Overview
Collection Information
Size: 3.5 Linear feet
Summary: The Frederic Jean Thalinger Papers measure 3.5 linear feet and date from 1915-1989, with the bulk of the material dating from 1940-1965. Thalinger's son, Ernest Thalinger, arranged, annotated, and donated these materials to the Archives of American Art in 1989. Thalinger's records include certificates, membership papers, university records, resumes, four address books, family history documents, divorce papers, correspondence, notebooks, notes, sale invoices, project files, blueprints, exhibition catalogs and announcements, brochures, newspaper clippings, published booklets, photographs of family and art, including negatives and slides, sketches, and a collage. This collection also includes one audio cassette recording of an interview with Ciel Frampton Thalinger, Thalinger's wife, by his son, Ernest Thalinger on how she met Thalinger in 1939.
Biographical/Historical Note
Frederic Jean Thalinger (1915-1965) was a sculptor and artist based in Chicago, St. Louis, and Croton-on-Hudson, NY. Thalinger was born in 1915 in St. Louis, MO to his parents, including Ernest Oscar Thalinger who was a painter and served as a registrar at the City Art Museum, St. Louis. Thalinger completed a sculpting course at the Washington University St. Louis School of Fine Arts and attended Antioch College around the late 1930s. Thalinger was also a member of the St. Louis Artists Guild and the People's Arts Center. Thalinger worked with multiple mediums for sculpting, including soap, plaster, stone, and iron. In 1945 during World War II, Thalinger was a part of the US Merchant Marine.
Thalinger married Ciel Frampton, and had a son, Ernest Thalinger. Thalinger later divorced Ciel in 1958. Thalinger lived separately from his family while they lived in Tucson, AZ and Croton-on-Hudson, NY. Throughout Thalinger's life, he battled alcoholism, phlebitis in his leg, and depression. Thalinger later passed of a heart ailment in 1965 in St. Louis, MO.
Provenance
Ernest Thalinger assembled, collected and annotated his father's papers. He compiled the family history and updated resume. The placement of photographs of sculpture into subject files is based on Ernest Thalinger's prior arrangement and annotations of the papers.
Language Note
English .
