My father, Ben Ross, was a student of Kimon Nicolaïdes and, over several years, developed a close relationship with him. In 1935, Ben painted a memorable portrait of Nicolaïdes, which is now part of the Art Students League’s permanent collection. The portrait is included in New Acquisitions, an exhibition on view in the registration office through January 12, 2025. To accompany this painting, I’ve compiled letters, ephemera, and photographs, including one that may have been used to aid the composition of this work. These images document Nicolaïdes’ relationship with my parents, who were enrolled at the Art Students League between 1929 and 1934.
Ben Ross (aka Bernhard Rosenzweig, Dov Ben Tzwe, Constantine B. Ross) was born in a small town—a shtetl—in Romania in 1902. He came from a musical household and played the violin. When the Bolsheviks invaded around 1917, he was shot in the left hand and lost part of his finger. He left home, traveled Europe in the Merchant Marines working as a barber, and eventually made his way to New York. Arriving in 1922, he worked as a newsreel photographer, among other jobs, and started his studies at the Art Students League in 1929.
My mother, Muriel Walcoff, grew up in an upper-middle-class family on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She attended private schools and was expected to “marry well,” but she wanted to study painting and envisioned a different life, leading her to the Art Students League. My parents met there and soon after married in 1933. They shared a studio and, in later years, ran a gallery, exhibited widely, and belonged to several local art groups.
Ben enrolled in life classes with Nicolaïdes in 1929 and continued until 1933; Muriel studied with Nicolaïdes from 1931 until 1934. They both became life members of the League.
Kimon Nicolaïdes was a painter and teacher early in the twentieth century. Born in 1891 in Washington D.C. to an upper-middle-class family, Nicolaïdes’ father was a dealer in oriental objects. His parents initially did not support his desire to be an artist, and he had to leave home to find his way. He studied and then taught at the Art Students League. He exhibited at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris, the Whitney Studio Club (now the museum), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Salons of America, the Corcoran Gallery, and in 1932 at the Museum of Modern Art, among other venues. From 1922 until his untimely death in 1938, he became a teacher and friend, and for some, a second father, to countless art students who passed through his classes and were influenced by his teaching style. After his death, several of his students came together to complete his book, The Natural Way to Draw, under the editorship of his student Mamie Harmon.
In a letter from Nicolaïdes to Ben dated July 16, 1935, Nicolaïdes described encouraging my mother in her artistic training and a special payment arrangement. She was studying with him and a group of students in his summer studio in Lyme, New Hampshire. Nicolaides wrote, “I consider you and Muriel among the very best of my friends. I dare say you are aware of this. You might know that I will be only too happy to make the arrangement you suggest about financing the lessons.” The letter is signed, “Your friend, Nicolaides.”
In another letter sent a short time after, Muriel says: “Yesterday I got your letter, telling me about the arrangement with Nicolaïdes and coincidentally he remarked to me about during my criticism so I said that I knew nothing about your business arrangements.”
In 1935, the Eighth Street Playhouse Gallery featured my father’s works. In the Playhouse program (image 11), Nicolaïdes is quoted as follows: “There has been, there is and there always will be two groups of painters, separate from impulse. One group, the largest at the present time, motivated by the frank desire for gain: functioning in relation to the very material and primary impulse of self-conservation. There are the ‘Circus Barkers’ and ‘Business Men’ of art. On the other hand, there is a group motivated by a free aesthetic impulse, that impulse to experience, in form, in movement, in color, those reactions which they have received the world in which they life. It is a world which is around them and within them. Ben Ross belongs to this second group. His work is distinctly imaginative and expressional, rather than imitative…. His forms and color move to an orchestration of intellectualized emotion, which creates feelings of infinity…”
Nicolaïdes is similarly quoted in a later program regarding my mother’s artwork: “Her color is used as a binding medium which tends to be all persuasive, helps to create an expression of a particular quality of light and time.”
Lester Bridaham, then Public Relations Counsel of the Art Institute of Chicago, wrote on May 15, 1939, after the death of Nicolaïdes: “I am much interested in the critical notice which Nic made of your work in the 8th Street Playhouse exhibition you had. I am using that as my material also.” Lester had also been a student of Nicolaïdes and was collecting information on him for an article or book.
Although I was born after Nicolaïdes’ death, my parents often spoke about how important he was to their development as artists and how meaningful his friendship was to them. I believe my father’s portrait expresses that affection for Nicolaides, for the League, and for this period when they felt inspired and excited about their lives as young artists.
All documents and photographs are from the archives maintained by Helena Ross, the painter’s daughter.
