Charles Haigh-Wood was born in 1856 in a home above a workshop in Bury, England where his father Charles Wood, a master craftsman, built picture frames. By the 1870s when Charles Sr.’s business was prospering, he diversified into picture-dealing, and moved into a substantial new home. Young Charles was not only as ambitious as his father, but highly talented artistically. As a teen, his father enrolled him in Manchester Art College, where he was awarded several prizes, and it was at this young age that he chose to combine his parents’ surnames as Haigh-Wood. In 1873, at just 17, Charles Haigh-Wood was accepted to study art at The Royal Academy in London.

While attending the Academy, Haigh-Wood captured a great deal of attention, and by 21 he was exhibiting at the Academy and was elected a member. For three years following, he traveled and studied Renaissance masters in Italy, before returning to settle in England. His talent at painting portraits brought in many commissions, but Haigh-Wood was best known for painting drawing room “conversation pieces,” or story-telling scenes of polite society, which made him a popular genre painter in the late 19th century. These works were also lucrative, as they were purchased by greeting-card manufacturers for reproduction, galleries from as far away as Australia bidding for his pictures.

Upon attaining financial success as an artist as well as from a sizeable inheritance, Charles no longer devoted his time solely to commercial art. He began working in a more social realist style, painting scenes of villagers working, and in particular the fishing village of Yorkshire. “In the Garden” is such a work, depicting a girl carrying a pail from a garden cottage, perhaps to fill it with water from the fountain in the foreground, or perhaps with produce from the flowering garden. The appealing charm of Haigh-Wood’s early drawing room paintings still prevails in this mature work, although he has depicted a less pretentious subject, and one closer to his own childhood experience, in the colorful, narrative manner of painting for which he was admired.

Charles Baum immigrated to the United States from the Rhineland, Germany in the wake of the European Revolutions of 1848. He had been a schoolteacher in his native land and had married a former pupil, Susana Schneider. The couple first settled in New York, and subsequently moved to Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, where they would remain except for a short residence in Pennsylvania between 1867-69. Strongly influenced by fellow Rhineland native Severin Roesen, it is possible that Baum was acquainted with the artist and began his artistic career in the studio-workshop of Roesen in New York City.

Charles Baum is known primarily for his still life paintings, one of which was included in the Artists’ Sale held by the American Art-Union in New York City in December of 1852. However, he seems to have been versatile, also painting animal pictures and landscapes. Several of these landscapes were included in New York City in December of 1871, in the First Annual Exhibition of “The Palette,” or The Palette Club, an art society originally devoted to promoting the work of artists of German descent.

Baum’s finely detailed still lifes were often created in a similar format: on a vertical canvas, with a bounteous arrangement of fruit cascading over a practically hidden multi-dished vessel atop a white marble slab. The artist selected fruits from all seasons, rendered with exquisite attention to detail and contrasting jewel-like colors. He also frequently added such motifs as a bird’s nest, a split pomegranate, or a half-filled wineglass. Baum’s canvases overflowing with fruits and foliage reflect the Victorian opulence of his time, and the optimism of a New World filled with abundance.

Mary Bradish Titcomb began a career teaching drawing in the public schools of Brockton, MA. In 1888, she resigned from her position as director of drawing and moved to Boston to begin artistic studies under Boston Impressionists Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson, and at the Boston Museum School with Philip Hale.

In 1895, Titcomb traveled to Paris to study with Jules Lefebvre. On subsequent trips to Europe she painted in Italy, Spain and England, always returning to Boston, where she was inducted into the Copley Society, the most prestigious art society in New England. She began signing her works, “M. Bradish Titcomb” in 1895 to avoid discrimination as a woman artist. Titcomb’s winters were spent in her Boston studio painting commissioned portraits, while summers were spent traveling abroad and painting the New England coast, where she owned studios in Provincetown and Marblehead. President Woodrow Wilson’s purchase of a painting by Titcomb at the Corcoran Art Gallery in 1915 and his public praise of her work brought the artist additional success and fame.

