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Guillaumin belonged to the first group of revolutionary French painters and he exhibited with them in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés as one of the Naturalistes. He rarely resembled other artists and was quickly recognized as an innovator and leader in his day. Contrary to widespread opinion, he contributed an elaborate amount of original ideas to the new movement.
 
Parisian-born, Guillaumin was the son of a tailor whose shop on the Rue de Rivoli specialized in hunting costumes for the haute monde. He was sent outside of Paris for his education, to the town of Moulin, where he developed his a love for the landscape and the mountainous regions on the borders of the Massif Central. It was here he began his study of art. His first teacher was an old artist from the region of the Bourbonnais, named Tudot. From the time of his youth Guillaumin devoted all of his spare time to painting. So dedicated was this young artist, that he dug ditches in the middle of the night so he could attend studio classes and paint by day.
 
In 1891, Guillaumin had the luck to win in France what is called the two Gros Lots. These were lotteries, from which he received 100,000 gold francs. This source of income liberated him from the anxiety of having to sell his paintings through galleries. Instead he traveled frequently, mainly to the South of France in the Creuse, at Crozant, but also to Brittany, where he painted many of his works.
 
This “ill-omened” good fortune of lottery winnings did not help Guillaumin very much from an art historical aspect. After the artist’s death, much of his work was found amongst his friends. The galleries in France never had enough works in their hands to properly promote Guillaumin, which would have been necessary to make him better known within the world of art. He was one of the most important painters of the Impressionist Group of that time, but perhaps one of the least well known. Today, however, his art is widely appreciated for its superb quality, and he in recognized as one of the prominent artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. 
George Benjamin Luks was born on August 13, 1867 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. At a very early age, his parents recognized his artistic talent, and they encouraged him to pursue his interests in becoming an artist. George Luks enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under Thomas Anshutz. He studied abroad in Duseldorf, Paris and London and returned to the United States in 1894. It was in this year that Luks settled in Philadelphia and began work as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Press and Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 
 
The beginning of the 20th century was a time of mass expansion of the United States. Cities were rapidly expanding with new factories and buildings, and they were being filled by the growing population of immigrants and factory workers. The metropolises of Philadelphia and New York became centers for culture of all types, and important artists flocked there to capture the evolving energy and diversity. Among these artists was George Benjamin Luks. His staff positions as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Press and Philadelphia Evening Bulletin placed him in contact with many of the artists that would go on to form the group known as “The Eight”. Gradually, George Benjamin Luks and the other artists moved to New York City, where many of them continued to work as illustrators. Luks took a position at the New York World and The Verdict and shared living accommodations with William Glackens. The eccentric and bizarre behavior of Luks attracted many interesting characters, including the homeless people that lived in his neighborhood. Luks made friends with these people and often used them as subjects for his paintings. The stark realism that embodied Luk’s canvasses earned him great recognition and a place among the other “Ash Can” artists. 
 
In 1908 George Luks exhibited together with seven other artists, lead by Robert Henri, at Macbeth’s Gallery in an attempt to free themselves of the teachings of the National Academy. This exhibition earned them the title of “The Eight”, and was composed of artists George Luks, John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Robert Henri (“The Philadelphia Five”), Maurice Prendergast, Arthur B. Davies and Ernest Lawson. 
   
Associations
Boston Art Club
Eight (The Eight)
National Arts Club
New York Watercolor Society
Portrait Society of America
Society of Independent Artists
Whitney Studio Club
 
Museums
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Albright-Know Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona
Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh/Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Cheeckwood Museum of Art & Botanical Garden, Nashville, Tennessee
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
De Young Museum, San Francisco, California
Delaware Art Museum, San Francisco, California
Edwin a Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas
El Paso Museum of Art, Texas
Everson Musuem of Art, Syracuse, New York
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina
Heckscher Museum, New York
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Jack S Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida
Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts
Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Michael C Carlos Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, Minnesota
Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York
Museum of Art at Brigham Young, Utah
Museum of Art, For Lauderdale, Florida
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts – St. Petersburg, Florida
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York
New Orleans Museum of Art
New York University Collection
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania
Rhode Island School of Design – Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island
Richmond Art Museum, Indiana
Robert Hull Fleming Museum, Burlington, Vermont
San Diego Museum of Art, California
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska
Sheldon Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio
Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia
The Arkansas Art Center
The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, New York
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
The Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
The Columbus Museum, Georgia
The Dayton Art Institute, Ohio
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
The Newark Museum, New Jersey
The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
The Philips Collection, Washington, DC
The Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri
The Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio
The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Michigan
The Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland
Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut
Wetservelt-Warner Museum of American Art, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America (Alexander Wilson has that distinction), but for half a century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist. His seminal Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured.

Although Audubon had no role in the organization that bears his name, there is a connection: George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Audubon, John James’s widow. Knowing Audubon’s reputation, Grinnell chose his name as the inspiration for the organization’s earliest work to protect birds and their habitats. Today, the name Audubon remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over.

Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his French mistress. Early on, he was raised by his stepmother, Mrs. Audubon, in Nantes, France, and took a lively interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music. In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent to America, in part to escape conscription into the Emperor Napoleon’s army. He lived on the family-owned estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where he hunted, studied and drew birds, and met his wife, Lucy Bakewell. While there, he conducted the first known bird-banding experiment in North America, tying strings around the legs of Eastern Phoebes; he learned that the birds returned to the very same nesting sites each year.

Audubon spent more than a decade in business, eventually traveling down the Ohio River to western Kentucky – then the frontier – and setting up a dry-goods store in Henderson. He continued to draw birds as a hobby, amassing an impressive portfolio. While in Kentucky, Lucy gave birth to two sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, as well as a daughter who died in infancy. Audubon was quite successful in business for a while, but hard times hit, and in 1819 he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy.

With no other prospects, Audubon set off on his epic quest to depict America’s avifauna, with nothing but his gun, artist’s materials, and a young assistant. Floating down the Mississippi, he lived a rugged hand-to-mouth existence in the South while Lucy earned money as a tutor to wealthy plantation families. In 1826 he sailed with his partly finished collection to England. "The American Woodsman" was literally an overnight success. His life-size, highly dramatic bird portraits, along with his embellished descriptions of wilderness life, hit just the right note at the height of the Continent’s Romantic era. Audubon found a printer for the Birds of America, first in Edinburgh, then London, and later collaborated with the Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray on the Ornithological Biographies – life histories of each of the species in the work.

The last print was issued in 1838, by which time Audubon had achieved fame and a modest degree of comfort, traveled this country several more times in search of birds, and settled in New York City. He made one more trip out West in 1843, the basis for his final work of mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was largely completed by his sons and the text of which was written by his long-time friend, the Lutheran pastor John Bachman (whose daughters married Audubon’s sons). Audubon spent his last years in senility and died at age 65. He is buried in the Trinity Cemetery at 155th Street and Broadway in New York City.

Audubon’s story is one of triumph over adversity; his accomplishment is destined for the ages. He encapsulates the spirit of young America, when the wilderness was limitless and beguiling. He was a person of legendary strength and endurance as well as a keen observer of birds and nature. Like his peers, he was an avid hunter, and he also had a deep appreciation and concern for conservation; in his later writings he sounded the alarm about destruction of birds and habitats. It is fitting that today we carry his name and legacy into the future.

-From the National Audobon Society, http://www.audubon.org/nas/jja.html

George Herbert McCord is recognized for his ability to accurately reproduce atmospheric qualities in his paintings, especially brilliant sunsets whether it was over water or land. Just as Jervis McEntee was called a painter of twilight, McCord seemed to be drawn to this time of day and to capturing golden sunsets that are offset by darkening foregrounds. He travelled extensively throughout New England, Florida, the Upper Mississippi, Mexico and Canada and was among the select few artists that were invited by the Santa Fe Railroad company to create paintings of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  

George Herbert McCord was born in New York City on August 1, 1848. He became a student of Samuel F.B. Morse and James Fairman at the age of eighteen and began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in 1868. After gaining widespread recognition in 1870 through an exhibition in New York City, George McCord received a commission from Andrew Carnegie to paint the surroundings of his castle in Cluny, Scotland. He became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1880. Boats at Twilight is signed A.N.A so it was clearly painted sometime after 1880.
 
 
Exhibitions
Art Institute of Chicago
Boston Art Club
Brooklyn Art Association
Lotos Club
Mechanics Institute Fair, Boston 1883 (medal winner)
National Academy of Design
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
St. Louis Exposition, World’s Fair 1904
World’s Cotton Exposition, New Orleans 1884 (medal winner)
 
Associations
American Watercolor Society
Brooklyn Art Association
Lotos Club
National Academy of Design
Salmagundi Club
Society of American Artists 
 
Collections & Museums
Haussner Collection, Baltimore, Maryland
Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
New York Historical Society
The Brooklyn Museum of Art,
The Hickory Museum of Art, North Carolina
The Hudson River Museum
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland
Jacobsen is considered to have been the most prolific and the most well known painter of ships in Europe or America. Ship painting or ship portraiture holds a unique position in the history of canvas art. They were decorative as well as practical. The clients of such pictures were most often shipmasters or their owners whose first concerns were the accuracy and beauty of representation. They could hang in the captains quarters or in the offices of shipyards to bolster the prowess of the company. Because of the greater significance and presence of shipping and the maritime industry for travel, commerce and the military in the late nineteenth century, their appearance for the public and for clients in paintings served an important role in representation and public relations. No other artist was as central in this role as Jacobsen.

