page_title: Robert Winthrop Chanler
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Winthrop Chanler / Career
context_page_description: Robert Winthrop Chanler was an American artist and member of the Astor and Dudley–Winthrop families. A designer and muralist, Chanler received much of his art training in France at the École des Beaux-Arts, and there his most famous work, titled "Giraffes", was completed in 1905 and later purchased by the French Government. Robert D. Coe, who studied with him, described Chanler as being "eccentric and almost bizarre." Chanler rose to prominence as an acclaimed American artist when his work was exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show in New York City.
context_section_description: Like Mai Rogers Coe and Everett Shinn, Chanler was staying in Paris in the 1890s and became involved with the art community. When he returned to the U.S. in the early 1900s, he purchased a townhouse on East 19th Street, decorated it with his own works, and called it his House of Fantasy. The townhouse became a social center for New York's art community. Like Everett Shinn, Chanler was a personality and a figure in his time.
  Chanler was a member of the New York State Assembly (Dutchess Co., 2nd D.) in 1904, but did not run for re-election. In 1907 he was elected Sheriff of Dutchess County, New York and remained in that office for three years.
  Chanler specialized in painted screens and was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters. A ceiling mural of buffaloes painted by Chanler is in the Coe House in Brookville, New York. He was also a member of the Architectural League of New York. He painted a ceiling inside the Colony Club, a private member's club located at Park Avenue and 62nd Street in New York City.
  In 1905 Chanler exhibited a work entitled Au Pays des Girafes (or et argent) at the Salon d'Automne in Paris (no. 328 of the catalogue). This was the exhibition that prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to label a group of painters "fauves" (wild beasts), thus marking the birth of Fauvism.
caption: Robert Winthrop Chanler, 1905, Giraffes, portion of a screen. Print, published 1922
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