Ivan Swift

Although born just outside of Detroit in 1873, Swift was raised near Harbor Springs, where he received his first art instruction from traveling Boston artist, C.W. Sanderson. Swift later attended the Art Institute of Chicago for three years and also studied with William Merritt Chase and Leonard Ochtman. For a time he conducted drawing classes in New York City before returning to Detroit in 1902. Swift then divided his time between his studio on Adams Avenue and his summer home in Chippewa Cove near Harbor Springs. Although he painted city scenes, it was for his misty, impressionistic landscapes, inspired by the northern Michigan woods and lake country that Swift became known. He was one of the first Detroit artists to experiment with photography as an art form. With the publication of Fagots of Cedar (Chicago, Tomorrow Press, 1907) he began a career as a poet. Often called the "poet laureate" of Michigan, he published several more volumes, including The Blue Crane and Shore Signs (New York, J.T. White & Co., 1918) and Green Bench Writs and Opinions (Harbor Springs, Privately Printed, 1929). During the Depression Swift gained considerable notoriety for his caustic, almost daily letters to the editors of various Detroit newspapers. In these, he railed against government "handouts" (he refused to take part in the Deferral Art Project), castigated the authorities for their neglect of the veterans of the Spanish American War, and advocated that all writers, artists, and architects should be exempt from taxes.