Ernest Maxwell Albert was born in Chicago, Illinois as the son of Ernest Albert (1857-1946). The elder achieved distinction for designing color schemes for the interiors of buildings at the 1895 Chicago World’s Fair. He worked as a set designer for the Chicago Opera House and then moved his family to New York. There he became the top Broadway set designer, sometimes working for several shows at a time. As his son grew older, the senior Albert became a landscape painter, a subject in which his son would also excel. In 1863 the family moved to a house in New Rochelle, New York. Maxwell Albert attended public schools and then, at the young age of 15, was admitted to the New York City Art Students League, one of the most famous art schools in the United States. He graduated in 1919. During World War I he served in the camouflage section of the Army. Beginning in 1917 Maxwell Albert began accompanying his father to Florence Griswold’s house in Old Lyme, Connecticut to paint with other famous American landscape Impressionists. The family moved to a 16 acre farm in New Canaan and converted one of the barns into a studio. Maxwell Albert was single and living in New Canaan when the Great Depression began. Between 1937 and 1941, he painted 54 easels for the WPA, mostly landscapes, many of which were distributed throughout the state. He earned a living as a commercial illustrator and as a teacher. In his later life, he became a restorer. Maxwell Albert continued to paint landscapes during his career and exhibited at the New Rochelle Art Association, the Lyme Art Association, the American Watercolor Society, the New Haven Paint and Clay Club, the Silvermine Art Society in Norwalk, and the National Academy of Design. He belonged to many art groups including the Allied Artists Association, Salmagundi Club of New York City, the Old Lyme Art Association, the New Rochelle Art Society, and the Silvermine Guild of Artists. Maxwell Albert died, unmarried, at his home in Stamford in 1955.

Sources:  WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Biography; AskART; Who’s Was Who In American Art (1985), p. 7; Hartford Courant:  “The Fine Arts,” July 22, 1923; “The Fine Arts,” September 2, 1923; “Annual Lyme Art Exhibition Opens, August 3, 1924; “Lyme Art Exhibition is Opened,” August 1, 1926; “Society,” August 5, 1927; “Art Show Opens In Old Lyme Gallery,” July 29, 1928; “Saturday Will Be Hamburg Day for Lyme Art Colony,” August 3, 1928; “Lyme Art Colony Exhibit Attracts Many Visitors,” August 5, 1928; “Antiques Hobnob With Art In Ancient Lyme Mansion,” August 26, 1928; New York Times:  “Here, There, Elsewhere,” February 2, 1949; “Ernest Albert, 64, An Artist, Restorer,” June 18, 1955.