Walter Launt Palmer (1854-1932)

Walter was born in Albany NY in 1854, the son of the famous sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. In his youth he was aquatinted with the leading artists of the day such as Frederick E. Church, John Kensett and John McEntee. All of whom frequented the Palmer home.

At age 24, he began his formal study of art with the artist Frederick E. Church, the great Hudson Valley painter. In the early and mid-1870’s Walter traveled and studied extensively in Italy and France. He studied with Carouls Duran in Paris. He studied the work of the impressionists as well as all the expatriate American artists in Europe. He was a friend of John Singer Sargent and went on at least one sketching trip with Sargent. He also spent time with John Henry Twatchman, William Merritt Chase, Frank Druveneck, and Robert Blum. Upon his return to the states in the late 1870’s, he and Church rented a studio in New York City. They keep it from 1878 until 1881.

Palmer first received major attention for his winter scenes in 1887 when he received the Second Halgarten Prize of the National Academy for his painting “January”. This award is for outstanding young (under 35) artists with potential. The artist’s use of blue shadow in the snow is considered one of the first uses of this technique. It wasn’t his only award. He received the gold medal from the Philadelphia Art club in 1894 and another gold medal from the Boston Art Club in 1895. More awards came from more prestigious Art Associations and his reputation continued to grow. His winter scenes became very popular but his scenes of Venice and interiors were also beautiful and desirable.

At the turn of the century Palmer was being compared in a favorable manner to Claude Monet and John Henry Twatchman. In 1915, Palmer, now 61 years old, spent the summer in Gloucester Mass. A habit he would continue to do for many years thereafter. His studio was rather quaint and situated on Rocky Neck in Gloucester Harbor. The Boston Globe described it in 1923 as one “which hangs down over the rocks and boasts an array of sky blue shutters .. in this studio by the sea.” He actually found the summer studio a boost to his art sales as many visitors who came to see stayed and actually bought. He complained that visitors interrupted him but it was good for business. Prices at that time were about $200 each without frames for good sizes pictures. One person bought three for a reduced price of $500. He kept meticulous records of all his paintings and sales. He became active in the local art colony and the local art associations, basking in his celebrity status. People and writers would remark that it was strange to see him sitting on his Gloucester Bay dock in the summertime while painting a snow scene. All the while the picturesque harbor’s beauty was right in front of him. But he responded that he felt that it was no more inconsistent that many of his fellow artists who painted summer scenes in the dead of winter.

Walter L. Palmer died in his hometown Albany NY on April 16, 1932 at the age of 78. After his death his work fell out of favor and many museums de-accessioned his paintings in the years following W.W.II. Indeed, by the early 1960’s, representational art was out and often the frames were worth more than the paintings. People liked clean walls with no paintings — a sort of a delayed reaction to the covered wall style of the Victorian period.

In the last 20 years the trend has again reversed and the work of American Impressionist and realistic artists of the early 20th century have been rediscovered. Walter Launt Palmer is now recognized as the excellent artist he always was.

Eugene Galien-Laloue, (1854-1941)

Eugene Galien-Laloue (1854-1941) is considered to be one of the foremost Parisian street scene masters in the field of impressionism. For over five decades his art has dominated those of his contemporaries in both quality and price. His paintings stand as a landmark in art history.

Born in Paris, France in December 1854 to French-Italian parents, with the name Eugene Galiany. He later changed it as a tribute to his teacher Charles Laloue whom he studied with in 1877. He received his first training as an architect, which helped Galien-Laloue with popularizing the subject matter of Paris street scenes and his very natural rural landscapes.

Since the camera could not accurately record motion, and perceived only black and white, Laloue’s paintings were in a sense picture postcards for the public, and they were highly prized by both tourists and the townspeople. His attention to detail accuracy of perception, reproduction of architecture, clearly set him above other street scene painters.

The country of France also selected Laloue to work as a military illustrator, capturing both the Franco-Prussian and the First World War in watercolor. These very rare paintings exhibit Eugene Galien-laloue’s true genius. Laloue rendered the uncompromising beauty of life in France, depicting popular monuments, structures, villages and Harbors recognized throughout Europe.

Preferring the medium of gouache for the great body of his work, although there are several oil paintings and watercolors recorded, his pieces took on a painterly quality that few have come to perfecting. Today Galien-Laloue’s gouaches are treasured as artistic jewels. He is listed in the Benezit, Vol. 4 pg. 589.

