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Frederick John Mulhaupt

Ice Bound Vessels, about 1920

oil on canvas

36 x 36 in.

Emma Harter Sweetser Fund

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Frederick Mulhaupt was born in Rockport, Missouri and spent his early years in Kansas.  He was first employed as a manager of a newspaper and magazine in Dodge City.  Mulhaupt’s art training began with an apprenticeship to an itinerant painter.  He continued his studies at the Kansas City School of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago. Mulhaupt spent many years in Chicago and taught figure classes at the Art Institute.  He eventually moved to New York and then spent several years in Paris, exhibiting at the Paris Salon where he came under the influence of both modernism and Impressionism.  Returning to New York, he spent his summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts and eventually became a year-round resident.  It was there that he became known for his depictions of the landscape and seascapes of the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts. 

Ice Bound Vessels depicts a scene in Gloucester, Massachusetts.   Mulhaupt’s firmly structured painting combines factual realism with a poetically evocative color scheme, applied with broad strokes of the brush.  By the early twenties when this picture was painted, its style was already somewhat old-fashioned but continued to be popular in spite of the impact of Impressionism and progressive modernism during the first two decades of the twentieth century. 

Reference

North Shore Art Association. Frederick J. Mulhaupt: Dean of the Cape Anne School, Gloucester, MA: North Shore Art Association, 1999. ASIN: B000MPIZCS