F. Winold Reiss,
10 weeks old, drawn by
his father, Fritz Reiss.
 
Winold and Hans Reiss in Germany, ca. 1910
 
Winold and 9-month-old Boykie in Canaan, New York, September 1914
 
Henriette Reiss and Boykie, Washington Square,
New York City
 

Crafts & Arts Studio, 1914
 
Winold Reiss and Dr. Schäffer in Mexico, 1920
 
Winold Reiss School at 4 Christopher Street, 1920.
Detail of photograph by Nickolas Muray.
 
Winold and Boykie on
the S.S. Rotterdam,
September 1921
 
Woodstock, New York, 1923
 
Little Dog, Winold Reiss, Plume and Turtle. Glacier Park, Montana, 1927
 
Hans Reiss, Frenchy Reviere (?), Winold Reiss, 1928
 
In Glacier Park, Montana, with Blood Indian friends, 1928
 
Powder River Jack, Winold Reiss, Tjark Reiss in Glacier Park
 
Class at the Reiss Studio, 1928
 
Winold Reiss with one of the murals for the Cincinnati Union Terminal, ca. 1931. Photo by Peter A. Juley & Son.
 
Winold Reiss painting Shot Both Sides, Glacier Park, Montana, 1937
 

Carl Link, Frank Bird Linderman, Winold Reiss, ca. 1937
 
Winold Reiss painting Medicine Boss Ribs, 1931
 
Winold Reiss and Albert C. Schweizer at the Empire State Longchamps, 1938. Photograph by Ezra Stoller.
 
Winold and Hans Reiss, 1939 New York World's Fair
 
Winold and Hans Reiss, New York City, 1940
 
Carl Link drawing of Winold Reiss, ca. 1943

 
 

Winold Reiss Chronology

Based on original research by Jeffrey C. Stewart and periodically updated;
additional research by C. Ford Peatross, et al.

  1886 Fritz Wilhelm Winold Reiss is born in Karlsruhe, Germany on September 16th.
  1910 Travels to Munich; attends Academy of Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts.
  1912 Marries Henriette Anna Lüthy on September 7th in Munich.
  1913 Immigrates to the United States; arrives October 29th and settles in New York City.
   

December 27th: Son Winold Tjark ("Boykie") is born.
  1914

Studio located at 96 Fifth Avenue.

