Artist
Centurion, 1890–1924
Born 9 May 1861 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Died 18 November 1924 in Florence, Italy
Buried Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori
, Florence, Toscana, Italy
Proposed by Hooper C. Van Vorst and Charles Loring Brace
Elected 3 May 1890 at age twenty-eight
Archivist’s Note: Son of Robert Sewell
Proposer of:
Century Memorial
Robert Van Voort Sewell [sic: Robert Van Vorst Sewell] was educated at Columbia, studied art in Paris under Lefébre [sic: Lefebvre] and Boulanger from 1883 to 1887 and was elected to the Century in 1890. His art found its main field of interest in mediæval legend, with mural painting his best-known expressives. The Canterbury Pilgrims received sympathetic treatment under his hand; the painting is in the Georgian Court, at Lakewood. The work by which Sewell is best known, however, is his Psyche, which was painted for the St. Regis Hotel.
An episode that will be recalled by many was the importation, in partnership with Davenport the cartoonist, of a string of Arabian horses from Algeria, where he had spent two years painting. The venture in horse-raising was not a success, but it was the expression of a mind that turned from one interest to another and led to far travels and eccentric adventures. As a conversationalist, Sewell was a man of rapid and positive convictions; very apt to press a new idea which had just occurred to him to an ultimate opinion that admitted of small argument.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1925 Century Association Yearbook