The artist came to New York from Denmark in 1871 and after abandoning a career in music soon found work in ship drawing after he was seen sketching around the docks of New York City. His childhood fascination with boats and sailing soon turned into a lucrative career that lasted almost fifty years. The number of boats and ships in harbors such as New York is almost inconceivable; there was no shortage of captains and shipmasters that wanted a picture of their ships. Jacobsen learned to master his craft with efficiency and dexterity like few artists ever could. 3,000 of his paintings are listed in official records of the time and as many as 6,000 are believed to have been painted in his lifetime. His paintings today now hang in nearly every major marine exhibit in America ands Europe.

Collections:
The Mariner’s Museum, Virginia
Bulter Institute of American Art
Farnsworth Art Museum
Museum of the City of New York
New Jersey State Museum
New York Historical Society
Ohio Historical Society
Peabody Essex Museum
Penobscot Marine Museum
Shelburne Museum, Vermont
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Columbus Museum of Art-Ohio
The Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport
The Museum of Arts and Sciences
The Newark Museum

The White House

Ventura County Maritime Museum

Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art

In the late nineteenth century Nancy emerged from beneath the shadow of Paris to establish itself as the second artistic center of France. One of the Nancéienne artists was Émile Friant, who began his artistic career at an extremely young age and rose to prominence with his version of naturalism which later manifested into a latent symbolism. It was noted that Friant “appears to have the sincerity at least as much as the ability to be a major artist, and we have confidence that he will remain faithful to art in a time when wealthy manufacturers have invaded the temple, giving young people the fatal example of rapid fortunes and superficial studies…” (quoted in L’École de Nancy : Peinture et Art Nouveau, ex. cat., Paris : Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999, pg. 130) Friant’s public acceptance would reach impressive levels, but despite consistent acclaim, he sought new methods of representation and various uses of media while promoting his work outside the Salon system.  
 
Émile Friant was born April 16th, 1863 in Dieuze, a small city in eastern France near Nancy. His father worked at a locksmith’s shop while his mother was from a peasant family and from fourteen years of age had work as a dressmaker – certainly modest beginnings for an artist who would attain such prestige. As a young boy, Friant was sent to live with a wealthy client of his mother’s, Madame Parisot. After the Franco-Prussian war and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine by Germany in 1871, the two fled to Nancy which was still part of France. This was an important move for Friant as Nancy and the École de Nancy would become a key artistic center of production during the Art Nouveau period. Friant attended the École de l’Est, where he began drawing courses and quickly showed his adeptness at drawing. Unfortunately, Madame Parisot hoped that he would pursue a career as a chemist, such as her late husband, and enrolled him in the school at Nancy where he learned Latin. But, Friant’s artistic faculties were already recognized and he enrolled in the École de dessin et de peinture de Nancy, becoming the favorite student of the director Louis-Théodore Devilly, an accomplished artist who studied under Eugene Delacroix. Devilly was sure to orient each student towards his individual goal, which was, for Friant, to concentrate purely on painting. Under Devilly’s tutelage, Friant painted studies of still life, landscapes, and afterward portraits which he sold for thirty francs apiece. Doing poorly at his lessons outside of art class, Friant convinced his father to allow him to focus on his artwork while attending special individual lessons for his schooling. In just a short period of time, Friant would begin exhibiting at the local Salon.
 
He was just fifteen years of age when he first exhibited at the Salon des Amis des Arts in Nancy and was referred to as “le petit Friant,” or the “little Friant”. That the organization permitted the entrance of a fifteen year old, exhibiting alongside established artists, attests to his immense talent. This exhibit created a demand for his work and he had continued success for the next year, until the city of Nancy granted him a scholarship which allowed him to relocate to Paris. He was sixteen and a half years of age, leaving his home and embarking on a journey alone. In the autumn of 1879, he settled in an apartment on the rue Notre Dame des Champs and entered the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel, a well-established academic painter.   
 
During his first year in Paris, he met up with three other artists, Aimé Morot, Victor Prouvé, and Jules Bastien-Lepage, also from the Lorraine region. The artists formed a strong friendship and Morot, the older and more well-established artist of the group, encouraged Friant to end his academic training and complete his first two paintings, Intérieur d’Atelier (Interior of the Studio), and L’Enfant Prodigue (The Prodigal Son), which would later be accepted into the 1882 Salon. Despite having met other Alsatians in Paris, the young artist grew tired of the monotonous discipline of Cabanel’s atelier and returned to Nancy.
 
The seduction of Paris was too much for the young artist and after a short return to his home city of Nancy, Friant returned in 1881. He re-enlisted in Cabanel’s atelier and in 1883 he entered the Prix de Rome competition, awarded every four years to a young art student for study in Italy. He submitted Œdipe Maudissant son Fils Polynice (Oedipus Cursing His son Polynice) but received only second place. Despite losing the Prix de Rome, Friant had already become a portraitist and painter very much in-demand; he was commissioned to paint portraits for the artist Georges Jeanniot, the sculptor Ernest Bussière, Madame Majorelle and, among others, the count of Isnard, M. de Meixmoron. In 1885 he exhibited a second Intérieur d’Atelier (Interior of the Studio) which earned him a second medal and also placed him hors concours, or exempt from having to submit his works for approval by the Salon jury. This came after he exhibited in just four prior Salons. At the age of 22, it was an amazing accomplishment for a young artist from Nancy.  
 
