Robert Rucker
A framed watercolor and graphite on board by one of the stalwarts of New Orleans and Louisiana art and denizen of the French Quarter, of a subject near and dear to everyone who loves the Big Easy. Framed size 22.5" x 18", actual watercolor is 14.75" x 10.8".
The following biography is submitted by George L. Montoto of Baton Rouge, a long- time collector of Louisiana Art. His source is "Knute Heldner and the Art Colony in Old New Orleans", copyright 2000, a catalog purchased in the Jean Bragg Gallery in New Orleans.
Robert Malcolm Rucker was born March 28, 1932 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and died March 7, 2001 in Mandeville, Louisiana. He was an oil painter who occasionally used watercolor, and his style combined realism and impressionism. He was primarily known for landscapes but also did many paintings of plantation homes, steamboats, and other aspects of Louisiana life and culture. Most of his life he lived in New Orleans.
Rucker is really the heir to the nineteenth-century Louisiana landscape school of painting. He has a great kinship with the romantic descriptive images of Richard Clague (1821-1873), William Henry Buck (1840-1888) and Marshall J. Smith (1854-1923).
Robert Rucker grew up in New Orleans during the Depression. His early
dabbling in paint led to him opening his own French Quarter gallery with the help of his mother. He was just 15 years old. He painted an average of five paintings a month from that time. When he was 17, he was stricken with polio. Because of this, The Louisiana Department of Education funded his education at the John McCrady School of Fine Arts in New Orleans.
His mature subjects recreate Louisiana in her golden past with amazing historical accuracy, in both detail and composition: sternwheelers steaming down the Mississippi (his father was a steamboat captain), colonial plantations set among cotton fields, rustic moonlit cabins, stands of old cypress in the bayous, and solitary live oaks garlanded with Spanish moss.
In his early career, Rucker taught painting in his own studio and courses in
art and ceramic for the New Orleans Recreation Department. He worked as a
textile designer and as a medical artist at Tulane University School of
Medicine. Rucker passed away on March 7, 2001 of a heart attack. His
beautiful work will remain with us forever.
SPECIAL AWARDS AND EXHIBITIONS:
Louisiana Legends Award - 1996
One-man shows in New Orleans at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, Royal
Orleans Hotel, Louisiana National Guard Convention and Trial Lawyer
Convention. His work is in the Baton Rouge at Louisiana State University's Library and Gerard Ruth's Gallery and at private galleries in St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco.
LIFE
Robert Rucker was born in 1932 and grew up in Depression-era New Orleans. When he was a teenager, he and his mother opened a gallery in the French Quarter, beginning his long and prolific art career. After he contracted polio, the Louisiana Department of Education paid for his education at to the John McCrady School of Fine Arts. He completed his studies, then taught in his own studio and for the New Orleans Recreation Department, and worked at Tulane University as a textile designer and medical artist. Rucker died in 2001, leaving behind a legacy as one of Louisiana’s foremost painters.
ART
Rucker works in a romantic style that merges realism and impressionism, often in oil paint with pastel tones. He carries on the tradition of the Louisiana landscapes created in the 1800s by painters like Richard Clague and Marshall J. Smith. Rucker paints dreamlike, iconic glimpses of historical Louisiana. He is famous for his landscapes as well as many depictions of steamboats (his father and grandfathers were steamboat captains).
RECOGNITION
Louisiana Legends Award - 1996
One-man shows in New Orleans at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, Royal Orleans Hotel, Louisiana National Guard Convention and Trial Lawyer Convention
Work shown at Baton Rouge at Louisiana State University's Library, Gerard Ruth's Gallery, and galleries in St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco
Sources:
AskArt
Artnet.com
Gilley’s Gallery