Beginning around 1917, when Titcomb joined other women painters who called themselves “The Group,” her painting style evolved from traditional Boston Impressionism to one that integrated the stylistic ideas of modernism. She is one of select few women considered integral to the Boston School tradition. A consistent, vibrant painter, Titcomb often included architecture in her compositions, around which she developed her landscapes and figures.

Born in 1871 in Buffallo, NY, Edward Dufner enjoyed a long, successful career as an art teacher and actively exhibiting painter. Dufner was considered the leading Impressionist in New Jersey during a period when Impressionism flourished in various regional artist colonies across the United States.

Edward Dufner was one of the first students of the Buffalo Art Students League to earn an Albright Scholarship to study painting in New York. In 1893, he moved to Manhattan and took classes at the Art Students League. Five years later, Dufner and his wife went to Paris where he studied at the Academies Julian and Carmen. Dufner traveled in Europe for five years, also studying with James McNeill Whistler, before returning to the United States in 1903.

A major instructor of portrait and still-life painting at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy from 1903-1907, Dufner resigned in 1908 to teach at the Art Students League in NY. He was an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1910 and 1929. Dufner received several awards, including a prize at the Paris Salon in 1899 and the gold medal in the National Art Competition in NYC, 1925. In 1910, he held a special Art Students League summer in Caldwell, New Jersey, and spent subsequent summers painting there. Dubbed the “Painter of Sunshine,” Dufner favored as a subject joyous spring landscapes, often depicting a stream with swimming ducks, and figures such as women and children in crisp white garments leisurely spending the afternoon outdoors.

Born in London, England, to a wealthy family with ties to royalty, Brett became a noted long-time resident artist of Taos, New Mexico. She saw her first American Indian when she was age five attending a performance in London of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She determined to be an artist, which was counter to her parent’s social expectations of her, and she enrolled in the Slade School of Art in 1910 and graduated six years later. Titled the “Honorable Dorothy Brett,” she also attended University College.

Brett began painting portraits of English celebrities including novelist D.H. Lawrence, and she went to Taos with him and his wife in 1924. It was to be a short visit, but she remained, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1938. She began painting Indian genre but was hesitant because her background was academic landscape and portrait painting.

She became a close associate of Mabel Dodge Luhan; Brett, Luhan and Frieda Lawrence became such close friend and fixtures of society in Taos that they were known as the “Three Fates.”

Born in Jackson, Michigan, Philip Curtis was one of the early painters from the East to move to Arizona, and some critics later referred to him as Arizona’s greatest painter. His landscape and figure paintings, many of them full of whimsy, are called “magic realism”. With recognizable forms but incongruous relationships, his paintings also have many elements of surrealism.

A 2,500 square foot space, the Ullman Center – The Art of Philip Curtis, recently opened at the Phoenix Art Museum.  The Center houses the Museum’s growing collection of works by this renowned Arizona artist and Phoenix Art Museum founder.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Elaine de Kooning became a noted Abstract Expressionist painter. However, like many women artists of that era who married artists, her career was sublimated to that of her famous husband, Willem de Kooning. They became the leaders of the New York School social set in the 1940s, 50s and 60.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, she did not completely abandon realism, and much of her career was devoted to portraiture for which she was known in the 1950s and 60s. One of her most famous commissions was for President John F. Kennedy, which was in process at the time of the assassination.

Norman Rockwell (1874-1978)

 

Born in New York City in 1894, Norman Rockwell always wanted to be an artist. At age 14, Rockwell enrolled in art classes at the New York School of Art (formerly the Chase School of Art). Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at the National Academy of Design. He soon transferred to the Art Students League, where he studied with Thomas Fogarty and George Bridgman. Fogarty’s instruction in illustration prepared Rockwell for his first commercial commissions. From Bridgman, Rockwell learned the technical skills on which he relied throughout his long career.

 

Rockwell found success early. He painted his first commission of four Christmas cards before his sixteenth birthday. While still in his teens, he was hired as art director of Boys’ Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, and began a successful freelance career illustrating a variety of young people’s publications.

 

At age 21, Rockwell’s family moved to New Rochelle, New York, a community whose residents included such famous illustrators as J.C. and Frank Leyendecker and Howard Chandler Christy. There, Rockwell set up a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe and produced work for such magazines as Life, Literary Digest, and Country Gentleman.

