Jean McLane was born on September 14, 1878 in Chicago and died on January 23, 1964 in New Canaan, Connecticut. Her first studies were with John Vanderpoel at the Art Institute of Chicago. She later studied with Frank Duveneck in Cincinnati, Ohio. McLane later moved to New York to study with William Merritt Chase. Chase was the first to purchase a painting of her early works.

McLane and her husband, artist John C. Johansen (1876-1964) help found the National Foundation of Portrait Painters in 1912. In that same year, she was invited by a group of philanthropists to depict the Allied Leaders from W.W. I. McLane provided the only female subject, Queen Elisabeth of Belgians. This painting now hangs in the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Also in 1912, she was elected associate member of the National Academy of Design and a full academician in 1926.

McLane became noted for her portraits of women and children. In 1931, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her portrait of actor William Gillette hangs at the Academy.

Awards:
Bronze Medal, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904 First Prize
International League, Paris, 1907
New York Women’s Art Club, 1907 Burgess Prize
New York Women’s Art Club, 1908
Julia Shaw Prize, National Academy of Design, 1912
Third Hallgarten Prize, National Academy of Design, 1913
Lippincott Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1914 Silver Medal
Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 Harris Silver Medal and Prize
Art Institute Chicago, 1924

Museums:
Museum of Art, Toledo Art Institute of Chicago
San Antonio Museum
Texas Syracuse Art Museum
New York National Museum of American Art

Whether in the studio or plein air, Mitchell Johnson revels in the act of painting. His airy, sun-splashed landscapes of Italy, France, Denmark and California vibrate with a power that comes from years of painting on site. The casual nature of his magical compositions is the result of a dedicated studio practice. While schooled in the rigors of New York abstraction, he does not abandon representation, but rather constructs a context for it: color becomes form, line becomes definition, and paint becomes space.

Albert Bierstadt was like most painters of the Rocky Mountains in the nineteenth century, he was foreign born. He was born in 1830 in Soligen, near Dusseldorf, Germany and died in New York in 1902.

He and his family emigrated to the United States when he was two years old. He grew up in Bedford, Mass. In 1853, Bierstadt returned to Dusseldorf to study under the landscape painters Andreas Aschenbach and Karl F. Lessing. Under the influence of the Dusseldorf school, and in the company of his fellow painters Emmanuel Leutze and Thomas Worthington Whittridge, Bierstadt learned attention to detail, the respect for drawing and the numerous tricks and effects of technique which he utilized for the rest of his life.

He traveled though Germany, Switzerland and Italy during his four years of European study, and produced some competent and pleasing picturesque old world scenes. After his return to the United States in 1857, did he travel and paint in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

He also began to employ a camera, not used by artist of the time. It was not until 1858 that he discovered the subject matter which he would make his own. In that year, Bierstadt joined a survey expedition to the American West led by Col. F. W. Lander. He made numerous studies, working swiftly, of the spectacular Western scenery, Indians and wildlife. He patiently set to work in his studio to produce paintings of the West which filled a seemly insatiable hunger of the American and European public.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Brooklyn Museums, New York
Capital Building, Washington, D.C.
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
High Museum, Atlanta, GA.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Fine Art, Boston
St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, VT.
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
Amon Carter, Fort Worth, Texas
Gilcrease, Tulsa

German born August Laux achieved a considerable reputation in the 1870s for his frescoes and decorative paintings, but switched to genre scenes and still lifes a decade later. His work, always traditional in style, was highly regarded in his day but forgotten soon after his death.

He was born in the Pfalz area of the Rhineland in 1847 to French parents. Members of his mother’s family held important positions in the government of Strasburg; one of his uncles and a cousin were sculptors in Paris. One story has it that, during a visit to his uncle’s studio while he was a child, the young Laux took a mallet and a chisel to try his hand at sculpting, unbeknown to his elders, and managed to ruin a work in progress. True or not, the boy did show an aptitude for sculpting and was encourage to work in clay.

Soon after his parents emigrated to New York City in 1863, he begun studying sculpture. In 1867, however, he switched to painting and enrolled in classes at the National Academy of Design. His first painting was exhibited there in 1870. Three years later Laux was commissioned to paint the scenery for the private theater of a club in Manhattan. The results were so successful that he was soon much in demand for frescoes and decorations in hotel and other buildings, as well as in such magnificent private homes as those of financier Jay Gould and Andrew Garvey.

Laux turned to genre painting, still lifes and landscape sketches after 1880. He continued to work in this vein until his death in Brooklyn in 1921.

LISTED:
Mantle Fielding’s, Dictionary of American Paintings, Sculptors & Engravers, pg. 523
Falk, Who Was Who in American Art, pg. 320
Gerdts & Burke, American Still Life Painting, pg. 162
Zellman, 300 Years of American Art, pg. 421

Edward Gay was a landscape painter who really didn’t fit into any particular category or school. He learned technique from several artists with whom he studied, but was not markedly influenced by them. His paintings depicted what he saw – no more, no less. He did not romanticize or idealize.

