expanded his technique from what was deemed 'impressionist' with the use of bravura style and gestural paint application.  This took Currier to the heart of expressionism. 

Currier's artistic output only lasted 20 years (1873-93).  In 1893 J. Frank Currier stopped painting altogether for the rest of his life. 

In 1898 Currier returned to Boston.  He became associated with the Boston Art Club.  In 1903 Currier had an exhibition at the St. Botolph Club, Boston.  In 1904-05, Joseph Frank Currier had a exhibitions of his pastels which traveled from the Boston Art Club to the Brooklyn Museum, to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, to the Cincinnati Art Museum.  These pastels were framed by Charles and Maurice Prendegast (the largest single commission for the Prendegast frame company). 

On January 15, 1909; despondent from failed investments in the stock market, Currier committed suicide by throwing himself under the wheels of a train.