    First book wrap and cover designs for Scribner's.
    Active with the "The Crafts and Art Studio".
  1915 Lectures at the Art Students League, New York City.
    Co-founds the "Society of Modern Art", publishers of the magazine Modern Art Collector. Designs and illustrates the first issues of Modern Art Collector.
    Begins Winold Reiss Art School, 96 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
    Does interior design of Busy Lady Bakery, New York City.
  1916 Illustrates The Making of a Steinway by Ralph I. Bartholomew, New York City
    Holds Winold Reiss Art School in Woodstock, New York during summer.
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
  1917 Establishes studio at 4 Christopher Street.
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
  1919 Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
    Does interior design of Crillon restaurant, New York City.
    Holds Winold Reiss Art School in Woodstock, New York during summer.
  1920 Early January: First trip west, with student, W. Langdon Kihn. Spends approximately two weeks in Browning, Montana producing ca. thirty-six portraits of Blackfeet Indians. Travels to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Fe and Taos; also visits Grand Canyon.
    March: Solo exhibition of his Indian portraits, E.F. Hanfstaengl Galleries, New York. All works purchased by Dr. Philip Cole.
    Early October: Goes on six-week trip to Mexico; produces more than forty portraits and imaginative drawings.
  1921 Completes theatre and lobby murals in Holabird & Root's new Apollo Theatre, Chicago; also South Sea Ballroom murals at Hotel Sherman, Chicago.
    Three Reiss pictures illustrate "Draughtsmanship and Racial Types: Mexican Character Studies by Winold Reiss" by M.D.C. Crawford, Arts and Decoration.
    Shows 51 works at the Chicago Art Institute (drawings, paintings, woodcuts, batiks).
  1921-22 September to May: Goes to Europe (takes his young son along.) Travels in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Czechoslovakia. Produces portraits of nineteen Oberammergau Passion Players, seventeen Swedish peasants, and thirty-eight Black Forest types.
  1922 Three of Reiss's Mexican pictures illustrate "Where Presidents Have No Friends" by Katherine Anne Porter, Century Magazine.
    Shows 136 portraits, including German, Swedish, and Mexican pictures, along with woodcuts and decorations, at Anderson Galleries exhibition in New York City, accompanied by catalogue Drawings by Winold Reiss.
  1923 Winold and Henriette Reiss divorce.
    April 18th: Hans Reiss, a sculptor, joins his brother Winold in New York City.
    Woodblock print portfolio Months of the Year published by Albert & Charles Boni, New York.
    Completes design commissions for Hotel Alamac, New York City (including Grill Room, Congo Roof, Main Dining Room; murals and five-metal panels.)
  1924 Brothers-in-arms at Zapata's Headquarters illustrates "Bandit Colonies" by Robert Haberman, and three portraits and a drawing of Cuernavaca illustrate "Mexican Types" by Reiss, Survey Graphic.
    Conducts Winold Reiss Art School summer session in Woodstock, New York.
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
  1925 Illustrates cover and produces Opportunity; issue also contains editorial "The Art of Winold Reiss."
    Cover design, five imaginatives, and thirteen portraits by Reiss illustrate Survey Graphic special issue, "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro."
    Shows thirty-seven African American portraits and imaginatives in solo "Exhibition of Recent Portraits of Representative Negroes," at the 135th Street Harlem Branch, New York Public Library.
    Cover, imaginative designs, and seventeen portraits by Reiss illustrate The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke.
    Completes interior design of Restaurant Robert, [33 West 55th Street,] and of Theodore Weicker apartment, [1115 Fifth Avenue,] New York City.
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
  1926 Reiss portrait illustrates "Nana Amoah" by Alain Locke, Survey Graphic.
    Cover and five portraits by Reiss illustrate special Asian number of Survey Graphic, "East by West: Our Windows on the Pacific."
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
  1927 Moves studio to 108 West 16th Street.
    Portrait of Langston Hughes illustrates review of The Weary Blues, Hughes's first book of poetry, New York World.
    Trip to Glacier Park and Browning, Montana, and to Alberta, Canada, under auspices of Great Northern Railway. All fifty-two portraits done on this trip purchased by Louis Hill, the president of Great Northern.
    Takes study trip to Penn Community School, St. Helena Island, South Carolina; produces approximately sixteen portraits.
   

