Stanton Macdonald-Wright papers
name: label: Creator
content: Macdonald-Wright, Stanton, 1890-1973
label: Names
content: Russell, Morgan, 1886-1953
label: Names
content: Seuphor, Michel, 1901-1999
label: Names
content: Summerfield, Anne, 1917-
label: Names
content: Summerfield, John, 1917-
topic: label: Occupation
content: Painters -- California -- Los Angeles
label: Topic
content: Synchromism (Art)
label: Topic
content: Painting, Abstract
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: Stanton Macdonald-Wright first loaned materials to the Archives of American Art for microfilming in 1964. David Nellis, a gallery owner, gave the Archives the artist's unpublished autobiography in 1978. The bulk of the Stanton Macdonald-Wright papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by his widow, Jean Macdonald-Wright, in 2 installments in 1995 and then in 2019 as a bequest.
creator: label: Creator
content: Macdonald-Wright, Stanton, 1890-1973
setName: label: See more items in
content: Stanton Macdonald-Wright papers
abstract: label: Summary
content: The papers of Southern California painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright measure 17.2 linear feet and date from 1890 to 2008. The collection contains biographical material including address books and interview transcripts; correspondence with family, friends, and artists, including Morgan Russell, and his wife Suzanne Binon, Michel and Suzanne Seuphor, Ann and John Summerfield, and Bethany Wilson; contracts, correspondence, and other material related to exhibitions Macdonald-Wright participated in or that featured his works in the decades following his death; notes, drafts and manuscripts for books, and other writings; diaries and travel journals; invoices, inventories, legal and estate documents, and other personal business records; scrapbooks consisting of clippings and exhibition materials; clippings, exhibition announcements, exhibition catalogs, and other printed materials; sketches and other artwork; photographs, slides and transparencies of Macdonald-Wright, family portraits, travels, and artwork.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) was the creator of a modernist style of painting based on pure spectral color known as chromatic abstraction or "Synchromism." He worked in New York and later primarily in Los Angeles.   

Stanton Macdonald-Wright was born in 1890 in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1900 the family moved to Santa Monica, California where they ran a seaside hotel.  A few years later he took courses at the Art Students League in Los Angeles, studying under Warren T. Huges.  His older brother was Willard Huntington Wright, a respected art critic who wrote Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning (1915), upon which he collaborated with his younger brother Stanton, and The Future of Painting (1923), and later became a detective novelist under the name S. S. Van Dine.  

At the age of seventeen, Stanton Macdonald-Wright married his first wife and moved to Paris where he immersed himself in European art and studied at the Sorbonne, the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts, and the Académie Colarossi. While in Europe he also befriended fellow American painter Morgan Russell and the two artists began working closely together.  They studied with Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart between 1911 and 1913 and were deeply influenced by their teacher's color theory, which connected the qualities of color to those of music.  Together Macdonald-Wright and Russell developed a style of painting based on color and named it "Synchromism." They introduced their work in 1913 at the Der Neue Kuntsalon in Munich and in Paris at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.  These exhibitions helped to establish Synchromism as an major influence in modern art well into the 1920s. 

Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell returned to the United States eager to promote their work and theory.  It was not long before the two separated, but both continued to work in the Synchromist style. Together, they held one more Synchromist exhibition in New York in 1916 which received significant critical support.  Macdonald-Wright also participated in the prestigious 1916 "Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters" in New York and exhibited his work at Alfred Stieglitz's famed 291 gallery in New York in 1917.  Yet, financial success evaded him. 

Macdonald-Wright moved to Santa Monica in 1918, where he taught and served as director of the Los Angeles Art Students League. In 1924 he published his instructive Treatise on Color.  In 1927 he organized another joint exhibition with Morgan Russell at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he also exhibited five years later.  He exhibited at the Oakland Art Gallery, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Alfred Stieglitz's An American Place gallery in New York, and the Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles.  From 1935 to 1942 Macdonald-Wright served as director of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project for Southern California, followed by a faculty position at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles where he taught for sixteen years.  

In the late 1950s, Macdonald-Wright completed the Synchome Kineidoscope, a color and light projecting machine first envisioned by Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell as early as 1913.  

Macdonald-Wright traveled extensively throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, spending time in Hawaii, Italy, and Japan.  Macdonald-Wright married three times and died in California in 1973, at the age of 83. 

This biographical note draws heavily on the Archives of American Art's West Coast Regional Collector Paul Karlstrom's collection description written upon acquisition of the papers.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 17.2 Linear feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1890-2008
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.macdstan
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Diaries
label: Type
content: Scrapbooks
label: Type
content: Drawings
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged as 10 series.

