DRAKE
Canadian/American Impressionist
A prominent Canadian/American theatrical designer, painter, printmaker, draftsman, and educator, William Alexander Drake was born in Toronto, and died in Bergenfield, NJ. Drake worked in the early motion picture business in NJ, taught at Yale, exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, he was a scenic artist for live theater in NYC for over 60 years, and was an art director for NBC TV. He created scenery for some of the most famous Broadway plays and his paintings, prints and drawings are in several museum collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Canada.
His mediums included oils, watercolors, graphite, etching, lithograph, and dry point. Subjects included figures, landscapes, still life, rural scenes, marine scenes, street scenes, boats, buildings. Locations included France, Belgium, NJ, Mass, NY and Ontario; and, most likely Roche's Point on Lake Simcoe north of Toronto where he had a summer home for years. His styles are Impressionism, Naturalism, Post Impressionism and Realism. During his Toronto years he also designed scenery at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. After a discussion with Tom Thomson, Drake realized opportunities were better for an artist in the US and in 1914 he left Toronto for NY and NJ where he painted sets for the NY Opera Company (1914-15) and worked in the motion picture business in NJ (1915-17). In 1918 he returned to what was now the Ontario College of Art to finish his studies. He graduated from the OCA in 1918.
Drake moved back to the U.S in 1920, became a member of the United Scenic Arts Union in NY, and began working there as an art director and scenic designer for Broadway plays and later for the NBC (from 1953) where he was a “staff scenic artist”. He was also an art lecturer at Yale School of Drama, Yale University (1951-65) and a visiting critic in design there (1965-66). He retired from painting sets and backdrops for Broadway shows and TV productions in 1975, a job, which his NY Times obit said he had been doing since 1914.
He was a member of the Architectural League of NY; the United Scenic Arts Union, NYC; National Society of Mural Painters (NYC); and the Arts & Letters Club, Toronto. Drake exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Ontario Society of Artists, the Art Assoc. of Montreal; the NJ State Annual Exhibition, at the Montclair Art Museum; the Laguna Beach Art Association; the Salons of America; and at the Library of Congress. His works were also shown at the “British Empire Exhibition” in London, (1924); the Venice Biennale (1940); and at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Ontario in an exhibit “Industrial Strength” His life & work was the subject of the 1992 exhibit “The Man Who Got Away” at the McLaughlin Gallery.