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Patrick Henry Bruce (March 25, 1881 – November 12, 1936) was an American cubist
Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature....
 painter.

A descendant of Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry was a prominent figure in the American Revolution, known and remembered for his "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" speech. Along with Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, he is remembered as one of the most influential advocates of the American Revolution and Republicanism in the United States, especially in his denunciations of c...
, Bruce was born in Campbell County, Virginia
Campbell County, Virginia

Campbell County is a county located in the U.S. state — officially, "Commonwealth " — of Virginia. As of the United States Census, 2000, the population was 51,078....
, the second of four children. His family had once owned a huge plantation, Berry Hill, worked by over 3,000 slaves
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
. Berry Hill Estate originally was part of a tract granted by the English Crown in 1728 to William Byrd II. (Berry Hill is now a resort and conference center outside South Boston, Virginia and is a National Historic Landmark.) The Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
 left the Bruces' wealth greatly diminished.






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Patrick Henry Bruce (March 25, 1881 – November 12, 1936) was an American cubist
Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature....
 painter.

A descendant of Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry was a prominent figure in the American Revolution, known and remembered for his "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" speech. Along with Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, he is remembered as one of the most influential advocates of the American Revolution and Republicanism in the United States, especially in his denunciations of c...
, Bruce was born in Campbell County, Virginia
Campbell County, Virginia

Campbell County is a county located in the U.S. state — officially, "Commonwealth " — of Virginia. As of the United States Census, 2000, the population was 51,078....
, the second of four children. His family had once owned a huge plantation, Berry Hill, worked by over 3,000 slaves
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
. Berry Hill Estate originally was part of a tract granted by the English Crown in 1728 to William Byrd II. (Berry Hill is now a resort and conference center outside South Boston, Virginia and is a National Historic Landmark.) The Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
 left the Bruces' wealth greatly diminished. Bruce began taking evening classes at the Art Club of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the Capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. Like all Virginia municipalities incorporated as cities, it is an independent city and not part of any county....
 in 1898, while working in a real estate office during the daytime. His earliest known extant painting dates from 1900.

In 1902 he moved to New York, where he studied with William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase

William Merritt Chase was an United States Painting known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher....
, Robert Henri
Robert Henri

Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art....
, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. By February 1904 he was in Paris, where he would live until 1933. Although his evolution toward a modernist style was gradual, his works of 1908 reveal the influence of Renoir and Cézanne
Paul Cézanne

Paul C?zanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist Painting whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century....
, and in that year he was among the first to enroll in Matisse
Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a France artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid, brilliant and original draftsmanship. As a drawing, printmaking, and Sculpture, but principally as a Painting, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century....
's school.

Bruce exhibited regularly in the Salon d'Automne
Salon d'Automne

In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, Andr? Derain, Henri Matisse and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon....
, and met many of the leading artists of the early twentieth century avant garde. During a period of close friendship with Sonia
Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay was a Jews-France artist who, with her husband Robert Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colors and geometric shapes....
 and Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was a French artist who used Orphism , which is similar to abstract art, abstraction and cubism in his work. Delaunay concentrated on Orphism, while his later works were more abstract art, reminiscent of Paul Klee....
 in 1912–14 his paintings were influenced by Orphism
Orphism (art)

Orphism or Orphic cubism, is a term coined by the France poetry Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912. He used the French term Orphisme to label the paintings of Robert Delaunay, relating them to Orpheus, the poet and symbol of the arts of song and the lyre in Greek mythology....
, but Bruce never formed an attachment to any school. Although art historians have sometimes linked him to the Synchromist
Synchromism

Synchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by United States of America artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell.Synchromism is based on the idea that color and sound are similar phenomena, and that the colors in a painting can be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony....
s, he never exhibited with the Synchromists, adopted their theories or gave his paintings Synchromist titles.

The style of his mature work anticipated the Purism
Purism

Purism was a form of Cubism advocated by the France Painting Am?d?e Ozenfant and the architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret ....
 developed by Léger
Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri L?ger was a France painting, sculpture, and film director....
 and Ozenfant
Amédée Ozenfant

Am?d?e Ozenfant was a France cubist Painting.He was born into a bourgeois family in Saint-Quentin, France, Aisne and was educated at Dominican Order colleges in Saint-S?bastien....
 in the 1920s. In his paintings of 1918 and later, hard-edged geometric forms are arranged as on a tabletop and rendered in evenly applied, flat colors. His work was admired by Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a France artist whose work is most often associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art....
 and may have influenced the style adopted by his former teacher, Matisse, in his mural
Mural

A mural is a painting on a wall, ceiling, or other large permanent surface....
 La Danse (1932–33, in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Merion, Pennsylvania

Merion is an unincorporated area in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, United States. It is contiguous to Philadelphia and is also bordered by Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, Narberth, Pennsylvania, and Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania....
).

Intensely self-critical, Bruce destroyed a great many of his paintings, and only about one hundred works remain. His death was by suicide
Suicide

Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"....
, in New York City on November 12, 1936.

See also

  • American Modernism
    American modernism

    American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both Social progress and Optimism....
  • Orphism (art)
    Orphism (art)

    Orphism or Orphic cubism, is a term coined by the France poetry Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912. He used the French term Orphisme to label the paintings of Robert Delaunay, relating them to Orpheus, the poet and symbol of the arts of song and the lyre in Greek mythology....