J. REDDING KELLY (August 5, 1870 – December 8, 1939)
A.K.A. “John J. Kelly,” “Redding Kelly”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: There has been incredible confusion about this artist, and this biographywill correct the confusion. “J. Redding Kelly” and the artist known as “Julia Kelly” are NOT the same person, they are two different people, one a man and one a woman.

Artist, Portrait and Landscape Painter, Professor. Born as “John J. Kelly” in New York City to an Irish immigrant father, in 1890 he officially changed his name to “J. Redding Kelly.” This was likely done to hide his Irish ancestry and provide a more aristocratic air and elegant sounding name for his chosen profession. While alternative birth years of 1868 and 1873 have been reported, 1870 appears to be the correct year of his birth.

In his youth, Kelly studied and under studied respected public-school administrator and principal, Theo B. Barringer, whose former students were known as the “Barringer Boys.” In the early 1890s Kelly was accepted into the school of the National Academy of Design in New York City. There in 1896 he received an honorable mention in the Suydam Awards, for his work done in the Painting from the Nude in the Life School. At that year’s student exhibition, he was singled out among others, by The New York Times: “The work of these young men and women, and notably of that of the brothers Bierhals, and F. C. Stahr, in landscape, and of J. Redding Kelly, in portraiture, could be studied to advantage by some Academicians who might be named.” The following year (1897) he won the National Academy’s Cannon School Prize in the Painting from the Nude category.

Kelly began exhibiting at the Salmagundi Club in 1900, where his view of the iron works at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania garnered significant attention, and where he exhibited routinely for the remainder of his life. A year later, in 1901, he was employed by the National Academy of Design to teach the summer sketch class “for study in the open air.” That same year he secured a prestigious commission to paint a portrait of the newly installed President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. This portrait was exhibited that autumn at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Additional important portrait commissions soon came his way, including that of the President of Columbia University, Robert R. Livingston (1906). He also painted several other members of the Livingston clan and Columbia University Professors A. D. F. Hamlin (1907) and Laura Drake Gill (1907). He also painted a portrait of Edward Morse Shepard (1912), a former Chairman of the Board of the College of the City of New York.

Around 1912-13, Kelly traveled to Europe, possibly to study art, though it remains unclear if that was his true purpose. He returned to New York City from Liverpool, Great Britain, aboard the steamship Celtic, in September of 1913. This is the only record yet discovered that documents his full birth date of August 5, 1870 and reports his address as 217 W. 125th Street in Manhattan. Later he resided in a penthouse studio located in Manhattan at 55 W. 95th Street.

Kelly began teaching in the city colleges of New York in about 1904, and by 1918 was made an Assistant Professor at the College of the City of New York, where he instructed the summer sketch classes in 1918 and 1919. He would later join the staff of Brooklyn College, which “superseded the former junior college branches of City College and Hunter College in Brooklyn,” where he would eventually become Chairman of the Art Department.

In 1926 he painted a noted portrait of Abraham Lincoln, which was to become part of the Brooklyn College Hall of Fame. There appears to have been at least three versions of the Lincoln portrait created. The first was presented to Brooklyn College in 1927; a second was installed in the lobby of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City when it opened in 1928; and a third and final version was later acquired by A. D. Whiteside, president of Dunn and Bradstreet, Inc. It was illustrated in Whiteside’s book, The Flag of Destiny (1937). The portrait was also issued as its own lithograph, complete in 1930 with a Lincoln facsimile signature by the New York Graphic Society.

As a leading staff member of Brooklyn College, Kelly worked on and oversaw a number of projects during his tenure, including the design of the school’s official seal between 1930 and 1931. He was also selected to paint a portrait for the College of its Dean, Mario E. Consenza, in 1934. In September of 1938 Kelly officially retired from his post as Chairman of Brooklyn College’s Art Department after thirty-four years in the city college system. Th next month, Kelly was photographed for and featured in a major article in the New York Daily News, which among other things, noted:

“Kelly was an established portrait painter when he turned to teaching. He was offered the City College post. Accepting, he planned to divide his energies between teaching and painting… ‘But each year at college took up more of my time,’ he said… For the last fifteen years he has done practically no painting. He’s making up for that now in his new found leisure. Portraiture, marines and landscapes in oil are his big interest. He may yet send canvases for exhibition at the National Academy of Design, where he studied in his youth.”

J. Redding Kelly died in Manhattan, Friday, the 8th of December 1939 at the age of sixty-nine years. His service was organized on December 11th from Holy Name Church at 96th Street, though it is unclear exactly where he was interred. He was a bachelor and never married, and among his immediate heirs were a friend, Mrs. Glen E. Balch, and his niece, Jane McGary, both whom received legacies from his estate.

Kelly was a prominent teacher in New York’s art schools, and among his students was the landscape painter, Hyman Goldstein (b. 1915). As previously noted, Kelly painted portraits, seascapes and landscapes, though he focused on portraiture during his early career. His landscape works, and specifically those shown at the Salmagundi Club, reveal a broad imagery depicting the New York City region including Harlem, Staten Island, etc., as well as other locations in the United States, including Eastport Maine, Bass Rock Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, including Allentown, Bethlehem and Yorktown; and St. Catherine, Vermont.

However, in the early 1900s, confusion arose among viewers of paintings by J. Redding Kelly and Julia Kelly, as at exhibitions they both submitted scenes of Great Neck, New York, and both used the signature of J. Redding Kelly.

During the late 1930s J. Redding Kelly served as the President of the Artist’s Mutual Aid Society, later known as the Artists' Fellowship, Inc., and also served as Assistant Treasurer of The Allied Artists of America. Confusion continued asas they both signed their work J. Redding Kelly and both painted scenes of Great Neck, New York. One of J.Redding Kelly's painting depicted a scene at Great Neck, Long Island, New York, and it was exhibited in 1905 at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Finally, John J. Kelly took the legal name of J. Redding Kelly, and Julia Kelly singed as Julia Kelly.
Though there are undoubtedly other exhibitions in which John J. Kelly participated, those presently known include the following: Students of the National Academy Exhibition, New York, NY, 1896; The Country Sketch Club Exhibition, Brooklyn NY, 1899, 1902; Salmagundi Club, New York, NY, 1900-10, 1914-15, 1917-20, 1933-39; Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, NY, 1901; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 1905-06; The Columbia Portraits Exhibition at the Century Club, New York, NY, 1908; The Home Galleries Exhibition, Leonia, NJ, 1929; Brooklyn College Development Exhibit at Abraham & Straus, Brooklyn, NY, 1936.

Kelly’s works are known to be in the following public collections: Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY; College of the City of New York, New York, NY; Columbia University, New York, NY. A number of his works reside in private collections throughout the United States.