Max Bohm
1868–1923 · American painter who worked in Étaples
Max Bohm (Cleveland, Ohio, 1868 – Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1923) was an American painter who spent much of his career in Europe. He matters chiefly for his years in the art colony at Étaples, on the coast of northern France, where he portrayed local fishermen with a heroic, almost visionary quality.
Born in Cleveland, Bohm studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and travelled widely in Europe. From 1895 to 1904 he lived in Étaples, and his heroic images of its fishermen earned a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1898. He then taught painting at a school in London until 1911, before returning to the United States to join the community of artists on Cape Cod.
In 1920 he became a National Academician, and three years later he died in Provincetown, a town at the tip of Cape Cod. His paintings are held by the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art and the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris. He also left a mural in his hometown, at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. He was the grandfather of the artist Anne Packard.