Joseph A. Maturo
Artist
1876-1938
Joseph A. Maturo was born in Caserta, north of Naples, Italy. He sang in the church choir. Enrico Caruso, an opera singer had returned from America. Joseph came to New York City, when he was 18 years old with hopes of singing opera. He found friends who spoke his dialect in Brooklyn. His first job in America was from an ad for a wall painting. While he was waiting for them to show up with the ladder, he prepared the plaster bottom half of the wall. They just wanted the wall to be painted, not a fresco. So for interior decoration, he was paid $1.50 a day.
An early business card of his read: Joseph A. Maturo, Hand painted tapestries. Drawings, rental studies, tapestry materials. Colors, brushes, etc. Art School, 1947 Broadway New York. A later business card with the telephone number at the top read: Joseph A. Maturo, Artist, Oakdene Avenue, Teaneck, N.J.
Joseph and Mira. About 1910, this is a picture of his future wife, from their courting days in Central Park, New York. Mira's image is found in many of the paintings.
Around 1914, as was the fashion he wore a straw hat to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. Throughout his life he carried a cane. He wore spats to protect his shoes from the mud. He wore a polka dot bow tie.
From the mid 1930's his daughter in European costume is posing on a wooden bench he carved. He kept a collection of stage costumes and props, antique beaded satins, embroidered bright colored flower blouses, tri-corned hats, white French wigs, jeweled buckled shoes for painting any figure from a European peasant to prince.
He worked from models, often having his family pose. He had neighbors also that posed. If two figures were needed in a painting they would both start out from poses by his wife. Hands are never easy to paint. When he had hands to do in an awkward angle; he would ask one to stop what they were doing and pose their hand. He could do quick sketches.
His easel was always in use in the living room. The table was covered with pen and ink drawings. There were long hours and his wife would have to get him to finish a painting as he would want to rework passages or have gotten interested in another and not gotten back to the first. If he wasn't painting an illustration, he read the stories, so he could correctly depict the characters. He'd bring home the manuscript in his briefcase, with portions marked by the art director for where he wanted a picture.
His studio was in the Lincoln Arcade, a large building where actors, singers, and artists lived and worked in the 1910's. It was where Rockefeller Center is today. He had carved the wooden table.
By 1900 he painted tapestries. Tapestry cloth is hung wet and not completely stretched. The tapestries were of hundreds of old masters' pictures or mythology, which were sold from catalogs throughout the United States by Douhitt Galleries. he had others working for him. He did the laying in of the design. He did the faces and the hands. He also made his own exclusive designs, mostly on religious themes. Some of the most popular which still hang in churches today are: "Christ at the Well, " "Madonna and Child," " Mary at the Tomb," and "Flight into Egypt." Tapestry requires a special cloth that because of World War I was no longer available from Germany.
Home studio. He first moves to Leona, New Jersey and has a barn like studio. There are other artists in the neighborhood. (Grant Wood.) Then they moved across the meadow to Teaneck so they could have chickens and raise vegetables. From 1924 on he and his family make their home on Oakdene Avenue. They built a home with big windows. In 1936 he builds a studio addition onto his home. It's the room with the big open windows on the right. Photo was made in the 1990's.
Artist in Oriental draped corner. As was fashionable he had an oriental corner in his New York studio. Draperies of paisley forma backdrop for the model. Here the artist is taking a languid pose to show the model what the figure will be doing in the painting.
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