Donald Mattison
American artist (1905-1975)
Donald Magnus Mattison (April 24, 1905 – July 28, 1975) was an American artist born in Beloit, Wisconsin. His father, Magnus Wilhelm Mattison, invented machine tools, and his mother, Florence May Knickerbocker Mattison, taught school. Mattison also had two sisters, Dorothy M. Spaugh and Ruth M. Eaton. He spent his early youth in Wisconsin, but the family relocated to Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1920.
Education
Mattison attended Yale University, where he excelled as a draftsman and painter, and took an interest in boxing. After completing the usual five-year program in only four years, Mattison graduated marshal of his class with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Personal life
Mattison moved to Chicago in 1927 to work as an assistant for respected American muralist Eugene Savage. Mattison went on to produce notable murals and easel paintings of figures and landscape subjects, but turned to portraiture later in his career. In 1928 Mattison won the Prix de Rome, a scholarship for art students that provided the opportunity to study overseas. Because the Prix de Rome was only offered to single students due to funding restrictions, he and Catherine Lucille Morrison waited until July 17, 1928, after Mattison had already won the prize, to be married.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Donald Mattison” is american artist (1905-1975). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Donald, Mattison and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5294815. VIAF identifies the subject as 89697254. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1975, 1920 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Donald Mattison” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.