Born in Ireland in 1837, Gay came to America with his parents in 1848 in the wake of the Potato Famine. They settled in Albany, New York. He had to go to work as a boy, but showed a talent for drawing. Encouraged by the Hart brothers and George Boughton, all successful local painters, he began to study with them.

In 1862, at the urging of the Harts, he went to Karlsruhe, Germany to continue his studies under Johann Schirmer and Karl Friedrich Lessing, both conventional historical painters. Although he learned much, Gay felt he was wasting his time. When he returned to the United States in 1864, he began painting the large landscapes which were in vogue. Three years later, with his wife and growing family, he moved to Mount Vernon, just north of New York City. The area was open farmland, with sunny meadows and orchards stretching along Long Island Sound. These were the scenes that Gay painted for much of his life.

In 1905, he built a summer home at Cragsmoor in upstate New York and painted there, as well as on frequent trips to Europe. It was for his paintings of the rivers, fields and shores near Mount Vernon, where he died in 1928, however, that he was best known.

MEMBERSHIPS:
Lotos Club
National Academy of Design
New York Water Color Club

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Layton School of Art, Milwaukee
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul
Mount Vernon Public Library, New York

Born in Bridgeport, Ohio, Joseph Sharp was regarded as the “father of the Taos Art Colony,” and was known for his Indian figure and genre painting as well as for exquisitely colorful landscapes.

He was one of the first Caucasian artists to visit New Mexico, arriving in Santa Fe in 1883. Although Sharp was completely deaf from a childhood accident, he reportedly had a cheerful nature and was an avid traveler, always seeking learning experiences about other cultures.

From childhood he was interested in Indians and at age fourteen, because of his deafness, left public school to study art in Cincinnati at the McMicken School and the Cincinnati Academy of Art.

His studio was in the same building as that of Henry Farny who gave him books on Pueblo Indians. At age 22, he went to Antwerp, Belgium where he studied with Charles Verlat, and two years later he began traveling the American West going first on a sketching trip that included Santa Fe, places in California, and north to the Columbia River.

He did numerous paintings of Indian figures to record their disappearing culture. In 1886, he returned to Europe for more study and enrolled at the Academy in Munich with Karl Marr. He also traveled with Frank Duveneck, famous Cincinnati artist, through Spain and Italy. From 1892 to 1902, he taught classes at the Cincinnati Art Academy, and from 1895 to 1896 attended the Academie Julian in Paris where he met Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips, who later joined him in Taos.

In 1893, he first went to Taos, and his sketches from that trip were published in “Harper’s Weekly.” He began making summer trips West to sketch Indians, and in 1902, he painted in Arizona, California, Wyoming, and Montana. An admiring President T. R. Roosevelt had a studio built for him at the Custer Battle Field site. From there Sharp traveled throughout the Plains to paint about 200 portraits of living Indians who had been in that battle, and to achieve these paintings, he endured much severe weather and physical hardship.

By 1912, Sharp was a permanent resident of Taos, living across from Kit Carson’s homesite and painting many of the Pueblo Indians in their daily activities. His longtime close friend and model was Jerry (Elk Foot) Mirabal, who, dying in 1980, lived to be 110. Sharp continued to travel, going frequently to Hawaii and California during the winters where he completed numerous floral landscapes. He also stayed in close touch with his hometown of Cincinnati, where he relied upon friends in the Cincinnati Art Museum for canvas and certain types of paint, and in December, 1915, he held the first of fifteen annual Christmas exhibitions there.

He died in Pasadena on August 29, 1953. His Indian paintings are prized for their detailed accuracy, and many of them are in the collection of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Arthur Drummond was born in Bristol in 1871; the son of John Drummond, a maritime artist. Arthur enjoyed an early exposure to painting and received the encouragement and support of his family.  It appears that he received additional training both in Paris and in London. While in France he studied with both Constant and Laurens – learning the ways of the Academic artists.  In London he studied with Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema – the important British Neo-Classical artist; from whom Drummond would draw his greatest influence.

 

By 1890 Drummond was living at 41, Walterton Road, St. Peter’s Park and exhibited his first work at the Royal Academy: A Minstrel.  He would continue to exhibit works at the RA until 1901; specializing in history/genre scenes and like Alma-Tadema, many of which are set in ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome.  

 

During his career, Drummond exhibited works at the Royal Academy; Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham; and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

 

Below is a complete listing of the works he exhibited at the Royal Academy:

 

1890: A Minstrel
1893: The Ladies’ robing room before an entertainment: ancient Egypt
1896: The last days of Pompeii
1899: The Gods of the ancients
1901: The King’s Courtship

Jean MacLane was born on September 14, 1878 in Chicago and died on January 23, 1964 in New Canaan, Connecticut. Her first studies were with John Vanderpoel at the Art Institute of Chicago. She later studied with Frank Duveneck in Cincinnati, Ohio. MacLane later moved to New York to study with William Merritt Chase. Chase was the first to purchase a painting of her early works.