 

In 1916, the 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine considered by Rockwell to be the “greatest show window in America.” Over the next 47 years, another 321 Rockwell covers would appear on the cover of the Post. Also in 1916, Rockwell married Irene O’Connor; they would go on to divorce in 1930.

 

The ’30s and ’40s are generally considered to be the most fruitful decades of Rockwell’s career. In 1930 he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, and the couple had three sons: Jarvis, Thomas, and Peter. The family moved to Arlington, Vermont in 1939, and Rockwell’s work began, more consistently, to reflect small-town American life.

 

In 1943, inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s address to Congress, Rockwell painted the Four Freedoms paintings. They were reproduced in four consecutive issues of The Saturday Evening Post with essays by contemporary writers. Rockwell’s interpretations of Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear proved to be enormously popular. The works toured the United States in an exhibition that was jointly sponsored by the Post and the U.S. Treasury Department and, through the sale of war bonds, raised more than $130 million for the war effort.

 

Although the Four Freedoms series was a great success, 1943 also brought Rockwell an enormous loss. A fire destroyed his Arlington studio as well as numerous paintings and his collection of historical costumes and props.

In 1953, the Rockwell family moved from Arlington, Vermont, to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Six years later, Mary Barstow Rockwell died unexpectedly. In collaboration with his son Thomas, Rockwell published his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator, in 1960. The Saturday Evening Post carried excerpts from the best-selling book in eight consecutive issues, with Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait on the cover of the first.

 

In 1961, Rockwell married Molly Punderson, a retired teacher. Two years later, he ended his 47-year association with The Saturday Evening Post and began to work for Look magazine. During his 10-year association with Look, Rockwell painted pictures illustrating some of his deepest concerns and interests, including civil rights, America’s war on poverty, and the exploration of space.

 

In 1973, Rockwell established a trust to preserve his artistic legacy by placing his works in the custodianship of the Old Corner House Stockbridge Historical Society, later to become the Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge. The trust now forms the core of the Museum’s permanent collections. In 1976, in failing health, Rockwell became concerned about the future of his studio. He arranged to have his studio and its contents added to the trust. In 1977, Rockwell received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his “vivid and affectionate portraits of our country.” He died at his home in Stockbridge on November 8, 1978, at the age of 84.

One of the most popular subjects for an artist during the 19^th century was cats and dogs.  As the Industrial Revolution progressed and more people moved to the large cities, the number of people keeping cats and dogs as pets increased.  With this increase more and more artists were called upon to paint charming and sentimental works featuring the domesticated animals.

 

Arthur A. Brunel de Neuville was a French 19^th century artist working in Paris who took up the call and devoted his artistic talent to portraying the different moods of cats and kittens.  A typical scene includes a small feline family drinking from a bowl of milk, playing with a ball of yarn or toying with a bug.  His animals are often set against a dark background, in the corner of a room, and are painted in a mixture of the Academic and Impressionistic styles.

 

Brunel de Neuville also painted a number of still life paintings during his lifetime.  These works are often rustic in feeling and definitely reflect the Realist tradition that was so prevalent during the late 19^th century.

As with many of his contemporaries, his work was very popular during his lifetime and he exhibited a number of works at the various exhibition halls.  Today examples of his work can be seen in museums in  Beziers, Brest and Chateau-Thierry.

William Louis Sonntag
1822-1900

William Louis Sonntag was born in East Liberty, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh), in 1822 and died in New York City in 1900. He is considered an 19th century landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School. In 1840, Sonntag moved to Cincinnati to study with Godfrey Frankelstein at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Art. He maintained his studio there from the mid 1840’s to the 1850’s. He made regular painting trips to the Ohio River Valley and into the mountains of Virginia and Kentucky. Landscape painter Thomas Cole influences the paintings of this period.

Sonntag made his first trip to Europe in 1853 and returned in 1855 to study in Florence. Upon his return to the United States, he established his studio in New York City.

He became an associate member to the National Academy of Design in 1861. Sonntag exhibited at the Academy on a regular basis for over forty years.

Memberships:
American Watercolor Society
National Academy of Design

Museums:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Peabody Institute