Daniel Ridgway Knight 1839-1924

Born in Philadelphia to Quaker parents, Daniel Ridgway Knight overcame the culturally restrictive Quaker life, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in his native city before traveling to Parts in 1861. There he worked under Charles Gleyre along with other artists such as Pierre Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley.

He returned to Philadelphia in 1863 to serve in the Civil War, remaining there for the following eight years. During this time Knight supported himself by painting portraits and genre pictures. In 1871, his Philadelphia patrons sent him back to France, where he succeeded so well at painting in the European style that he remained abroad for the rest of his life. In 1872, Knight began studying under the realist painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier. Although unaccustomed to teaching, Meissonier made an exception with Knight whom he influenced greatly. In 1875, Meissonier assisted Knight in obtaining entry to the prestigious Paris Salon, helping to ensure a favorable judgment of Knight’s entries in the Salon’s annual juried exhibitions.

Knight subsequently moved out of Paris to Poissy, a charming village on the Seine an hour away, where he continued working under Meissonier. At Poissy he executed the peasant subjects for which he became so well known. He was working toward a more natural lighting, a style that dominated painting at the time. Knight even built a glass house in his garden, permitting him to work in natural lighting the entire year. Knight became friendly with his neighbors in Poissy, and although his paintings of them are picturesque, he avoided an overly sentimental approach. His people carry on their daily tasks, and one can develop an understanding of their character from his sensitive renditions. The lush foliage in Knight’s paintings conveys the beauty of the fertile French countryside.

Knight’s technique was to intensify certain colors in the foreground of his composition, contrasting them against gray skies and subdued backgrounds, which conveyed a heightened sense of reality. The transition from one form to another was accomplished through the exact use of color rather than through an emphasis on shadow and light. Knight’s skillful use of lighting gradations frequently conveyed definite moods. The artist continued to explore the nuances of this style until his death in 1924.

Daniel Ridgway Knight’s paintings enjoy widespread popularity. They can be found in many museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia.

Awards:

Third Gold Medal, Paris Salon 1888

Gold Medal, Munich Exposition 1888

Silver Medal, Paris Exposition 1888

Gold Medal, Columbian Exposition 1893

Gold Medal, Antwerp Exposition 1894

Grand Medal, Pennsylvania Academy 1896

Knighted into the Legion of Honor, 1889

Listed:

E. Benezit

American Art Journal

Mantle Fielding

Who’s Who in American Art

Young

Thieme Becker

Arthur Parton 1842-1914

Born in New York City in 1842, Arthur Parton was a landscape painter who studied in Philadelphia under William T. Richards and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Parton gained from Richards a sound grounding in the technical aspects of his art.

Parton settled in New York City in 1865 and became a regular exhibitor at the National Academy of Design. In 1886, he received the gold medal of the American Art Association and the Temple Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He also won the competitive prize in the Paris Exposition in 1900. His works are represented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1869, Parton spent a year in Europe, where he was influenced by the Barbizon painters. His first pictures were shown in Philadelphia in 1862, but the works that brought him public prominence were On the Road to Mt. Marcy (1873, location unknown), A Mountain Brook (1874, location unknown) and Evening, Harlem River (1887, location unknown). His November, Loch Lomond, and Solitude (dates and locations unknown) attracted a great deal of attention at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and gave him a national reputation. “In any foreign collection of paintings,” the New York Evening Post said, “Mr. Parton’s work would be distinctly American.” He died in 1914 at age 71.

Memberships:

American National Academy

American Water Color Society

Artist’s Fund Society

National Academy of Design Public

Collections:

Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York City

Jules Rene Herve 1887-1981

J.R. Herve, an impressionist of our time, is the very type of artist who has worked a lot on his own, indifferent to the fashion and to outside trends. He has never ceased to deepen the technical secrets of his art; and after 50 years of artistic experience, he has arrived at complete mastery of the science of this art which absorbs him.

Born in 1887 in Langres, a town in the eastern part of France, he began his art studies in an evening school of his hometown. As far back as he can remember, Herve always wanted to become an talented artist and thus to be able to express through color the beauty of everything he sees. He came to Paris where he first continued his studies at the School of Decorative Arts and then at the Fine Arts School.

He exhibited his works for the first time at the Salon of French Artists in 1910. He was one of the most important members of this group. Obtaining his teaching diploma, he started teaching. From 1911 to 1943 he taught painting to many generations of young artists. In 1914 he received a first silver medal from the association of French Artists, but afterwards he unfortunately had to join the army for the duration of the war.