Completes Palmer House Bar murals, Chicago (Holabird & Roche, architects).
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
  1928 Shows fifty-one works from the Louis Hill Collection of his Blackfeet portraits in solo exhibition, Belmaison Galleries in John Wanamaker's, New York City.
    Shows twenty-six works from Hill Collection in group exhibition of paintings, sculpture, and drawings by American and European artists, Brooklyn Museum.
    Trip to Glacier Park and Browning, Montana under auspices of Great Northern, to draw Blackfeet Indians.
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
    Shows five portraits in annual group exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
    Designs "Daughter's Room" for group modern design exhibition, American Designer's Gallery, New York City. Reiss a founder of ADG.
    Completes Shellball Apartments lobby and reception areas, Kew Gardens.
    Shows fifty-one works from Hill Collection in solo exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago.
    Does interior design of the Tavern Club, Chicago, in Holabird & Root's 333 No. Michigan Ave. building.
  1929 Five portraits illustrate "Winold Reiss Paints the Northern Indians," Survey Graphic.
    Designs "Living Room" for second exhibition of the American Designer's Gallery, New York City.
    Teaches at New York School of Applied Design for Women.
    Shows eighty works (including the original fifty-one) from Hill Collection at Museum of Science, Buffalo, New York.
    Shows at least nineteen portraits from Hill collection at Glaspalast, Munich. Paintings also shown in Hamburg and in Italy and France.
    Completes designs for Shellball Apartments, Talbot Street at Lefferts Blvd., Kew Gardens, Queens, New York.
  1930 Shows Blackfeet Indian and Portrait in annual group show, Art Institute of Chicago.
    Shows Hill Collection at Cleveland Public Library; sponsored by Women's National League for Justice to Indians.
    Completes designs for the Grand Ballroom, banquet rooms, restaurants, and special purpose rooms serving Emery Roth's new tower addition to Brooklyn's Hotel St. George, now New York's largest hotel.
    Designs Walden Book Shop, Chicago, in Holabird & Root's Michigan Square building.
    Shows six portraits, including Miss Helen Coolidge and Isamu Noguchi, in group exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
    Seven plates of portraits of Blackfeet Indians in The Sun God's Children by James Willard Schultz and Jessie Louise Donaldson.
    Completes interior designs for Rumpelmayer's at the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South; and for the Café Bonaparte in Raymond Hood and Kenneth Murchison's Beaux-Arts Apartments, New York City.
  1931 Begins to solicit funding for the Indian Monument Museum.
    Completes interior design for Café Caprice, [1 University Place,] New York City.
    Conducts Winold Reiss Summer School at Glacier Park.
    Shows eighty works from Hill Collection in solo exhibition, Los Angeles Museum.
  1932 Work illustrated in Architectural Forum.
    Juniper Buffalo Bull, Little Young Man and others illustrated in Chicago Visitor.
  1933 Completes interior mosaics for Cincinnati Union (Train) Terminal.
    "Cartoons, Drawings and Designs by Winold Reiss for the Mosaics in the New Cincinnati Union Terminal" exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum.
    Appointed assistant professor of mural painting at New York University. Also elected member of the school's Institute of Fine Arts Advisory Committee. Teaches there until 1941.
    James Weldon Johnson illustrated in New York Herald Tribune Books.
  1934 Shows eighty works from Hill Collection in solo exhibition, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
    Conducts Winold Reiss Summer School at Glacier Park, Montana.
    Completes murals for Steuben Tavern, Broadway and 42nd Street, New York City (Simon Zelnik, architect.)
  1935 Home Gun, Shot Both Sides, Plume, Long Time Pipe Woman, Nenauaki-Mrs. Joe Devine, Many Horses, Little Rosebud and Baby, Scalping Woman, Tough Bread, Cut Nose Woman, Good Striker, and others (forty-nine plates) illustrated in Blackfeet Indians: Pictures by Winold Reiss. Story by Frank Linderman, published by Great Northern Railway.
    Shows Mike Short Man, Theodore Last Star, and Cecile Black Boy at Marshall Field, Chicago, to promote Reiss-Linderman book. Mike Short Man and Theodore Last Star attended.
    Designs interiors of two new Restaurant Longchamps: in the Chanin Building (Louis XV murals), and at 59th Street and Madison Avenue (first complete design of a New York restaurant based on Indian portraits and design motifs.)
    Conducts Winold Reiss Summer School at Glacier Park, Montana.
