Earle - George Frederic

Earle, George F. (1913-2010)

George Frederic Earle was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He began oil painting at the age of 8. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design and the College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, and while at Syracuse he organized the institution’s first ski team. After graduating from Syracuse Earle “travelled alone by burro through the tropical west coast region of Mexico” for a year. He then moved to Connecticut in 1928 and pursued an advanced degree of fine arts at Yale. From 1939-1941 he painted around 82 oil works for the WPA. Earle enlisted in the Army in 1942 and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant. He joined the 10th Mountain Division serving as a ski instructor with the Mountain Training Group at Camp Hale, Colorado then served in the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment seeing action on Kiska Island in the Aleutians and in combat in Italy. Earle was a combat artist “painting most of the scenes in 30 minutes or less.” He donated his art work to the Denver Public Library [George F. Earle Papers, 1943-1945, 1993-1995]. He later wrote a history of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment. After the war Earle completed his degree at Yale and returned to Syracuse University to teach skiing and run the largest ski school in the U.S. He taught architecture, art design, and art history and continued to paint. In 2003, the State University of New York Department of Landscape Architecture established the George F. Earle Scholarship. Earle died in 2010.

Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; WPA Artist’s Biography;Social Security Death Index; AskART; Who Was Who in American Art (1985), p. 179; Finding Aid to the George F. Earle Papers at the Denver Public Library through Denver Public Library Online.

Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from George Earle:

Earle, George Frederic