J.R. Herve is both a painter of daily country themes in which there are characters at their daily tasks, and a painter of Parisian scenes. He interprets his scenes with sensibility, putting all his heart into his work. All his artistic sensitivity is achieved by incredible strokes of light and color. Paris as seen by Herve is a city of poetry. The “City of Lights” under its most touching aspects, and at its most charming. It is a real part of Paris, with its sentimental life, feelings, her special character, that inspire Herve to paint.

Not only is Herve a painter of great talent, he represents the purest tradition of French art. He paints just like the great impressionists of former times, playing with his colors as a musician does with his musical instruments. He obtains in each of his works a marvelous harmony of color and light. His paintings are in numerous museums in France; in the Petit Palais in Pads, at Langres, Troues Dijon, Saint-Etienne, Tourcoing, Annecy and abroad, in Chicago Museum and at Casablanca.

Hugh Bolton Jones
1848-1927

H. Bolton Jones was an award winning landscape artist of the late nineteenth century, whose paintings of pastoral scenes were widely exhibited in the United States around the turn of the century.

Born in 1848 in Baltimore, Jones began his formal studies at the Maryland Institute. In 1865, he studied under Horace W. Robbins in New York City, and two years later exhibited at the National Academy of Design.

From 1865 to 1876, Jones painted many landscapes of well-known scenes of the Eastern United States, from Maryland and West Virginia north to the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. In style and subject matter, his paintings of this period tend to reflect the dominant influence of the Hudson River School.

In 1876, Jones traveled to Europe with his younger brother, eventually joining former Baltimore acquaintance Thomas Hovenden in the artists’ colony at Pont Aven, Brittany. Here he painted his first mature plein-air works, depicting scenes of winter light, as in “Edge of the Moor, Brittany”, (1877, location unknown).

In 1880, Jones returned to the United States, where he continued to paint American landscapes in a manner emphasizing the effects of seasonal light or time of day on his rural subjects. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1893; he received awards at the Paris expositions of 1889 and 1900 and the St. Louis exposition of 1904. He continued to paint until his death in 1927, in New York City.

Member:
National Academy of Design
National Institute of Arts and Letters

Public Collections:
Brooklyn Museum Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

John Frederick Kensett
1816-1872

The paintings of J.F. Kensett are among the finest and most sought- after work produced by the second generation of Hudson River School artists. With an engraver’s eye for sharp detail and a sensitivity to atmospheric variation, Kensett created powerful portraits of rocks, water and sky, reflecting infinite depth, power and peace. He was considered a luminist painter, one of a group that was especially interested in weather effects. Stanford Gifford, a follower of Kensett, referred to luminism as “air-painting.”

Kensett was more a follower of Asher B. Durand than he was of Thomas Cole. He attempted to concentrate on compositions that were realistic and detailed, rather than contrived and dramatic. His work falls into four major categories: shorelines; mountain and water views from above; mountain and lake scenes from a lower point of view; and woodland interiors.

In 1840, Kensett went to Europe with John W. Casilear, Thomas Rossiter and Asher B. Durand. He stayed for seven years, helping to support himself by doing engraving’s for American companies. When he returned to America in 1847, he had no trouble selling his work. His timing was good: in 1846 he had sent several Italian landscapes home, two of which were purchased by the American Art-Union.

His studio became a magnet for the art world. Travelers delighted in identifying precise locations in the Catskills or Newport or New England in the oil sketches and drawings that covered his walls.

Memberships:
National Academy of Design

Public Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago
Brooklyn Museum
Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, Florida
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
New York Historical Society, New York City

Jean Francois Raffaelli
1850-1924

Jean Francois Raffaelli portrait painter, landscape artist, genre painter, engraver lithographer and sculptor, born in Paris on April 20,1850, died in the same city on February 29,1924 (French School).

Before dedicating himself to painting, Raffaelli was an actor and played in the Lyric Theater. He then entered Gerome’s studio and made his debut at the Salon of 1870. At first he painted genre pictures. Then in 1879 he began doing picturesque views of quaint Paris neighborhoods. A voyage to Brittany in 1876 revealed to him the efficiency, compared to genre scenes, of realistic themes treated with restraint. Searching for his subjects in the life of ordinary people in the suburbs of Paris’ such as “Les Invites attendant la Noce” (Guests waiting at the Wedding) which is in the Louvre, he acquired the favor of naturalist writers.

