A native of Philadelphia, Wharton Esherick (1887-1970) studied painting at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1913 he moved to an old stone farmhouse near Paoli, where he painted his rural surroundings.
In 1920 he began carving decorative frames for his paintings. This carving led first to the making of woodcuts, and then sculpture, the medium in which he was best able to express his artistic concepts. His work places him in the vanguard of modern American sculptors.
He also began to make his own furniture. Many who came to his studio intending to buy a painting, left with a chair or table, or commissioned him to create entire rooms or interiors. He is best known for his sculptural furniture and furnishings, for shich he has been called the dean of American craftsmen.
His work has been featured at World's Fairs in New York, Brussels, and Milan; exhibited at galleries and museums in theis country and abroad, including a number of one-man retrospective shows, and has been acquired for the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Whitney Museum, Armerican Craft Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian.
Set high on a wooded hillside overlooking the Great Valley and surrounded by the trees that were both his inspiration and his source of raw material, the Studio is one of Wharton Exherick's monumental achievements. He worked forty years building, enlarging and altering it. No detail escaped his attention; he carved the doors, forged the hinges, shaped the copper sinks, sculpted the andirons, heater grilles, light switches and fixtures, door latches, stairs, walls, ceiling and floors, kitchen cabinets and counters, even a set of coat pegs caricaturing the workmen who had helped him.
When Wharton Esherick died in May of 1970 his heirs and friends desired to keep the Studio and the collection intact and to make them available to the public. The Wharton Exherick Museum, a non-progit corporation, was extablished to accomplish this objective.
The building, its contents and grounds have been preserved much as they were when the artist lived and worked there. This was his home and showroom. The atmosphere is intimate and informal. The work is displayed without cases and can be touched. there are no identification signs, the pieces being described and interpreted through guided tours.
On exhibition are more than 200 pieces of the artist's work - paintings, woodcuts, prints; sculpture in wood, stone and ceramic; furniture and utensils - produced between 1920 and 1970. They reveal the artist's progression from organic forms, through the sharp prismatic angles of cubism, eventually evolving into swirling, lyrical forms, wanting to be touched as well as viewed. Also on display are his models for commissioned interiors and submissions for sculpture competitions.
For more information call 610.664.5822
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