Boardman Robinson 1900 (WPA)

Peter Van Valkenburgh

Boardman Robinson (illustrator, caricaturist and painter) was born on September 6, 1876, in Somerset, Nova Scotia. His childhood was spent in Wales and England but he moved to Boston to enroll in the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design).

He continued his education in Paris at the Academie Colarossi and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. While in Paris he studied the political cartoons of Honoré Daumier and Théophile Steinlen.

Upon his return to the United States, Robinson supported himself by freelancing for a variety of publications including Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Weekly and Collier’s, as well as the Socialist Masses. In 1910 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune working for four years as an editorial cartoonist. He lost this job due to his radical anti-military opinions during the first World War. In 1915 he traveled to Eastern Europe with John Reed to see and record the Russian Revolution.

Robinson taught at the Art Students’ League in New York between 1919 and 1930 and then moved to Colorado Springs to teach at the Broadmoor Art Academy (now the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center). In 1931, Robinson became the Director of the Broadmoor Art Academy and served in that capacity for seventeen years.

Boardman Robinson died in Colorado Springs on September 5, 1952.