John Koch

Born in Toledo, Ohio, American realist painter John Koch was largely self-taught, though he attended two summers at the artists' colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he was influenced by Charles Hawthorne, who also taught at the Wilmington Art Academy in 1930. After high school, Koch moved to Paris for four years where he visited museums and painted, but did not take instruction. Koch painted his immediate surroundings. Artists, models, and musicians populate his paintings, which are often set in elegant Manhattan apartments (including his own) and at his summer home in Wilmington, Vermont.