John Vanderpoel

John Henry Vanderpoel (1857-1911), born Johannes van der Poel in Haarlemmermeer, the Netherlands, was a Dutch-American artist and teacher. Although he painted murals and easel pictures, he is best remembered as an instructor of figure drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught from 1880 until 1910.

He emigrated with his father and siblings to the United States in 1869, after his mother's death. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Design, which later became the Art Institute, and from 1886 spent two years at the Académie Julian in Paris under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre. Back in Chicago he exhibited five paintings at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and was elected president of the Chicago Society of Artists. He received a bronze medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

His style stayed within the beaux-arts tradition, and he publicly denounced modernism. His book The Human Figure, published in 1907 with many of his pencil and charcoal drawings, became a standard textbook in art schools.

In 1910 he moved to St. Louis to head the drawing and painting department of the Art Academy at People's University, and he died there in 1911. His legacy lives on in the Vanderpoel Memorial Art Galleries in Chicago and in students such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Frederick Carl Frieseke and J. C. Leyendecker.