Richard Haines (1906 - 1984)

  

Always influenced by his Midwestern roots, Charles Richard Haines was born in Marion, Iowa on December 29, 1906.  After growing up on an Iowa farm he worked for several years as a designer for a greeting card company and subsequently Brown and Begelow, a calendar firm. 

 

He went on to study under Edmund Kopietz and Glenn Mitchell at the Minneapolis School of Art, where he would later teach.  He also studied with John Norton in Chicago.  While teaching at the Minneapolis School of Art he became interested in mural painting.  In 1933 he won the Vanderlip Traveling Scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Fontainebleau, France.  There he studied fresco under La Montaigne St. Hubert and composition under Despujols.  Shortly after returning to the United States he became involved in the New Deal art projects, winning nine mural commissions, primarily for U.S. Post Offices from the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture between 1935 and 1941.  In 1938 he met and married interior decorator Leonora (Nona) Stevens from Minneapolis, MN.

 

The artist and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 1941 where Haines worked for Douglas Aircraft during WW II.  He went on to teach at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1945 -1954.  In 1952 he was among nine artists selected to paint murals for the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.  From 1954 – 1974 he was the head of the painting department at Otis Art Institute. 

 

As a painter and watercolorist Haines was prolific and successful.  From the late 1940’s through the early 1960’s Haines enjoyed representation by one of the West Coast’s finest galleries, Dalzell Hatfield.  He worked non-stop until his death in Los Angeles on October 9, 1984.  Haines suffered no diminution in his skill, producing many of his finest painting in his last years.   

 

COLLECTIONS (partial list): 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Smithsonian, American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, WA
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR