Born in South Carolina, but raised in a number of southern communities including Charlotte, North Carolina, Eugene Thomason studied at the Art Students League in New York City under George Bridgman, Frank DuMond and John Sloan, and at the Grand Central School with Wayman Adams. During his second year at the League, Thomason was befriended by George Luks, who invited the younger painter to join him in the operation of a school for advanced students. For the next decade, the two artists lived together intermittently, shared a studio, and jointly administered the school. Thomason was fascinated with the unconventional lifestyle of Luks and his circle, and some of his paintings depict their activities. In one of the most amusing, "Aunt Emma with Baby", Luks, clad in female attire, gazes tenderly at a baby perched on his lap. In the late 1920s, inspired by the example of Robert Henri, Thomason spent four months painting fishermen and waifs in Ireland. In the early 1930s, he returned to North Carolina. Following a period of time in Charlotte, he married a musician and built a house in the Appalachian region near Lake James. There Thomason formulated the concept "Hankins," a composite family representing his perceptions of characteristics of the mountain people. In the 1940s he settled near the village of Nebo, and devoted his last thirty years to painting the local landscape and to executing the portraits of the Appalachians. Dubbed "The Ashcan Artist of Appalachia", Thomason’s post-New York pictures share stylistic similarities with the contemporaneous works of Thomas Hart Benton, the leading interpreter of rural America.
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Born and raised in rural North Carolina, Francis Speight began his formal art education in 1920 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., but after one term he was drawn by the landscapes of Daniel Garber to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Thereafter he remained at the Academy–first as a student, then as a teacher–for more than forty years. For most of this time, Speight’s major subject was Manayunk, an industrial area above the Schuylkill River on the edge of Philadelphia. The hills, the light, and the architecture were endlessly fascinating to the artist, and he returned again and again to paint the same subject, often the same viewpoint, in all kinds of weather and at various times of day. In 1961 Speight returned to his native state to accept a position as artist-in-residence at East Carolina University in Greenville. His work took on a new character, composed at this time of simple farm subjects. The flat countryside of eastern North Carolina was especially appealing to Speight: the red earth, the red waters from the rivers during spring floods, and, in Carolina as in Philadelphia, the deserted factories. Despite the look of spontaneity,these scenes were carefully composed. About one Speight explained, "I painted the houses, then put in the sky. On the way I saw the sky I wanted about seven miles up the road and just pulled over by the side and put it in." For an appropriate foreground to a major motif, such as eroding earth, he might travel many miles. "My interest has been in painting recognizable objects," he said, "with realistic colors . . . Somewhere along the way I was made aware of eroding earth and of smoke crowding in on man’s dwelling places. But . . . eroding earth affords opportunity for grasping the drawing and molding of the earth. And the smoke may make a deep-toned background to accent the light on the houses, the fruit trees and the people themselves." The spirited brushwork that enlivens the surface many of Speight’s paintings was an important part of the artist’s style, described in the 1930s and 1940s as "romantic realism," and in the years since as "poetic realism." Quotations from Sellin, David, Francis Speight: A Retrospective. Washington, DC: Taggart, Jorgensen & Putnam, 1986.
