Impressionists and Flyfishing

Although to some it would seem rather strange to begin a story on fly-tying with a long discourse on the merits of modern art and the Impressionist Movement. However, the fly patterns designed and dressed by John Atherton owe their very existence to the impressionist’s pallet and the aesthetics of his art, and as such his life as a painter requires some of our attention.

Born on the 7th June 1900 in Brainard, Minnesota. Atherton moved to San Francisco in 1920, to study at the College of the Pacific and The California School of Fine Art. After graduating he sharpened his artistic skills in various West-Coast art studios of the time, and exhibited numerous paintings.

In 1929 during the annual exhibition at the Bohemian Club he won the $500 fourth prize, a win that part financed his move to New York, a move which would become the turning point of his flourishing artistic career. Arriving during a period of boom in the New York advertising industry, Atherton started to undertake commissions for companies such as General Motors and Shell Oil, and illustrated covers for magazines such as Fortune, Holiday, and The Saturday Evening Post.

In 1938 he would go on to hold his first one man exhibition at the Julian Levy Gallery in Manhattan, and later in 1943 at the “Artist for Victory” show, his painting The Black Horse won fourth prize and now hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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