Artist, author and educator Richard Whitney, PhD.H is
nationally known for his portraits and landscapes painted in the style of
contemporary realism. Town and
Country magazine has named him one of the top dozen portrait painters in America. Fine
Art Connoisseur has called him
one of “the giants of the field” of figurative painting. Whitney's paintings hang in over 800 public
and private collections throughout the United States and abroad. They include the Anchorage Museum of Art and
History; the Anderson House Museum;
the Newark Museum; the Pentagon; Harvard, Yale, and
Stanford Universities; and the Catholic University of Portugal. He has won over 50 regional and national
awards as well as three grants from the Greenshields Foundation of Montreal. Whitney was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine
Arts from the University of New Hampshire in 2015 and the Lotte Jacobi Living
Treasure Award from the State of New Hampshire
in 2017.
Whitney has painted
more than 400 portraits including numerous CEOs of industry, presidents of
universities and educational leaders as well as family and individual
portraits. He has painted eight US Governors including Mitt Romney; US Senators
Tom McIntyre, Judd Gregg and James Webb, Jr.; Nobel Laureates Paul Samuelson
and Phillip Sharp; Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; Cardinal Humberto Medeiros;
Father McGivney, Founder of the Knights of Columbus; and actor, Ethan
Hawke. Whitney is Chairman Emeritus of
the American Society of Portrait Artists Foundation.
Whitney is the author of the book Painting the Visual
Impression which summarizes the basic principles of representational
painting. First published in 1972, it
has been read by thousands of artists world-wide and is regarded as a classic
in its field. He is also a co-author of
the book Realism in Revolution: The Art
of the Boston School and his paintings have been reproduced in the book Edmund C. Tarbell and the Boston School of Painting.
Born in 1946, Whitney graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of New Hampshire in 1968. He studied with Sidney F. Willis and with the
eminent Boston
painter, R. H. Ives Gammell, for five years. Memberships have included the American Society
of Classical Realism, the Guild of Boston Artists, the National Arts Club, the
Players and the Society of Illustrators.
Whitney is an Honorary Member of the Allied Artists of America and the
American Artists Professional League and a Lifetime Member of the Copley
Society of Art. He is an Advisory Board
member of the Art
Renewal Center,
the world's largest on line museum and is recognized as an ARC Living Master.
Whitney's paintings have been seen on national cable
television and have been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine
articles. He was the cover artist for
the April 1982 issue of American Artist and was featured again
in April 2002. Whitney has traveled and
painted in Europe, Japan, Alaska and the Caribbean and has lectured and conducted
workshops throughout the United
States.
He is listed Who's Who in American
Art, Who’s Who in America,
Who’s Who in the 21st Century and Who's Who in the World, 2018.
Whitney and his
artist wife Sandy Sherman live on Crescent Pond in Stoddard, NH and their property is connected to a huge
forest. Many years ago, Whitney began feeding black bears when they came out of hibernation and
there was no food in the frozen forest.
The world's leading authority on
black bears, Dr. Lynn Rogers, encouraged him to continue as it was a public
service and would help prevent the bears from going into town in search of
food. Whitney practiced what biologists
call "diversionary feeding." Over a
ten year period, Crescent Pond became a nature lover's paradise and Whitney
created what could be called a work of "environmental art" which was
enjoyed by hundreds of visitors. He spent over a thousand hours walking amongst
the bears in all hours of the day and night.
He stopped feeding them last year and hopes to write a book about the
experience. Whitney is trying to promote
the idea of creating wildlife viewing sanctuaries in New Hampshire so that
others can share the joy of seeing these magnificent animals up close and not
behind a cage or as a trophy on a wall.