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Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Frank Benson was a painter of impressionist seascapes and landscapes, often with figures posed by his wife and children and also numerous hunting scenes. He spent most of his life in the seaport town of Salem and loved trekking through the countryside for his subject matter, especially wildlife. He is credited with making the American sporting print a distinct art form and for being one of the outstanding 20th-century wildlife printmakers. He was a teacher in Portland, Maine at The Society of Art, and in Boston at The Museum of Fine Arts, where he and his good friend Edmund Tarbell established it as a top-notch institution.He studied art in Boston at the Museum School of Fine Arts and in 1883 in Paris with Boulanger and Lefebvre at the Academie Julian during the French Impressionism movement. By the early 1900s, he had a very successful career and was a member of the Ten American Painters, a prestigious group of early impressionists. He was a life-long hunter, and it was said that he knew birds as only a sportsman can. He worked in both etching and drypoint and was lauded for his clear design, the naturalness of his birds and hunters, and the mastery of etching techniques. In 1900, Benson discovered the pleasures of North Haven Island off the coast of Maine, and from that time, he and his family spent every summer there, even purchasing a farm where he had a studio. There his style became increasingly impressionistic.Midway through his career as a recognized oil painter, he began to paint with watercolors, perhaps inspired by Winslow Homer’s use of that medium to show hunting scenes in the Adirondacks. In 1921, Benson became a serious watercolorist while on a fishing expedition to the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec, and from that time until his death in 1951, he created nearly six-hundred watercolors. He also did an occasion still life with Oriental themes such as "Confucius" circa 1930.Credit: Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"Michael David Zellman, "300 Years of American Art"
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A landscape painter and illustrator, Frank Henry Shapleigh was born in Boston. As a young man he studied art at the Lowell Institute, but interrupted his career briefly to join the Union Army in 1863. After the Civil War Shapleigh studied in Paris (1867-69) with Emile Lambinet, whose pastoral landscape style strongly influenced his work. Settling in Jackson, New Hampshire, he painted atmospheric landscapes, favoring the White Mountains for his subject matter. In the 1880s he also illustrated books and magazines. From 1886 until his death in 1906, Shapleigh spent part of each year in his studio at the Ponce De Leon Hotel, Saint Augustine, Florida, during which time he painted many street scenes.
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Born in Kent, Ohio in 1895, Garnet Jex moved at the age of four to Washington, DC, the area he made his home until his death in 1979. He enlisted in the Army at the outbreak of World War I, beginning fifty years of public service. Upon returning from the war, Jex worked as a medical illustrator for the Army Medical Corps while attending the Corcoran School of Art and George Washington University where he earned his B.A. in 1927. He worked as art editor for Nature magazine while completing his Master’s Degree, which he earned from George Washington in 1931. Jex continued public service for the next 26 years as an artist for the U.S. Public Health Service, ending his career with the U.S. Bureau of State Services in 1962. Soon after returning from the war, Jex began a series of landscape paintings depicting the Potomac River and the C & O Canal. His work documents the people and the places of the C & O, the lockhouses, lock keepers, and the boats that floated coal from Appalachia down the river. A massive flood destroyed the canal in March of 1925, but Jex’s work survives as a visual record of the canal. Jex was an active member of the Washington, DC art scene, serving on the executive committee of the Society of Washington Artists, as president of the Arts Club of Washington, the Society of Federal Artists and Designers, and as a member of the Art League of Northern Virginia. He also served as president of the Landscape Club of Washington, DC. An expert on the Civil War, Jex devoted much of his time doing research and painting historical scenes doing also, serving as president of the Civil War Round Table after his retirement. He collaborated with photographer Dana Doten on a series of photographs titled "The Bulldozer and the Rose," which recorded the history of southwestern Washington, D.C. before it was razed for redevelopment. In 1975, four years before his death from a stroke at age 83, Jex was honored with a one-man show at the Arts Club of Washington.
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Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1885, George Biddle attended Groton Academy and was a classmate of future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1911 and then went to France to study art at the Academie Julien (1911-1912) and in other European cities. A lieutenant in World War I, he created a series of drawings and watercolors that depicted warfare on the Western Front. During the interwar years he traveled throughout the world and at one point worked in Mexico with the painter and muralist Diego Rivera. During May and June 1930 Biddle was in Charleston, South Carolina, at the invitation of George and Ira Gershwin to prepare sketches for their opera "Porgy and Bess". He created an extensive portfolio of watercolors and pen and ink drawings of Charleston street scenes, some of which he used as studies for major paintings "The Negro Masons" and "The Wreckers". Muralist, printmaker, sculptor, illustrator, and painter, Biddle was active in the Federal Artists Project and the American Artists’ Congress. During World War II he was chairman of the United States War Department Art Commission. He also wrote and illustrated autobiographical works and a book of art criticism, "The Yes and No of Contemporary Art" (1957).
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Born in Maryland, George Cooke taught himself to paint after trying his hand at various endeavors, including land speculation. After a five-year period studying Old Master paintings in Europe, he returned to America and took up the life of an itinerant portraitist. He also painted historical subjects and landscapes, only a few of which are extant today. Most of Cooke’s travels were in the South. Although he visited the mineral springs of western Virginia on several occasions, this is his only painting of one of its famous resorts. Employing techniques from the French landscape painter Claude Lorrain, Cooke composed a scene that is both masterful and poetic. He was also concerned that the viewer accept its topographical accuracy and therefore included himself at an easel in the foreground, his attention directed to the dormitory rows that are still lit by sunlight. The classical temple that covers the springs, at the left, was designed by the notable Philadelphia architect, William Strickland.
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The son of a blacksmith, George Hand Wright, N.A. always retained a sympathy for rustic subjects and working people in his illustrations for "Century", "Scribner’s", "Harper’s", "The Saturday Evening Post" and other publications. He researched his pictorial material as a reporter, filling innumerable sketchbooks and making his finished illustrations from these on-the-spot drawings. In fact, many of his sketches were reproduced directly in the magazines as reportorial coverage for accompanying articles. He made no distinction in approach between these commissioned illustrations and the fine arts prints, etchings or pastels to which he restricted himself in his later years. Wright studied at the Spring Garden Institute and the Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He was a member and past president of the Society of Illustrators, the Westport Artists, and the Salmagundi Club, also a member of the Dutch Treat Club and the Society of American Etchers.
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An appetite for adventure inspired Andrews’ work as an artist-correspondent. In 1837, he accompanied Richard W. H. Howard-Vyse on an archaeological expedition to Egypt, where he served as an engineer and illustrator for Howard-Vyse’s three-volume Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh (London, 1840-42). In the autumn of 1860, Andrews accompanied the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, on an extensive tour of the United States and Canada. As the excursion’s official artist, he produced numerous sketches for the Illustrated London News. Some of his most famous works are those depicting Niagara Falls and the harbors of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Portland, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts. The prince and his entourage traveled as far South as Richmond, Virginia. When the travelers returned to England in October 1860, Andrews either remained behind in the United States or returned after a brief visit to London, for he was back at work by early 1861 in the American South and West. He covered early campaigns of the American Civil War, but by the end of that year had moved on to Canada. He was at home in England by mid-1862 and later traveled to France to record the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).
It is likely that Andrews painted Prawn Fishing, which depicts several groups of African American fishermen casting nets to harvest prawns or shrimp, during his extended or second visit. While the featured boats are traditional Southern tide craft, the nets employed are distinctive hoop nets, not the familiar lead-line cast nets traditionally used along the Southern coast.
Born in Lambeth, England, George Henry Andrews was educated as an engineer. The source of his artistic training is unknown, but by 1840 he was an active book illustrator and by 1847 was listed as a member of the art staff of the Illustrated London News. It was through his work on this newspaper—as well as other periodicals such as The Graphic—that Andrews’ career as an illustrator was established. A distinguished watercolorist as well, Andrews was a member of the Old Water Colour Society, exhibiting there from 1840 to 1850 and with the Royal Academy from 1850 to 1893.
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The painter and teacher George W. Chambers was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1857. Little is known of his life until 1880 when he entered the Paris studio of Jean Léon Gérôme, the French classicist. He remained in Paris until 1884, studying with Gérôme and also with Julien Dupré, whose Barbizon style influenced his early work. Chambers exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1883 until 1885, though by 1885 he was associated with the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, and may have been teaching there. He subsequently moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and took a position at the Watkins Institute, founded in 1885 and still active as a school of art and design. In the late 1890s he joined the staff of the Nashville School of Art.
Chamber’s landscapes of rural Tennessee were informed by the French Barbizon tradition, but some of his work reflects an aesthetic developed after his training in Paris. The Four Seasons is typical of this development in its frieze-like arrangement, decorative coloration, and allegorical subject. The women are personifications of the four seasons, but they also evoke the stages of life from youth to old age, the latter represented by the black shrouded figure at the right.
Integral to this work is the frame that surrounds it. Each image is painted on canvas, mounted on panel, and the four panels are incorporated into a whole by the use of a simply carved frame. Chambers’ interest in decoration suggests an alliance with the Arts and Crafts movement, which surfaced in America in the late nineteenth century and promoted the unification of fine arts and crafts. Chambers produced at least one other seasonal decoration, four vertical panels of birds on branches, in low relief and subdued colors, painted in 1900. (NRS)
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