At the Salon of 1886 Friant introduced portraiture into his exhibition entries and was again handsomely rewarded, this time winning a scholarship provided by the French state which provided him the opportunity to travel. His first journey was to Holland where he studied the “little masters”, but he departed soon thereafter. His second and more important journey was to Tunisia, arriving after first passing through Rome and Naples. Of this journey Friant wrote in a letter dated to 1886 that “The sample of the Orient that I have experienced in the city of Tunis alone fills me with astonishment; it’s an entirely new world…an inexhaustible source of the picturesque.” (Arsène, Alexandre. Émile Friant : Sa Vie et son Œuvre, Paris: Braun, 1930, pg. 14)  His voyage to Tunisia was part of an increase in interest from artists who sought new experiences in far-away lands. Upon his return Friant contributed to the new interest in Orientalism, the desire to portray the richness and beauty of other countries. These Orientalist artists, including Friant, became fascinated by everything around them; the different dress, the unique architecture, the brilliant light, the way of life, and all that was different from Europe. Friant used this journey to produce several paintings including Juive Tunisienne (Jewish Tunisian Woman), Souk des Tailleurs (Souk of the Tailors), Vue des Jardins à Tunis (View of the garden at Tunis), and Port d’Alger (Port of Algiers). 
 
Upon returning to Paris he exhibited at the Salon of 1888 Réunion des Canotiers de la Meurthe (Reunion of the Meurthe Boating Party). This work had actually been completed prior to Friant’s journeys to Holland and Tunisia and explains why, after such an impressive voyage as Tunisia, he did not submit paintings inspired by this journey. The Canotiers “announced his mastery of genre painting on a large scale…This was the good life as prized by the Third Republic…when Canotiers was painted it upheld the standards of a prosperous bourgeois clientele.” (McIntosh, DeCourcy E., ‘Emile Friant: a forgotten realist of the gilded age’, The Magazine Antiques, April 1997, v151 n4, pg. 585) While he did not receive any awards for this work, it was very popular and encouraged him to begin another large-scale painting, La Toussaint (All Saint’s Day), which was awarded the grand prize at the Salon of 1889. Later that year he was also named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and exhibited ten works at the Exposition Universelle, for which he received a gold medal and another scholarship that he used to travel to Spain, Holland and Algiers. Following these accolades he “knew all the forms of glory from the citations in all of the journals” (Alexandre, Arsène, Émile Friant: Sa Vie et son Oeuvre, Paris: Braun, 1930, pg. 15).
 
This same year Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier asked him to become part of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts which would stage their own exhibitions on the Champ de Mars, separate from the annual Salon of the Société des Artistes Français. The Salons were organized so that each artist could exhibit virtually as many works as they chose, without the constraint of a jury. They were described by the critics as “more progressive than those of the Société des Artistes Français, and their opinion helped propagate the renown of Friant and others.” (Weisberg, Gabriel P., L’École de Nancy : Peinture et Art Nouveau, pg. 64)  While Friant had already become a sought after artist, taking part in this Salon aligned him with other, more progressive, artists of the period. 
 
To this point Friant had become a prolific artist in painting, drawing, and printmaking, though best known for his paintings. His portraits were widely sought after and his work was more naturalistic in terms of style. But in the mid 1890s Friant changed direction, best explained by Gabriel P. Weisberg in Peinture et Art Nouveau (pg. 64):
 
Adapting his naturalist talent to a symbolist end, he created images more susceptible to be associated with the implementation in Nancy of the politics associated with the authorities of the Third Republic, in particular the celebration of family values and the education of children. While Friant was not the inventor of this theme, his eagerness to try his hand with these themes reveals his desire to respond to the public demand for such images. Through the expositions of Salons of the Nationale, it became more and more evident that the artists associated naturalism with idealism or with symbolism in a deliberate effort so that painting ceased to represent specific in order to examine universal problems…This return of interest for mural painting and the concern for making art available to the people explains a fundamental aspect of the ambitions of the Third Republic. Not only did the authorities recognize that art could heal the cruel wounds from the Franco-Prussian war, but also that it could treat the important notions of family, work, love, death, and the value of life and sense of human destiny. 
 
Thus Friant’s work began looking towards aspects of social amelioration, introducing symbolic references into an œuvre that had been, for the most part, a naturalistic and almost photographic representation of primarily daily bourgeois life. Nevertheless, appealing to an affluent clientele was never far from Friant’s mind as many of his later Salon entries were portraits commissioned by wealthy patrons from Nancy and its environs.
 
