George Gardner Symons

Born in Chicago, Illinois, George Gardner Symons was among the most highly regarded American Impressionist painters of winter landscapes during the early twentieth century.  He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before continuing his training in Paris, London, and Munich. He returned to the United States in 1909, based in New York while traveling to California, New England—where he kept a home in Colerain, Massachusetts—and abroad.

Symons received his first American award—the Carnegie Prize at the National Academy of Design—in 1909, followed by numerous others, including the Third William A. Clark Prize and Bronze Medal at the Corcoran Gallery’s Fourth Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings in 1912. That same year, the Corcoran organized a solo exhibition of his work.^[1]

He was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1910 and an Academician in 1911. Symons was also a member of the Institute of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres. His work is represented in numerous major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Carnegie Institute, and the Butler Institute of American Art.

[1] Dorothy Phillips, A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Volume 2 (The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1973), 44.