Arthur Meltzer, Bucks County Quarry in Winter

16" x 20", oil on board, signed lower right.

Cleaned, no restoration, reproduction gold frame.

Artist Arthur Meltzer (1893-1989) was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and began his training as an artist at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. After leaving home to serve in World War I, he relocated to Philadelphia to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), studying with Daniel Garber and Joseph Pearson, both of whom proved greatly influential on Meltzer's style.

In 1921 he won the prestigious Cresson Traveling Scholarship at PAFA and used it to travel and study throughout Europe. His exposure to art in Europe reinforced the lessons of his teachers, and Meltzer's style began to truly capture the essence of the Pennsylvania Impressionist idiom. He is best known for his landscapes that capture the changing seasons and different times of day.

In 1925, Meltzer joined the faculty of the Moore Institute (now called the Moore College of Art & Design) as a fine arts instructor. A year later, in 1926, he became Head of the Fine Arts Department, teaching painting, drawing, and anatomy. It was there that he met Paulette Van Roekens, also a Moore teacher and painter, whom he married in 1927. Meltzer taught at the Moore Institute until 1949 when he retired to his home in Huntington Valley where he painted and taught privately for the rest of his life.

Meltzer's work has been exhibited at the Michener Art Museum on a number of occasions, including Objects of Desire: Treasures from Private Collections (2005-2006), An Evolving Legacy: Twenty Years of Collecting at the James A. Michener Art Museum (2009-2010), and the institutional landmark exhibition The Painterly Voice: Bucks County's Fertile Ground (2011-2012).