Joseph E. Frederic

Joseph E. Frederic (1916-2005) was a 20th-century American painter, and illustrator whose work is best known for its depiction of life in U.S. post-World War II society.
Life and work
Frederic was born in New York City, son of a green grocer. His family soon moved to Rochester, NY, where by his teenage years he would take up sketching as a self-taught artist, and later taking art classes at Rochester Institute of Technology (originally called Mechanics Institute) and Chicago Art Institute. At age 19, he was hired for his first art-related job retouching photographs at the Eastman Kodak Company's headquarters in Rochester.
During World War II, Frederic's talents were utilized as an illustrator for military-based technical operations manuals. The post-war boom in magazines and other publications led to him taking on varied illustration work, with his ability to work in a variety of highly detailed styles setting him apart from his peers.
In 1968, minor league baseball team the Rochester Red Wings commissioned Frederic to create a painting of Silver Stadium to honor general manager Morrie Silver's achievements for baseball in Rochester. Frederic presented the painting to Silver, accompanied by the Commissioner of Baseball, and his watercolor rendition of the stadium still shows on the current website of Rochester Community Baseball.
In the early 1990s, Alling and Cory paper company published a 24" x 36" full color calendar that featured many of Frederic's paintings depicting life in downtown Rochester, New York in the 1950s.
Since he passed in 2005, Frederic's paintings have been collected, auctioned, and sold for prices in the thousands, such as No Cars, a watercolor portraying a winter scene in downtown Rochester.

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