Boss studied with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri in the New York (Chase) School of Art and learned the principles of anatomy from Thomas Anschutz who would come to New York from the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts to present classes. As part of “The Fifteen”, a group of Henri’s students including Edward Hopper and George Bellows who rebelled against the National Academy’s strictures, Boss was instrumental in organizing exhibitions of their work. His paintings were also included in the First and Second Independent Shows in 1910 and 1911.

Henri opened the Henri School of Art in 1909 and when he left for Europe in 1910, he turned its management and instruction over to Boss. When Henri returned, they disagreed over Henri’s insistence that all students use the Maratta palette, and Boss renamed the school the Independent School, continuing as its owner and master teacher. In 1916, he was one of the founders of the Society of Independent Artists which annually presented huge unjuried exhibitions, thus allowing viewers to form their own perceptions of art. From 1922-1941, Boss taught anatomy and other classes at the Art Students League and also at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (Parsons School of Design) and the New York School of Applied Design for Women. His lectures on anatomy were much sought after because of his technique of building muscles of plasticine on a full human skeleton with a nude model demonstrating the muscular actions.

Beginning in 1925, Boss went regularly to New Mexico. The Indians of the San Juan Pueblo became his friends and subjects; his portraits imbue them with great dignity. Not content to paint from the roadside, he would ride his horse deep into Indian country and thus preserved remote landscapes in their unspoiled, awesome beauty. Howard Devree, in a review of these paintings for the New York Times, 19 February 1933, wrote that Boss “has succeeded in presenting some of the amazing desert formations, and has produced cloud effects, counters of rock and brilliance of color calculated to cause the dwellers among artificial canyons of steel and stone to raise both eyebrows.”

In 1933, Boss and his wife settled permanently on their ranch in Santa Cruz, New Mexico, where he continued to paint until 1946. When he died of emphysema in 1956, the Museum of New Mexico mounted a retrospective of 39 of his paintings with many of them later traveling to several cities in the state. Among Boss’s notable pupils were A. S. Baylinson, Cecil Bell, Morris Kantor, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Anita Malfatti and Reginald Marsh. His works are in numerous museums including the Chazen (formerly Elvehjem)

Museum of Art, Madison, WI; the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; and the Museum of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.

Source: From the catalog called Homer Boss: The Figure and the Land

The catalog includes: Homer Boss: An Independent Artist which is an essay written by Susan S. Udell, Ph.D.