Alfred Henry Maurer was one of this country’s early modernists, the first American to adopt fauvism. During his lifetime his art was largely overshadowed by the reputation of his father, the noted illustrator Louis Maurer (1832-1932). At first Alfred’s work was allied with traditional academic painting; he studied in New York at the National Academy of Design in 1884 and in Paris at the Académie Julian in 1897. Except for a brief visit home in 1901 he remained in Paris until the beginning of World War I. He received critical praise for figurative scenes in the turn-of-the-century manner of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and WILLIAM M. CHASE that emphasized a decorative, tonalist quality.

Maurer became involved with vanguard art through Leo and Gertrude Stein, and by 1905 he began to abandon his dark, conservative style for the brilliantly colored, expressionist art of the fauves. He was one of the first Americans to study with Henri Matisse (1869-1954). In 1909 Alfred Stieglitz began showing Maurer’s paintings in New York at his gallery "291."

After he returned to New York in 1914, Maurer continued to paint fauvist landscapes while experimenting with other abstract styles, especially cubism, encouraged by his new friendships with MARSDEN HARTLEY and Arthur Dove (1880-1946). During the last years of 1920s he created a group of forcefully painted, synthetic-cubist tabletop still lifes. The most significant paintings of the last decade of his life were heads of women presented alone or in pairs.

Except for Stieglitz’s early attention Maurer’s modernist art was ignored until 1924, when Weyhe Gallery in New York held the first of numerous exhibitions devoted to his work. These shows brought his art to the critics’ attention. It came too late, however: in 1932, after a long illness, Maurer committed suicide only days after his father’s death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archiv. Am. Art, Elizabeth McCausland Papers and Bertha Schaefer Gallery Papers § Christian Brinton, "Maurer and Expressionism," International Studio 49 (March 1913): VIII-IX § Elizabeth McCausland, A. H. Maurer (New York: A. A. Wyn for the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1951) with chronology, bibliography, note on Maurer’s painting technique § Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, National Collection of Fine Arts, Alfred H. Maurer, 1868-1932, exh. cat., 1973, published by Smithsonian Institution Press, with text by Sheldon Reich, chronology, lists of exhibitions and awards, bibliography § Nick Madorno, "The Early Career of Alfred Maurer: Paintings of Popular Entertainment," American Art Journal 15 (Winter 1983): 4-34.