Little is systematically known about the latter part of Friant’s life. During the 1890s he dealt with several American patrons who wanted to either commission a piece or exhibit his work. One work Les Fiançailles (The Engagements) was chosen for the inaugural Carnegie Annual Exhibition in 1896. He began working steadily with Roland Knoedler, a major art dealer in the period, who put him in contact with Henry Clay Frick, a wealthy art collector whose collection of Old Masters later established the Frick Museum in New York City. But during the 1890’s, Frick also developed a collection of contemporary painters, which included Friant, works which Frick kept in his home in Pittsburgh, before he moved onto New York City. 
 
In addition to his collaboration with American patron and dealers, in 1895 Friant completed several panels which decorated the Hôtel de Ville in Nancy and also exhibited several drawings at the Exposition de la Société des Aquarellistes at Nancy. Significantly, Friant maintained a staunchly academic manner of creativity as applied to portraits at a time when this type of painting came under attack from the abstract modernists. Throughout the following years Friant continually exhibited at several Salons and exhibitions including the Salon Nationale in Paris and the Salon of Nancy. In 1906 he was named professor of drawing of the École Nationale des Beaux Arts where he continued to teach younger artists the importance of substantial academic method linked to drawing. He died in 1932.
 
The life and work of Emile Friant presents an artist who was equally influenced by Paris as well as by his home city of Nancy. But he remained attached to a more academic style of naturalism which appealed to a public both in France and abroad as he demonstrated that the training he received in Nancy could be used to maintain a substantial career.
The life of Antoine-Louis Barye spans one of the most turbulent periods in French history. Born in revolutionary Paris on 24 September 1795, he lived through two empires, two revolutions and three republics, as well as the nightmare of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. Like many of his Romantic colleagues, Barye’s work reflects the ferocity of his time, although it also captures the spirit of scientific inquiry that characterized nineteenth century Europe.  
 
Barye’s early years were typical of a working class family; he learned his father’s craft of goldsmithing, and by 1808, at age 13, he was apprenticed to the military equipment engraver, Fourier. He subsequently worked for Napoleon’s goldsmith, Martin-Guillaume Biennais, learning every facet of metalwork from casting to engraving. At age 21, however, he entered the sculpture workshop of the neo-classical artist, François-Joseph Bosio, who had created the bas-reliefs for the Vendôme Column. This proved to be short-lived; Barye began studying painting a year later with Antoine-Jean Gros, and in 1818, he was accepted into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
 
During his five years at the Ecole, Barye distinguished himself with honors in 1819, 1820 and 1823, but equally important was the emergence of his aesthetic direction as an animalier, an artist specializing in the depiction of animals. His inclination for this subject matter can be seen as early as 1819 in the engraved medallion of Milo of Croton Devoured by a Lion, the project that won him an honorable mention at the Ecole. Although ostensibly a portrayal of a classical academic subject—the   6th century BCE Greek athlete, Milo—Barye’s attention was riveted on the lion. His fascination with animals was reinforced as well by his work for the goldsmith, Jacques Henri Fauconnier, for whom he created animal figurines in order to meet his expenses during the 1820s. 
 
In addition to his frequent sketching trips to the Jardin des Plantes where he could observe exotic animals directly, Barye’s intellectual curiosity increasingly led him to read the scholarly literature on zoology and natural history. In particular, he was well versed in the writing of the Comte de Lacépède, the natural scientist who headed the reptiles and fish section of the Jardin; and the innovative thinking of Georges Cuvier, who helped establish paleontology and comparative anatomy as independent fields of study. Barye also attended anatomy classes taught by Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, the chairman of the zoology department at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle—and the man most responsible for creating the zoo at which Barye found his inspiration. With this somewhat unusual, but remarkably sensible, training in zoological studies, Barye prepared himself thoroughly in his chosen subject matter, as well as in the artistic skills he would need for his career.
 
His Salon debut in 1827 was largely unnoticed by critics, but in 1831, he received a silver medal for Tiger Devouring a Gharial [crocodile] on the Ganges, a subject that appealed to the exotic strain in French Romanticism, as well as to the burgeoning interest in nature’s frequently gruesome patterns of survival. Two years later in 1833, Barye submitted a plaster sculpture of Lion Crushing a Serpent to the Salon as an allegorical commemoration of the July Revolution of 1830. Although it would be cast in bronze for the Salon of 1836, it did not bring Barye the official commissions that he hoped for—and needed. Critics tended to view animalier work as primarily decorative and therefore, not worthy of their sustained attention. In 1837, when the Salon jury rejected pieces from a bronze tabletop hunting sculpture for the Duc d’Orleans, Barye decided to pursue his career outside that venue.
 
His work did attract attention among colleagues, and he received occasional large commissions such as the sculpture of St. Clotilde for the Church of the Madeleine in Paris. More financially rewarding, however, was the marketing of small bronzes of animals to bourgeois art collectors. In fact, Barye established his own company, Barye & Cie, in partnership with Emile Martin, in 1845 for just that purpose. He deserves much credit for this pioneering effort to promote his art to the private art market. Sadly, the company didn’t generate sufficient income to ward off creditors, and in 1848, Barye lost his large inventory of casts to foreclosure; it was not until ten years later that he was able to recover them.
 
Barye’s financial woes continued into the 1850s when he took a series of jobs, only to lose them to political appointees. His fortunes began to change by the middle of the decade, following the liberalization of the Salon juries under the short-lived Second Republic. Not only was his sculpture of Theseus Wrestling with the Minotaur accepted at the 1851 Salon, but he also began to receive commissions for much larger projects. For the renovation of the Pont Neuf, he was asked to create a series of 97 decorative stone masks featuring important historical, religious and mythological figures. This success led to a major commission for four allegorical groups symbolizing Strength, Order, War, and Peace for the expansion of the Louvre under Napoleon III; followed in 1857 by the promotional stone relief showing Napoleon I Crowned by History and the Fine Arts on the pediment of the new Sully Pavilion. At age 59, in 1854, Barye finally secured a permanent position as the Master of Zoological Drawing at Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, a position he would hold until his death. 
 
With renewed financial security, Bayre could also focus more fully on his animalier sculpture, which would increasingly receive supportive critical recognition for both its naturalism and its emotional power. Simultaneously, wealthy Americans were beginning to develop serious art collections, and Barye found a ready audience for his animalier sculpture. Winning the First Award for bronze sculpture for Jaguar Devouring a Hare at the Exposition Universelle in 1855 further spotlighted his work among potential buyers. 
 
In the 1860s, Barye turned his attention to the question of unifying the fine arts with the industrial technology of the time. He was a founding member of the Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts Appliqués à l’Industrie, which would evolve into the pivotal Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, an organization that strove to develop a flexible and effective working relationship between art and industry. Unlike the academic proponents of tradition, Barye believed that the tools of the industrial revolution could—and should—be employed to produce high quality design in all art forms. Although he undoubtedly disagreed with many of his academic colleagues on this subject, Barye was nonetheless elected to the Académie Française in 1868. 
 
In 1870, he moved to Cherbourg, most likely to avoid the terrible destruction of the Franco-Prussian War, which would have been very arduous for a 75-year-old man. The following year, at the end of the disastrous conflict, he moved back to his hometown where he died five years later on 29 June 1875 at age 80.
 
                                            Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
 
 
Selected Museums
 
Art Institute of Chicago
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin
Cleveland Museum of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Detroit Institute of Arts
Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Louvre
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Musée d’Orsay
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
National Gallery of Art, London
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
 
 

 

 

 

Eugène-Alexis Girardet was born in Paris on 31 May 1853 into a family whose livelihood had long been based on painting, engraving and lithography. All of his uncles, cousins and brothers—as well as several previous generations of Girardets—were engaged in either printmaking or painting. Girardet no doubt had a paintbrush tucked into his hands at a very tender age, and as a result, he emerged as a precociously talented artist who began selling his work shortly after his seventeenth birthday in 1870. 
 
Fortunately, Girardet was also able to obtain more formal education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the direction of Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose paintings of Middle Eastern scenes fascinated him. Following in his mentor’s footsteps, Girardet made his first trip to Spain and Morocco in 1874, searching out landscapes that offered him a fresh visual touchstone and introduced him to the customs of a new culture. At this point in time, his paintings remain anchored in the prevailing academic realism of his education. In an early work such as Café Arabe, Girardet has depicted an anonymous waiter preparing coffee in a carefully delineated interior space. The color palette consists entirely of monochromatic shades of brown, white and dusty gold—very like the Realist palettes of Girardet’s Paris colleagues; and the subject matter is clearly in line with Realist ideals of depicting ordinary people going about their daily life. This will change quickly, however, as Girardet falls under the spell of the colors and textures of North African fabrics. At The Souk, for example, illustrates the same sandy colored setting as in Café Arabe, but with the addition of brilliant reds, blues and greens in the garments of the women and an astonishing collection of richly textured fabrics piled into the lower right corner of the painting.
 
During the late 1870s and 1880s, Girardet redefines his imagery in a number of ways. First and foremost was the influence of his trip to Algeria and Tunisia in 1877 beginning with the typical itinerary in Algiers and Boghari in the northern part of the country. Like many artists before him, Girardet was eager to see the exotic cities and oases of North Africa, probably projecting a romanticized image of date palms waving in the desert sunset. His 1879 painting, Camel Train by an Oasis at Dawn, speaks to this sensibility with its stark silhouettes of camels and traders against the lemon and pink dawn sky. Such idealized notions, however, were overwhelmed by what Girardet perceived as the modernization of these French colonial cities. His desire to seek out non-western cultures that were untouched by European colonialism was similar to that which lured so many painters to Brittany looking for a part of France that had not been inundated with Parisian influences.
 
Girardet’s quest took him far south into the fringes of the Saharan oases, Al Kantarra and Bou-Saada. There he met Etienne Dinet, a French painter who had opted to live in Bou-Saada for at least six months out of every year. Dinet is a key figure in the history of French Orientalism, in part because he did explore—and paint—the far reaches of the Saharan landscape, and in part because he converted to Islam after many years of living in the Muslim communities of Algeria. Grirardet’s meeting with Dinet in 1877 was also to have a profound effect on how he conceived of his work. The academic realism and narrative content of his earlier painting gradually evolves into what might be described as a more ethnographic attitude towards the subject matter. Like Dinet, Girardet attempts to capture the images of North Africa accurately, emphasizing what he sees rather than what his academic training has taught him that he should see. Shoemakers Children of 1884 is a case in point. The setting is a modest workshop with the cobbler seated at his bench as he focuses on the task at hand. His children sit on a low stone bench in front of the workshop, looking rather bored as they stare into space while their father toils at his chosen craft. This is not a sentimental image, nor is it a precise anthropological illustration; instead it is a detached depiction of daily activity in an Arab family, painted in a loose naturalistic style.
 
Back in Paris later in 1877, Girardet and thirteen other artists formed a new organization called the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français (Society of French Orientalist Painters) for artists who specialized in this ever-increasing genre of painting. Members included Dinet as well as Paul Leroy and Arthur Chassériau; Jean-Léon Gérôme and Benjamin-Constant were included as honorary presidents, while Léonce Bénédite, curator at the Musée du Luxembourg, was the functional president of the group. This organization would become Girardet’s primary exhibition venue in France, although he also showed his work at the Paris Salon from 1878-1880.   In 1890, he joined the Société Nationale des Beaux- Arts, the splinter group that permitted all artists to exhibit their work. Outside of France, Girardet also exhibited his work in galleries in London, Geneva, Munich and Berlin. In 1906, his work was also included in the Colonial Exposition in Marseilles, although the Bedouin culture that had fascinated Girardet’s generation was now being upstaged by Cambodian dancers and firewalkers from French Polynesia.
 
Throughout the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Girardet continued his journeys to North Africa and the Middle East. In 1898, he traveled to Egypt and Palestine, painting numerous scenes of Cairo and Jerusalem. Stylistically his work showed increasing influence from the Impressionists with looser brushwork and growing attention to dappled and sparkling light effects. One especially charming image, atypical for Girardet, is an 1894 painting entitled Souvenir de l’été [Summer Memory] that depicts the now bespectacled and middle-aged artist peering at his portable easel in a French meadow while a beautiful young woman sketches quietly beside him. This is clearly a man who doesn’t take himself too seriously and who knows how to laugh at himself. Though the identity of the young woman is unknown, it would seem likely that she is either his daughter or one of his many nieces—and a sure sign that the Girardet family tradition of painting will continue into the next generation. Eugène Girardet died on 31 October 1907 in Paris.

                                                            Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
This essay is the property of Rehs Galleries, Inc. and many not be reproduced without our express written permission. 
 
Selected museum collections:
 
Dahesh Museum, New York City
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, Switzerland
Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Rochelle
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Troyes
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
The American art produced during the mid-20th century embodies a philosophy that is unique and represents one of the greatest collecting opportunities within the fine art market. The deliberate and necessary departure from the traditionally accepted stylistic and theoretical aesthetics was a challenge taken on by modern artists during the 20th century. Looking for a new mode of expression which identified more clearly with their own artistic and personal sensibilities, artists embarked upon defining a new relationship between themselves and their medium. This ultimately changed the visual experience for the viewer and the universal definition of art. 
 
The European masters such as Braque, Matisse and Picasso dominated the landmark Armory show in 1913, and the Stieglitz group, including Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe and John Marin, dominated the early modernist movement, but it would be the abstract expressionist icons such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky and David Smith who would lead America to dominate the art market in the mid-20th century.  
 
There were many more artists who possessed incredible talent but lacked the combination of dealer, collector and curator exposure, coupled with publicity and marketing, that would boost others to iconic recognition. Rediscovering the artistic skill, dedication and vision of these Hidden Gems is the mission and focus of Levis Fine Art.  
 
For the past five years, we have successfully endeavored to locate and secure works of art by these forgotten modernists to organize, create and publish reputable scholarship and exhibitions of their bodies of work. We are proud to announce the retrospective exhibition of the lifetime works of Albert Wein, N.A. (1915-1991) being held at the Boston Athenæum. Albert Wein: An American Modernist will be on view from September 17 thru November 29, 2008 and will be accompanied by the first major monograph on the artist’s life and work, written and curated by the Athenæum’s Susan Morse Hills Curator of Paintings and Drawings, David Dearinger. Levis Fine Art is proud to be a major supporter of the artistic legacy of Albert Wein. In addition to organizing the team that created the exhibition, Levis Fine art has lent several of Wein’s iconic works to the exhibition. In addition, numerous other fine works are on view at www.levisfineart.com. 
 