Series 1: Biographical Material, 1909-2008 (0.2 linear feet; Box 1)

Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1907-2005 (1.7 linear feet; Boxes 1-2)

Series 3: Exhibition Files, 1941-2005 (0.2 linear feet; boxes 2-3)

Series 4: Writings, 1913-2003 (4.7 linear feet; Boxes 3-7)

Series 5: Diaries, 1909-1991 (1.5 linear feet; Boxes 7-9)

Series 6: Personal Business Records, 1946-2006 (1.3 linear feet; Boxes 9-10)

Series 7: Scrapbooks, 1910-1994 ( 0.3 linear feet; Boxes 10, 19)

Series 8: Printed Material, 1912-2002 (1.8 linear feet; Boxes 10-12, 19)

Series 9: Artwork, circa 1897-1970 (0.2 linear feet; Boxes 12, 19)

Series 10: Photographic Material, 1890-2004 (5.3 linear feet; Boxes 12-18, OV 20)
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: This collection was processed by Rihoko Ueno in 2014 with funding from the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. The additions were processed by Ricky Gomez in 2022.
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Materials lent for microfilming are available on 35 mm microfilm reels LA1 and LA5 at Archives of American Art offices, and through interlibrary loan.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Diaries
label: Genre/Form
content: Scrapbooks
label: Genre/Form
content: Drawings
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The papers of Southern California painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright measure 17.2 linear feet and date from 1890 to 2008. The collection contains biographical material including address books and interview transcripts; correspondence with family, friends, and artists, including Morgan Russell, and his wife Suzanne Binon, Michel and Suzanne Seuphor, Ann and John Summerfield, and Bethany Wilson; contracts, correspondence, and other material related to exhibitions MacDonald-Wright participated in or that featured his works in the decades following his death; notes, drafts and manuscripts for books, and other writings; diaries and travel journals; invoices, inventories, legal and estate documents, and other personal business records; scrapbooks consisting of clippings and exhibition materials; clippings, exhibition announcements, exhibition catalogs, and other printed materials; sketches and other artwork; photographs, slides and transparencies of MacDonald-Wright, family portraits, travels, and artwork. 

Biographical material consists of address books, interview transcripts, and obituary and funeral material.

Correspondence consists of letters with family, friends, and artists, including Morgan Russell, and his wife Suzanne Binon, Michel and Suzanne Seuphor, Ann and John Summerfield, and Bethany Wilson.

Exhibition files consists of contracts, correspondence, and some printed material related to exhibitions that Macdonald-Wright participated in or that has featured his works in the decades following his death. Some of the exhibitions include the Southern California Art Project, Kineidoscope film, and "Color and Myth: Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Syncronism."

Writings consist of drafts of essays, plays, and book manuscripts.  There are drafts of A Treatise on Color with palettes and color wheels, The Basis of Culture, and Macdonald-Wright's autobiography Bittersweet: An Artist's Life. At the end of the series are a number of files containing photographs, printed material, and some notes that Macdonald-Wright used for various book projects.

Diaries consist of a number of diaries and travel journals.  One diary was written in Paris in 1909 in which Macdonald-Wright muses over the aesthetics of art and his color theories.  Five additional disbound diaries cover his life from 1939-1973.  Travel diaries date from 1959-1972 and cover trips to Italy, Japan, and Hawaii.

Personal business records consists of inventory cards and lists, invoices, property records, and legal documents related to the Macdonald-Wright estate. Also included are files between the estate and various galleries, such as the Esther Robles Gallery and the Goldfield Galleries, in regards to donations of works of art during both his active career and by his estate in the years after his death.

Scrapbooks consist of a scrapbook related to exhibitions featuring MacDonald-Wright's works and scrapbooks of clipping.

Printed material includes a copy of Les Synchromistes exhibition catalog, a newspaper clipping, and The Future of Painting by Willard Wright. Artwork consists of blueprints for Macdonald-Wright's Synchrome Kineidoscope, a color and light projecting machine first envisioned by Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell as early as 1913 and finally completed in the late 1950s. Also included are newpaper and magazine clipping, exhibition announcements, and exhibition catalogs.

Artwork consists of a sketchbook, and a number of sketches and drawings.

Photographic material consists of photographs of Stanton Macdonald-Wright and portraits and photographs of his family. Among these photographs is a glass plate negative of his family coat-of-arms. Also included are photographs, slides and transparencies of travels to Japan and Hawaii, and of Macdonald-Wright's artwork. There are also five glass plate images of some of Macdonald-Wright's paintings.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: The Archives of American Art holds several collections related to the Stanton Macdonald-Wright papers.  There is an oral interview of Stanton Macdonald-Wright conducted 1964 Apr. 13-Sept. 16, by Betty Hoag.  There are also Stanton Macdonald-Wright Letters to Alan and Fanny Leslie, the Stanton Macdonald-Wright Collection of photographs, Stanton Macdonald-Wright Letters to Morgan Russell, Walter Houk Letters from Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and an Oral History of Stanton Macdonald-Wright by Jeanne M. Marshall for the Voice of America Conducted in 1967.
separatedmaterial: label: Separated Materials
content: The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reels LA 1 and LA 5) including a brochure on the Santa Monica Library murals and six photographs of the panels while in Macdonald-Wright's studio. There is also a 1939 exhibition catalog for "Southern California Art Project" a master's thesis on Macdonald-Wright by Dori Jean Watson (1957), and one scrapbook of photographs, clippings, and other printed materials dating from circa 1910-1964. Lent materials were returned to the lender and are not described in the collection container inventory.