Frederick Theodore Weber was recognized for his talents in several media: he painted sensitive portraits, especially of youthful people, as well as robust coastal scenes; he created delicate etchings, particularly of New York cityscapes; and he worked in three dimensions.
Weber was born in Columbia, the state capital of South Carolina. In conjunction with his father’s business he spent his early years abroad: in Scandinavia and Finland, Germany and Holland, as well as England and France. His early education was at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium (or Joachimsthaler Gymnasium), a distinguished private school for gifted boys in Berlin, from which he graduated in 1903. His art instruction took place in Paris, where he studied privately with Ferdinand Humbert, a specialist in portraiture and history painting, Jean-Paul Laurens, a professor at the École des Beaux Arts, and Raoul Verlet, sculpture instructor at the Académie Julian. Weber passed his exams at the École des Beaux Arts in 1910 and was awarded the Prix Talrich in anatomy, probably as a result of his lessons with the anatomist Paul Richer. While Weber was still in his thirties, he exhibited work at the Paris Salon, first an etching, then paintings, and finally a sculpture in 1914.
After ten years in France, in 1914 Weber moved to New York where he obtained many portrait commissions and was active as a printmaker. In a 1919 article in Arts and Decoration, he described his reaction to New York’s art scene: “I had been told by Americans abroad that there was no general appreciation of Art here, so imagine my surprise to see the crowds before the windows of Fifth Avenue art shops. One does not see that on the Rue Lafitte [in Paris]. People stop to look at paintings only because they are interested. Then, too, in my studio, I find that even people who have had little or no training will choose at once the best work. Given such taste and such wide interest, something great is bound to come forth in American Art.”
Weber was involved with a variety of organizations and even served as the President of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers. A member of the Southern States Art League, he spent winters in South Carolina painting portraits in Charleston, Greenville, and elsewhere, probably through connections with his mother’s family and that of his wife. Considered an expert on portraiture, Weber wrote sections on the topic for the Encyclopedia Britannica, where he maintained: “A portrait is a work of art representing an individual. It has been called a materialization of an individual soul.” His obituary in the New York Times bears the headline “Frederick T. Weber, Painter, Sculptor.” He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston where many local artists have their graves, including Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.