Influence remains as precious to an artist as their tools; it is the strength and foundation upon which they test their own artistic abilities, resulting in a unique inner voice, one which resonates in each stroke and contour within their body of work. Multi-dimensional artist, Albert Wein serves as an exemplary artist who built upon his influences, ultimately transcending his voice across a range of themes, mediums and styles. His willingness to experiment with such a variety of influences provides a clearer understanding of his lifetime commitment to “modernize the classical tradition”. 
 
Beginning with his studies at the Maryland Institute and the National Academy of Design, during the late 1920s, Wein received incredible support and guidance in the period of classical antiquity. By the early 1930s Wein had enrolled in the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in Manhattan, looking to pursue a career which was architecture based, but art oriented. His sculpture, Adam, portrays both the strength of physical space and the delicacy of emotion, a revelation of what would become his signature style.   Notable artists such as Chaim Gross, Ibram Lassaw and Nathaniel Kaz were just a few of the well-accomplished on the Institute’s list of students at the time, but Sidney Waugh, a teacher at the Institute, would be credited with having the most impact on Wein’s artistic ideologies. Waugh appealed to Wein’s unrelenting infatuation with multi-dimension and multi-medium works of art. From the earliest stages in Wein’s artistic development, he simultaneously used different mediums. 
 
Wein’s early career proved highly successful as he won many of the major awards given by the National Sculpture Society, National Academy of Design and the Architectural League. The most prestigious of awards, the Prix de Rome, was bestowed upon Albert in 1947 for his obvious commitment to the modernization of the classical canon. Beethoven, Dancing Girl, Phryne and Homage to Bela Bartok were all created while Wein studied and worked in Rome during 1947 and 1948. Each work addresses Wein’s approach to providing only the most necessary of details with a consistent focus on the nude female figure as a subject. The monumentality of these small works transcends their physical space and emotional dynamism.
 
Wein’s infatuation with the female form prevailed throughout his career. Like other notable modernists, his style dramatically changed over his oeuvre, making amends for certain artistic styles and themes concurrent with the times. His earliest works from the 1930’s were heavily influenced by the W.P.A. style of massive, powerful figures, as seen in Harvest.  His works dating from the late 1940s reveal a softer, perhaps more mindful approach towards the human form, a style he would later return to in the 1970s. Even during Wein’s abstract period of the 1950s and 60s, his utilization and adaptation of the classical form is evident. It is in these pieces that his true voice is most vulnerable and apparent; everything has been pared down and the only remnants are raw emotion and pure form. 
In 1979 Wein won the commission to create the design for the Libby Dam on the Kootenai River in Montana. This 30 foot granite bas relief remains Wein’s most important and most technically challenging work created. Both the concept and the work itself gained Wein national attention and allowed him to work aside an architect fulfilling his lifetime desire of combining art and architecture.
 
Wein’s last major award was granted by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1989 and allowed Wein one last opportunity to study from the classical canon firsthand. The drawings from this period reflect incredible fluidity and ease depicting the human figure.
 
Wein’s notable and varied exhibition history including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney, support the recognition of his unique ability to master the human form in any material, whether bronze, wood, or terracotta. His unrelenting dedication to the human form, to the classical canon and to the modernization of both, reflect the ingenuity of an artist willing to take risks which produced a powerful aesthetic.  All castings are lifetime.
 
We hope that you will visit the Boston Athenæum and also visit our website for the full exhibition history and biography of Albert Wein.  Please contact Jim Levis at 646-620-5000 or [email protected] for more information on the pieces listed or others for sale in our inventory.
At 87 years of age, Mary Abbott is one of just a handful of the first generation Abstract Expressionist artists alive today. As an artist heavily indebted to the existential qualities found in post-war art, Abbott’s entire body of work, reflect the expressive energies embedded in the ideologies of Abstract Expressionism. The sense of immediacy and adventure which dominates her canvases, are snapshots of her most intimate relationship, with that of nature.
 
Each work carries with it a sense of exalting and dynamic space, perhaps homage to the sublimity and honesty of her peers and mentors in the late 1940’s,1950’s and 60’s, namely Rothko, Baziotes and de Kooning. Using her brushstroke with varying speeds and creating colors with varying intensities, Abbott successfully created works which match in comparison to her contemporaries, works which exemplify the modern traditions and culture of the times and works which remain timeless in their appeal.
 
While Abbott’s adventurous personality bred varied styles and techniques across her oeuvre, it was without sacrifice to her main initiative of translating the ambiguities of sensation into a concrete impression and energy within the canvas, much like the dynamics of a conversation.  
 

Abbott’s work has been exhibited by some of the most prominent galleries, namely Kootz, Tibor de Nagy and Tanager.