Robert Franklin Gates

Robert F. Gates (1906 - 1982) was an American muralist, painter, and art professor. He was one of hundreds of artists who benefitted from the Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts's distribution of approximately 14,000 contracts in the 1930s.[1]

Career

Robert Gates was born on October 6, 1906 in Detroit, Michigan. He first studied art at the Detroit School of Arts and Crafts. He attended the Art Students' League in New York City from 1929 to 1930. From 1930 to 1932, he studied under C. Law Watkins at the Phillips Gallery Art School in Washington, D.C. Between 1934 and 1938, he worked as an instructor at the Studio House in Washington, D.C.[2]

During this period, he won multiple commissions from the U.S. Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts, as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program. In 1934, he created a series of watercolors for Charles Gardens, South Carolina.[3] He installed his first post office mural, entitled Montgomery County Farm Women's Market in Bethesda, Maryland in 1939. He created Old Time Camp Meeting for the Lewisburg, West Virginia and Buckwheat Harvest for the Oakland, Maryland post offices in 1940 and 1942, respectively.[4]

While completing his Treasury Department commissions between 1937 and 1942, Gates also served as an instructor at the University of Florida, Hood College in Frederick, MD, the Washington County Museum of Art in Hagerstown, MD, and the Phillips Gallery Art School in Washington, D.C., where his wife Margaret worked as a secretary.[3]

Gates served in World War II as a civilian technician with the U.S. Navy. He made models and designed camouflage patterns. After the war, he studied under Bill Calfee at American University. He joined the faculty there in 1946. Gates worked as the Artist-in-Residence at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq from 1966-1967.[2]

His work is held in permanent collections at American University, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, the Phillips Collection, and the Lewisshon Collection. The Smithsonian Archives of American Art also hold a collection of his work and personal papers.[5]

Personal life

Robert Gates met his first wife, Margaret Casey, when they were both students at the Phillips Gallery Art School in Washington, D.C. They were married on January 7, 1933. They divorced in the mid-1950s. Gates married his second wife, Sarita, in Baghdad in 1967.[2]

He died on March 11, 1982 in Alexandria, Virginia.[2]

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References
  1. Saab, A. Joan (2004). For the Millions: American Art and Culture Between the Wars. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 18. ISBN 0812238184.
  2. "Detailed Description of the Robert Franklin Gates papers".
  3. "Summary of the Robert Franklin Gates papers".
  4. "Robert F. Gates Archives".
  5. "Artwork Search Results / American Art".
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