John Rutherford Boyd (1882–1951) was a 20th-century American sculptor, painter and illustrator.
Life Boyd was born in 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under Thomas Anshutz.
He worked as a commercial illustrator in Philadelphia, and was art director for the magazine The Ladies' Home Journal from 1909 to 1915. He moved to New York City to become art director for Everybody's Magazine. Boyd revamped the magazine's layout under editor Howard Wheeler, but both their tenures at Everybody's were short.Frank Luther Mott, Book Lovers Magazine, Volume 2, (Harvard University Press, 2002). Boyd next worked as art director at Squibb & Company (now Bristol-Myers Squibb).Paul H. Mattingly, Suburban Landscapes: Culture and Politics in a New York Metropolitan Community (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 221. He attended evening classes at the Art Students League of New York.
His illustration work appeared on the covers of national magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post.Rutherford Boyd from Art.com. During the 1920s and 1930s, he exhibited regularly at the annual International Exhibition of Watercolors at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society, the Salmagundi Club, and the Architectural League of New York.
Although his commercial art was realistic, he also created abstract sculptures and drawings. These intensely geometric works were the subject of a 1937 short film, Parabola, by Mary Ellen Bute and Ted Nemeth, with music by Darius Milhaud.Mary Ellen Bute: Film Pioneer. At the invitation of abstract artist Josef Albers, Boyd was a guest lecturer at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. With his friend J. Ernest G. Yalden, he designed the Yalden Memorial Sundial (1937), at Waterfront Park, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.Yalden Memorial Sundial from Flickr.
He married fellow PAFA alumna Harriet A. Repplier, and they had two children, Lydia, born 1914 and David, born 1918."Saying goodbye to David Boyd," from Leonia Life, March 5, 2010. The couple bought the Cole-Allaire House at 112 Prospect Street in Leonia, New Jersey in 1916, and spent three years restoring it. They renamed it "Boyd's Nest," and lived there until their deaths.Carol Karels, Leonia (Arcadia Publishing, 2002), p. 12 The house is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Albin H. Rothe, A.I.A., et al. (July 1979). Retrieved 2013-09-10.
His watercolor, Flower Garden, Irises and Poppies (1929), sold at Sotheby's New York, on September 24, 2008, for $43,750$35,000 plus a buyer's premium of 25%. – an auction record for the artist.Flower Garden, Irises and Poppies from Sotheby's NY.
He died in 1951 in Leonia, New Jersey.
References
External links Rutherford Boyd Papers at Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Science into Art: The Abstract Sculpture and Drawings of Rutherford Boyd (1882-1951), exhibition catalogue, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York City, 1983. Rutherford Boyd at Hirschl & Adler Galleries.