Blum was born in
Cincinnati, Ohio. He was employed for a time in a
lithographic shop. He studied at the
McMicken Art School of Design in Cincinnati and at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in
Philadelphia, but he was practically self-taught, and early on showed great and original talent. He settled in
New York City in 1879, doing his first work there for
Charles Scribner's Sons, and the next year travelled to
Venice, where he executed pen drawings and
watercolours. After 1880, he made many annual trips to Europe. He returned to Venice in 1881 and in 1882 he visited
Toledo and
Madrid. In 1884 he visited the
Netherlands. He visited Japan in 1890 and spent three years there; he had been interested in that country and its art for many years. His first published sketches of
Japanese
jugglers appeared in the
St. Nicholas Magazine. His most important work is a large
frieze in the
Mendelssohn Music Hall,
New York,
Music and the Dance (1895). His pen-and-ink work for the
Century Magazine attracted wide attention, as did his illustrations for
Sir Edwin Arnold's Japonica.
A Daughter of Japan, drawn by Blum and
William Jacob Baer, was the cover of ''
Scribner's Magazine for May 1893, and was one of the earliest pieces of color printing for an American magazine. His Artist's Letters from Japan
also appeared in an 1893 edition of Scribner's''. He was an admirer of
Mariano Fortuny, whose methods somewhat influenced his work. Blum's Venetian pictures, such as
A Bright Day at Venice (1882), had lively charm and beauty. His oil painting
The Venetian Beadstringers (1889) was a popular work, which, when shown at the
National Academy of Design, resulted in him being elected an Associate. In 1893 he exhibited
The Ameya at the Academy and was elected a full member based on that canvas. Blum's chief patron,
Alfred Corning Clark, heir to the
Singer Sewing Machine fortune, commissioned twin canvasses, 50 feet long and 12 feet high, for the proscenium of Mendelssohn Hall in downtown New York, which he had constructed to house the famous
Mendelssohn Glee Club. The first of these, finished in 1895, was entitled
Music and the Dance (originally
Moods of Music) and is considered Blum’s most important work. The other,
The Feast of Bacchus, was modeled on a painting of the same title that Blum had sent to Clark as a gift in 1888, but was not completed until after Clark's death in 1896. These works went missing when the Hall was demolished in 1912, but were later found in the vaults of the Brooklyn Museum, which put them on temporary display for the 100th anniversary of the Glee Club in 1966. Robert Frederick Blum died of
pneumonia at his home at 90 Grove Street,
New York City on 8 June 1903. ==Gallery==