Ralston Crawford
Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) was a Canadian-born American painter, lithographer, photographer, and teacher. He is best known for his abstract representations of urban life and industry. He taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy (now Art Academy of Cincinnati) for many years.
Ralston Crawford
- Name
- Ralston Crawford
- Born
- 5 September 1906
- Birthplace
- St.
- Died
- 27 April 1978
- Place of death
- Houston, Texas, United States
- Known for
- Painting, photography
- Education
- Otis Art Institute, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Barnes Foundation, Académie Colarossi, Académie Scandinave
- Spouse
- Peggy Frank (m.?–1978; his death)
- Nationality
- United States.
- Fields
- painting.
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Documentary summary
Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) was a Canadian-born American painter, lithographer, photographer, and teacher. He is best known for his abstract representations of urban life and industry. He taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy (now Art Academy of Cincinnati) for many years.
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Note VALÉORINE
Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) was American. Ralston Crawford died in Houston.
Ralston Crawford studied at Académie Scandinave, Otis College of Art and Design and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Ralston Crawford worked for Walt Disney Pictures. Ralston Crawford was active in painting. Works by Ralston Crawford are held at Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
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wikidata · Q3929822 · wikipedia · Ralston Crawford
In this article
Biography
Biography
Ralston Crawford studied at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Otis College of Art and Design and Académie Scandinave. The field of work recorded is painting. Employment is recorded with Walt Disney Pictures. Work by Ralston Crawford is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Modern Art.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Ralston Crawford • Born — 5 September 1906 • Birthplace — St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada • Died — 27 April 1978 • Place of death — Houston, Texas, United States • Burial Place — St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States • Known for — Painting, photography • Education — Otis Art Institute, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Barnes Foundation, Académie Colarossi, Académie Scandinave • Spouse — Peggy Frank (m.?–1978; his death) • Children — 3 • Illustration — Ralston Crawford, Lights in an Aircraft Plant, 1945, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)
Early life
Early life
He was born on September 5, 1906, in St. Catharines, Ontario, and spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York. He studied art beginning in 1927 in California at the Otis Art Institute. After working at the Walt Disney Studio in Hollywood, California, he relocated to further study art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. It was there he was exposed to the work of Picasso and Matisse. After traveling to Paris, Crawford enrolled at the Académie Colarossi in 1932, followed by time spent at the Académie Scandinave a year later.
Work
Work
In 1934, he had his first one-man show at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Crawford is best known for his abstract paintings of urban life and industry. His early work placed him with Precisionist artists like Niles Spencer and Charles Sheeler. Here, the focus was on realistic, sharp portrayals of factories, bridges, and shipyards. Ralston enlisted in the Army in Buffalo on July 8, 1942 and was assigned to the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion at Fort Meade. This was a unit in what later became known as the Ghost Army. He stayed there for about seven months and then transferred to Washington, DC where he served as the chief of visual presentation in the United States Army Air Force, weather division. Later work was geometrically abstract. In Spain, he observed bullfighting, and the religious procession during Holy Week in Seville. In New Orleans, he painted and photographed cemeteries and jazz musicians (requiring a permit to visit bars normally restricted to blacks). Fortune Magazine sent Crawford to the Bikini Atoll in 1946 to record a nuclear weapons test. In 1971, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati held a retrospective of his work. In 1972 Crawford won an award from the National Academy of Design.
Death
Death
On April 27, 1978, Crawford died of cancer in Houston, Texas. He was survived by his wife Peggy (1917–2015) and three children (Neelon, John and Robert). Crawford is buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 in New Orleans, a short distance from one of the Catholic cemeteries in which he produced many of his works. At that time of his death, his works were included in the public collections of the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Toledo Museum of Art. His wife, Peggy Frank Crawford, a founder of the Modern Art Society, which would later become the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, died April 18, 2015.
Identity
Identity
Ralston Crawford is recorded as having studied at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Otis College of Art and Design and Académie Scandinave.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1906
Ralston Crawford born at St. Catharines.
1978
Ralston Crawford died at Houston.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
St. Catharines.
Birth place
Houston.
Death place
Collections
The Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences (Charleston, West Virginia), the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (University of Oklahoma); the Georgia Museum of Art (University of Georgia); Harvard University Art Museums, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the James A. Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, Pennsylvania), the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, Missouri), the Kresge Art Museum (Michigan State University), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Mead Art Museum (Amherst College), the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Saint Louis Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), The Phillips Collection (Washington D.C), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), the Tweed Museum of Art (University of Minnesota, Duluth), the Walker Art Center (Minnesota), the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City), the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio), the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (Utica, New York), and the Whitney Museum of American Art Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art(Auburn University, Alabama),(New York City) are among the public collections holding work by Ralston Crawford.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Findsen, Owen. Ralston Crawford retrospective. The Cincinnati Enquirer. 134. February 28, 1971.
- 2.Glueck, Grace. Ralston Crawford Is Dead at 71; Abstract Painter and Lithographer. The New York Times. May 2, 1978. 0362-4331.
- 3.Artist Finds California Still 'Hinterland' of Art. Santa Barbara News-Press. 7. 1946-02-12.
- 4.Thurber, Hali. Ralston Crawford. Caldwell Gallery Hudson.
- 5.Ralston Crawford Biography.
- 6.George Ralston Crawford. The Ghost Army Legacy Project.
- 7.Rosen, Steven. CAC Announces the Death of Founding Member Peggy Crawford. City Beat. 22 May 2015.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 7
- Agee, W.C. (1983). Ralston Crawford. Pasadena, CA: Twelvetrees Press.
- Freeman, R.B. (1962). The Lithographs of Ralston Crawford. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
- Freeman, R.B. (1973). Graphics '73 : Ralston Crawford . Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
- Harnsberger, R.S. (1992). Ten precisionist artists : annotated bibliographies [Art Reference Collection no. 14]. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- Haskell, B. (1985). Ralston Crawford. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art.
- Hirschl & Adler Galleries. (1991). Ralston Crawford and the sea. New York: author.
- Hirschl & Adler Galleries. (1993). Ralston Crawford: images of war. New York: author.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q3929822: Ralston CrawfordWikimedia Foundation
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Partially resolved
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
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Formation and teaching. Crawford studied at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Otis College of Art and Design and Académie Scandinave. Connected to 1 other published record in the VALÉORINE Encyclopedia.
Recognition and collections
Work by Ralston Crawford is
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Within the Encyclopedia
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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