Weiland - James
Weiland, James G.(1872-1968)
James Wieland was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1872. His father was a sash-factory foreman. Before he began studying art, Wieland worked as a newspaper man, an illustrator, and in advertising. He studied at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Students League, both in New York City, and then at academies in Munich and Paris. Although he painted landscapes and skyscapes, he became a leading portrait painter in Connecticut, painting some of the state’s most prominent citizens and officials. For the WPA Federal Arts Project from 1936-1939, Wieland painted ten portraits including State Librarians James Hammond Trumbull, Charles J. Hoadley, and George S. Godard; and Judges Oliver Ellsworth, Samuel O. Prentice, and John Duane Park. These represent a small group of the many portraits he produced. He was a member of Salmagundi Club, the Allied Artists of America, Provincetown Art Association, Brooklyn Society of Artists, Lyme Art Association, and the Society of Independent Artists. Weiland lived in Lyme, Connecticut and in 1937 told a reporter for the New Haven Register that “there isn’t any better place in the world for the mature artist to live than on a farm in Lyme.” His later years were not without disaster. In the Hartford Courant of July 1, 1966, an article reported that Weiland’s studio in Lyme burned as a result of a fire started by lightning. At the age of 90, Weiland learned that many of his landscape and portrait paintings had burned. He died two years later in 1968.
Sources: WPA Artist’s Work Card; AskART; Who’s Who in American Art (1985), p. 666; Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters (1986) 1005; Mary Sayre Haverstock, et al, Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary (2000). 3 vols. Volume 3, pp. 919-920; “Lyme Artist and Some of His Portraits,” New Haven Register, August 1, 1937; Social Security Death Index; Materials sent by the Lyme Historical Society to the Museum of Connecticut History in 1988.
Works of Art Listed in CT Archives’ database from James Weiland:
| Oliver Ellsworth: | |
| Judge Samuel Prentice: | |
| George S. Godard: |  |
| James Hammond Trumbull: |  |
| Charles Hoadley: |  |
| Judge John Duane Park: | |
| Judge L.P. Waldo Marvin: | |
| Judge Hinman: | |
| Judge Milton A. Shumway: | |
| Judge Hohn W. Banks: | |
| Judge Torrene: |