Biography from AskART:
| Charles Frace, a wildlife artist whose work was featured in more than
450 exhibitions, was born in 1926 in a small town in eastern
Pennsylvania. He began drawing at five and taught himself to
paint when he was fifteen. Frace remembers wanting to be an
artist from an early age. His self-instructed talent earned him a
scholarship to Philadelphia's Museum School of Art, where he graduated
with honors.
In 1955, Frace began a professional career as a
freelance illustrator in New York City. Eventually, he established a
distinguished reputation for wildlife painting. However Frace soon grew
frustrated by the restrictions of illustrating ideas conceived by
others and longed to paint some of his own.
He moved to
Mattituck, Long Island and opened a studio and met his wife Elke.
She took his first finished work to the nearby Kron's Gallery for
framing. Although it was an unusual subject and title, A Sparrow on a Rat, they insisted on displaying the painting in the gallery, and it sold that same afternoon.
His paintings were immediately celebrated by fellow nature lovers and wildlife enthusiasts. His first Golden Eagle,
framed by ominous gray clouds and staring at the viewer from its perch
on a sun bleached tree limb, was such a success that he made a second
version as one of his limited edition prints.
In 1973, with the
issue of Frace's first limited edition print, he had finally made the
permanent change to fine art. Frace brings to his art over three
decades of personal research and a close kinship with animals.
Frace and his art has been the subject of two books.
Perhaps
the greatest honor of his career came in October 1992, when Frace as
recognized with a one-man exhibit of thirty-six of his paintings at the
National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C.
On December 16, 2005, Charles Frace died, having suffered from
Alzheimer's Disease. Of his work, he had said: "I was just
given this gift. I believe God gave me this talent to share with
others and, in this way, to contribute to the preservation of wildlife
and their habitat." (Wildlife Art 2006)
Sources include:
Texas Art Depot, http://www.texasartdepot.com/t-frace_morebio.aspx
Editors, "In Memorium", Wildlife Art, March/April 2006, p. 80
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