He participated in the get-togethers at the Cafe Guerbois, where Degas, against the wishes of the other members of the group, forced Raffaelli’s acceptance at the impressionist exhibitions of 1890 and 1891. In spite of his admittedly somber palette, which was in absolute contradiction of impressionist rules and which he would lighten before the end of his life. A one-man show, which he mounted in 1884, established his reputation once and for all. After executing a few portraits, notably those of “Edmond de Goncourt”” and “Clemenceau”, he resumed to genre painting and made a serious effort mainly, reproducing scenes of middle-class life. More careful with his drawing than color, Raffaelli made a preliminary drawing in black and white of most of his canvases.

He also did Paris landscapes and in this manner he reached a large public. His typical scenes of Paris are accurately seen and expressed with spirit. His landscapes of the city’s slums and fortifications created their own genre and perpetuate to this day our memory of this strange “no man’s land’ which has since disappeared “Sur le zone” (“In the Slum”) “Chiffonnier” (“Rag-picker”), “Le Chemineau (“The Railroad worker”) “Le carriere De sable” (“The Sand Quarry”). “La Plain Saint-Denis”, “Coin de fortifications” (“Corner with Fortifications”). As an engraver, Raffaelli produced prints with remarkable colors. Less gifted as an illustrator, one may nevertheless cite his collaboration with Forain on J.K. Huysmans, Croquis Parisians. He received a Mention Honorable at the 1885 Salon; Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1889 received a gold medal at the Exposition Universal of 1889 and became an officer of the Legion of Honor in 1906. He was a member of the society Des Beaux-Arts.

Dorothea Sharp
(1874-1955)

Dorothea Sharp was born in Dartford, Kent. She studied at an art school in Richmond, run by Charles Edward Johnson R.I. (1832-1913) studying landscape painting, and at Regent Street Polytechnic, continuing her studies in Paris.

Sharp exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy 1901-1948, at the R.B.A. to which she was elected in 1907, the R.O.I. elected member 1922, and at the S.W.A. of which she was vice president.

For much of her life Dorothea Sharp lived at 22 Blomfield Road in West London, moving to St. Ives in 1940-1946. She traveled widely in the 1920’s and 1930’s, visiting Cornwall, the South of France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, views of which appeared in her Royal Academy exhibits.

Dorothea Sharp epitomizes the movement known as ‘British Impressionism’. She had studied and painted in France and was clearly aware of Monet and the Impressionists; the clarity of light, her novel use of color, the spontaneity of her brushwork, define her as a significant figure in twentieth century British painting.

Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait
1819-1905

Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, A British born landscape artist, was one of the nineteenth century’s most popular painters. A good story-teller on canvas, Tait was able to instill in his genre paintings a strong sense of drama and conflict.

Although he never traveled further West than Chicago, he acquired a reputation as a frontier artist, painting scenes of hunters and wildlife, mainly from his experiences in upstate New York. The Quail and Young (date unknown, Corcoran Gallery of Arts), is a typical example.

Tait was born in 1819 in Liverpool, and schooled in Lancaster. By his mid-teens, he was working at Agents, an art dealer in Manchester. In his spare time, he taught himself how to paint by copying works at the Royal Institute.

During these years, he was able to assist George Catlin with his traveling Indian gallery in England and Paris. Tait was impressed with Catlin’s interpretation of the American West; it provided the impetus for his own immigration to the United States in 1850.

Tait worked out of New York City, but spent considerable time in the Adirondack Mountains, becoming a proficient marksman and woodsman. Using this rugged setting as a background, Tait focused much of his art on capturing the drama of a man against nature. His style, which combined misty, atmospheric landscape settings with detailed renderings of human figures, reminds one of that of George Caleb Bingham.

The period 1850 to 1860 was a prolific time for Tait. His paintings were accepted by Easterners as definitive views of life on the frontier. Currier and Ives reproduced much of his work, making him one of the most popular artists of the period.

These genre paintings were not his only source of success. Tait mastered still lifes of dead game, influencing a whole generation of artists, beginning with William Michael Harnett 25 years later. He also did barnyard landscapes, a pastoral departure from his frontier scenes.

Tait’s style did not change from 1860 until death in 1905; he continued to work in the style which he had found successful.

Memberships:
National Academy of Design

Public Collections:
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Denver Art Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Museum of the City of New York
R.W./ Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut