A dedicated realist, Fairfield Wadsworth Porter was an anomaly during the mid-twentieth century heyday of Abstract Expressionism. He explained: “The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality.”
Porter was born in Winnetka, Illinois, where his architect father built a Greek revival-style house for his family decorated with photographs of Italian paintings and plaster casts of Greek sculpture. Fairfield Porter recalled a pressure he felt in his youth to “paint like the Old Masters," but he was far more taken with the avant-garde styles of France at the time. In fact, a Chicago exhibition of Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard would continue to inspire him throughout his career. In reference to the intimate interiors and decorative compositions, Porter said of Vuillard "that what he is doing seems to be ordinary, but the extraordinary is everywhere.”
After attending Milton Academy in Massachusetts for a short period, Porter studied art history at Harvard University in Cambridge and became acquainted with the collection at the Fogg Art Museum. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Fine Arts. Following his graduation in 1928, he studied primarily drawing with Boardman Robinson and Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York for two years. In 1932 he traveled around Europe, an experience not new to him, as he had previously traveled around Europe and through Russia with his family.
With a recommendation from Elaine de Kooning, Porter took a position with ArtNews, which was critical to his development, and out of which came exhibitions and “at last” recognition from the art community. While working for ArtNews as an associate editor, he met many artists, dealers, and critics active in the New York art world. He also wrote reviews for The Nation and Art in America. He got involved with the socialist party, particularly when he returned to Chicago in the late 1930s for two years.
Prior to World War II Porter studied mechanical drawing, and during the war he worked as an industrial designer for the United States Navy. Afterward he studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York. In 1959 the prestigious art publisher Braziller issued his book on Thomas Eakins. Porter was frequently invited to college campuses as an art critic for lectures or to critique student work; he was in Alabama for a week, went to Yale University, Kent State University in Ohio, the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, and the Skowhegan School in Maine.
Except when he needed to be in New York, Porter lived in Southampton on eastern Long Island, where at times he taught at Southampton College. He spent summers at Great Spruce Head Island in Maine. Both locales were featured in his paintings, along with portrayals of his family. Typically these are bathed in light and rendered with slightly lush brushwork. In an interview he described part of his methodology: “If I can finish it [a painting] outside, I’m very glad. Sometimes I can’t because there’s too much light coming from all directions, and the world is bigger than that. You don’t know where to stop. It’s hard. That’s why it’s easier to paint out of a window, because it’s something that encloses.”