MacLane and her husband, artist John C. Johansen (1876-1964) help found the National Foundation of Portrait Painters in 1912. In that same year, she was invited by a group of philanthropists to depict the Allied Leaders from W.W. I. MacLane provided the only female subject, Queen Elisabeth of Belgians. This painting now hangs in the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Also in 1912, she was elected associate member of the National Academy of Design and a full academician in 1926.

MacLane became noted for her portraits of women and children. In 1931, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her portrait of actor William Gillette hangs at the Academy.

Public Collections:
Museum of Art, Toledo
Art Institute of Chicago
San Antonio Museum, Texas
Syracuse Art Museum, New York
National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.

Awards:
Bronze Medal, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904
First Prize, International League, Paris, 1907-08
Elling Prize, New York Women’s Art Club, 1907
Burgess Prize, New York Women’s Art Club, 1908
Julia Shaw Prize, National Academy of Design, 1912
Third Hallgarten Prize, National Academy of Design, 1913
Lippincott Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1914
Silver Medal, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915
Harris Silver Medal and Prize, Art Institute Chicago, 1924

Collections (a selected list):
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio
Crocker Museum, Sacramento, California
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas (Dallas Art Association purchase)
Irvine Museum, Irvine, California
Luxembourg Collection, Paris, France
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
National Arts Club, New York, New York
New York Historical Society, New York, New York
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania
St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis, Missouri
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California
City of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan
The White House, Washington, D.C.

Exhibitions (a selected list):
(1924-1925) Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California
(1925) Stendahl Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California
(1927) Ainslie Galleries, Los Angeles, California
(1927) Friday Morning Club, Los Angeles, California
(1934) Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, Santa Barbara, California
(1938) Memorial Exhibition at the Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

Publications:
Ackerman, Gerald M. American Orientalists. Paris: ACR Edition, 1994.

Cooper, Colin Campbell. Letter to the Editor “Urges Old Postoffice as Art Museum,” typescript reported as copied from Santa Barbara News-Press, Sunday ed., July 25, 1937, vol. LXXIV, no. 266, part 1, p. 3, col. 2. In artist files at the library of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, Calif.

Gerdts, William. Impressionist New York. New York: Artabras/Abbeville Press, 1994.

Goolsby, Tina. “Colin Campbell Cooper: An American Impressionist with a Global Perspective.” in Art & Antiques,” Jan 1983.

Hansen, James M. An exhibition of paintings by Colin Campbell Cooper, May 3-16, 1981. Santa Barbara, Calif.: James M. Hansen, 1981.

Hughes, Edan Milton. Artists in California. Third ed. Sacramento, Calif.: Crocker Art Museum, 2002.

Laguna Beach Art Museum. Southern California Artists 1890-1940. July 10, 1979 to August 28, 1979. Laguna Beach, Calif.: Laguna Beach Museum of Art, 1979.

Moure, Nancy Dustin Wall. California Art: 450 Years of Painting and Other Media. Los Angeles: Dustin Publications, 1998.

Price, Marshall N. “Colin Campbell Cooper: Impressions of New York,” catalogue essay for the exhibition of the same name. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2002.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Library. Colin Campbell Cooper artist files. Santa Barbara, Calif.

Solon, Deborah Epstein. In and Out of California: Travels of American Impressionists. Laguna Beach, California: Laguna Art Museum, 2002.

Stern, Jean. American Impressionism, California School. Scottsdale, AZ: Fleischer Museum / FFCA Publishing, 1989.

Westphal, Ruth Lilly [editor]. Plein Air Painters of California: The North. Irvine, Calif: Westphal Publishing, 1986.

Education:
(1879) Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; studied under Thomas Eakins
(1889) Academie Julian
Academie Decluse
Academie Viti

To learn more about this artist, click here.

Lydia Cooley:
Lydia Cooley studied closely with noted artist John Sloan at the Art Students League in New York. Although she was quite reserved about her talent as an artist, Cooley was an established member of the Ash Can school of painters. Her portraits of children, women, and the working class convey the simple pleasures of life and the excitement of new experiences waiting to be discovered.

Along with her husband, Don Freeman, Cooley authored several children’s books including Pet of the Met and Chuggy and the Blue Caboose. Although the Freemans moved to Santa Barbara in 1958, Cooley continued to stay in contact with the New York art scene through frequent correspondences with such notable artists as Esther Geotz and Al Hirschfeld. She died in Santa Barbara in 1996.

Don Freeman:
Don Freeman was born in San Diego, California on August 11, 1908. He studied art at the Art Students League in New York under noted artists John Sloan and Harry Wickey. Freeman’s paintings capture the scenes of every-day life in New York City during the 1930’s. As a member of the “Ash Can” School of painter, Freeman focused on the “Average Joe” on the streets: shoeshine men, fruit vendors and hobos. Unlike the artists working in social realism, the Ash Can painters presented these seemingly down-and-out subjects of the Depression era with a hopeful outlook and romantic view of life.

Sullivan Goss represents the estate of these two distinguished artists.

To learn more about Lydia Cooley, click here.
To learn more about Don Freeman, click here.