  1936 Shows fifty Indian portraits in Europe. Tour, organized by Tjark Reiss, begins at Künstlerhaus, Vienna, and goes to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; Budapest; Hungary; Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart and Freiburg, Germany.
    Designs interiors and produces murals for new Restaurants Longchamps, at Broadway and 41st Street, and at 12th Street and Fifth Avenue, New York City.
    Shows Indian Portraits and other works in solo exhibition, Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, Santa Barbara, California.
    Reiss's mosaics illustrate "Cincinnati at Work" Survey Graphic.
    Conducts Winold Reiss Summer School, Glacier Park, Montana.
  1937 Shows Sundance, Hairy Coat, and Shell Woman at New York Public Library.
    Conducts Winold Reiss Summer School, Glacier Park, Montana.
  1938 "A Portfolio of Indian Portraits" illustrated in Scribner's.
    Tjark Reiss returns from studying with Peter Behrens in Vienna and joins father's studio.
    Begins work on the exterior of the Theatre and Concert Building for World's Fair in New York City.
    Completes interior design and murals for two new Restaurants Longchamps: at 253 Broadway (opposite City Hall), and at 79th Street and Madison Avenue, New York City.
    Completes interior design and Mexican mural for "The Patio" Restaurant at Hess Department Store, Allentown, Pennsylvania
  1939 Designs façade and interior for Music Hall (Reinhard and Hofmeister, architects) and paints mural for Montgomery doughnuts concession, 1939 New York World's Fair.
    Completes interior design and American theme murals for Lindy's Broadway Restaurant, New York City.
  1940 Publication of Indian Legends: Piegan Indian Legends of Rock and Crow Woman as told to Beaver Child [Winold Reiss] by Chief Little Dog, Grinnell Lithographic Co.
    Moves studio to 266 West 12th Street.
    Tjark Reiss enters U.S. Army in Corps of Engineers.
  1941 Cover design, Survey Graphic.
    Completes commissions for Yorktowne Hotel, Yorktown, Pennsylvania; Oyster Bar, Hotel Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois; Hotel President, Kansas City, Missouri.
    Shows twenty-one portraits with his brother, Hans, who shows six sculptures, Montclair Art Museum.
    Hans Reiss moves to Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
  1942 Cover design for Survey Graphic special issue, "Color: The Unfinished Business of Democracy," edited by Alain Locke.
  Moves studio to 230 West 13th Street.
  1943 Takes a study trip to Glacier Park, Montana; completes sixty-six portraits of Blackfeet Indians.
  1944 Completes interior design and murals for Tropical Gardens Restaurant,
    Takes study trip with Carl Link to draw Indians at Rocky Boy Agency, Box Elder, Montana.
  1945 Completes interior designs of Mike Lyman's Grill, Los Angeles and St. James Restaurant, New York City.
    Tjark Reiss returns from military service, and rejoins studio.
  1946 Purchases Chinese bank building in Carson City, Nevada, as retirement home and studio.
    Completes mosaic murals for Woolaroc Museum entrance, Bartlesville , Oklahoma
    Completes interior design and murals for Tropical Gardens Restaurant, New York City
    Takes study trip to Muskogee, Oklahoma, with fellow artist Acee Blue Eagle.
  1947 Shows Indian portraits in solo exhibition, Arizona State Museum, Tucson.
Arizona State Museum show travels to Southwest Museum, Los Angeles and The Heard Museum, Phoenix.
    Shows twenty-one Indian portraits in solo exhibition, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
    Shows Indian portraits in solo exhibition, University of Arizona, Tucson.
  1948 Takes last study trip to Glacier Park, Montana, to draw Blackfeet Indians.
    Floyd Middle Rider illustrated on cover, National Future Farmer Magazine.
  1949

Completes interior design, murals, and portraits for Indian Room in Chic-N-Coop restaurant, Montreal, Canada.
  1950 Completes interior design, murals and stained glass panels for Restaurant Longchamps at Manhattan House (Third Avenue and 63rd Street), New York City.
  1951 Completes interior design and Grand Canyon mural for Santa Fe Railroad Ticket Office in Kansas City, Missouri.
  Suffers stroke in New York City.
    On recommendation of former student Aaron Douglas, donates Harlem and St. Helena portraits to Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.
  1952 Completes interior design and murals for Restaurant Longchamps, Washington, D.C.
    Suffers second stroke, which leaves him paralyzed.
  1953 Dies on August 29th in New York City.
  1954 Blackfeet Indians scatter Winold Reiss's ashes in Montana.
     
  Back to top

Home | Life | Works | Studio Circle | The Reiss Partnership

© 2005-2014 The Reiss Partnership. Last Updated: 6/14/14