Leon Dabo

American tonalist landscape artist best known for his paintings of New York, particularly the Hudson Valley. His paintings were known for their feeling of spaciousness, with large areas of the canvas that had little but land, sea, or clouds. During his peak, he was considered a master of his art, earning praise from such luminaries as John Spargo, Bliss Carman, Benjamin De Casseres, Edwin Markham, and Anatole Le Braz. His brother, Scott Dabo, was also a noted painter. In 1910, Dabo became the leader of The Pastellists, a somewhat radical artist exhibition society. During World War I, the multilingual Dabo went to France and offered his services to Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. He ended up serving as an officer in the French and British Armies successively and exposed a number of German spies, using his ear for dialect and accent. He even played the role of spy once, going behind German lines to gain information. In the 1920s, he taught and painted in various artists' colonies in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. Starting in 1933, he began to exhibit flower paintings and pastels, a departure from the landscapes with which he had become associated. In 1937, he returned to France and established a studio there, where he painted French landscapes. With war approaching, Dabo helped artists such as Walter Sickert and Fernand Léger transport their works out of the country to avoid their being confiscated. He escaped the German occupation of France in late 1940, through Portugal. After the war, he returned to France in 1948 and painted more landscapes, most notably of Montagne Sainte-Victoire. Dabo died in Manhattan, New York, on 7 November 1960 at the age of 96. Link to Wikipedia biography