Cecilia Beaux, born in 1855, was one of the most prominent female portrait painters of the late 19th and early 20th century and is often ranked with Mary Cassatt. She began her artistic training under two Philadelphia based artists from 1872-73 and 1881-83. Beaux then went to Paris to continue her studies at Academie Julian with Bouguereau in 1888. She rejected marriage and decided to dedicate her life to painting and acquired many patrons, particularly women and children of the social elite. Well-molded hands that shine with light against a dark background mark Beaux’s early traditional style. There are evident characteristics in the face that often convey psychological insight. However, after her return from France, she adopted a more vibrant, fluent style with whites, yellows and lavenders contrasted with bright black. “Les Dernier Jours D’efance” (1883), one of her greatest works, is the profile of her sister and resembles Whistler’s works of his mother. This piece won awards of both sides of the Atlantic and established her career as a respected portraitist.
James Carroll Beckwith was a portrait, genre and landscape painter born in 1852. He studied at the National Academy of Design, NYC, in 1871 as well as Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. While living in Paris, Beckwith shared a studio with Sargent. They both assisted a former teacher, Emile Carolus-Duran, in painting ceiling decoration in the Louvre. He also exhibited at the Paris Salon four times between the years 1877-87. In 1910 Beckwith moved to Italy for four years where he worked on plein-air landscapes that were full of sun and color. Although most of his work was basically academic, he felt a strong Impressionistic impression. Beckwith was also a highly respected teacher at the Art Students League in NYC, where he taught an antiques course. Unfortunately, due to poor health, Beckwith committed suicide in 1917. Most of his paintings were subsequently auctioned off in New York proceeding his death.
George Bellows was born in Ohio in 1882. He was a Realist painter whose bold, gestural style is noted in his dynamic interpretation of urban life. Bellows studied at Ohio State University and with William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art, NYC. His most popular paintings were scenes of prizefights, athletic events and crowded streets. These paintings were meant to display the physical stress and quality of life of everyday people.
He would often complete two or three canvases in a day, attempting to capture the moment’s glimpse of such scenes. Although Bellows was associated with members of “The Eight”, he did not exhibit in their 1908 show and therefore gained more popularity with critics and patrons for not challenging academic authority. His work often showed more qualities of the Ashcan School. He also taught at the Art Students League. In 1916 Bellows turned to lithography and during WWI he produced a series portraying the atrocities of war. Near the end of his career, Bellows began to experiment with geometric compositions based on the mathematical theories of Jay Hambridged. Bellows died at the age of 42 from a ruptured appendix.
Frank Weston Benson, born in 1862, was one of the first American Impressionists as well as an etcher and teacher. He studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and at Academie Julian. His plein-air paintings are best known for female figures on hilltops, which he began in 1903. He stayed at the BMFA to teach and became a member of the “Ten American Painters”. He exhibited with “The Ten” 41 times between 18998-1919. After 1912, Benson began to paint more wildlife and also developed his etching and watercolor work. “Portrait in White” (1889) is a study of his wife on their first anniversary and is often compared to James Whistler’s style of “art for art’s sake”. He pays special attention to the blue-white of his wife’s dress and the yellow-white of the chair she poses in. Benson also completed murals in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. before his death in 1951.
Thomas Hart Benton was born in 1889. He began his artistic career with training at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1906-7 and then went to Academie Julian in 1908-11. While in Europe he was influenced by works of El Greco and the Italian Renaissance, which later appeared in the figural distortions of his mature work. During his early stages, Benton experimented with many Modernist styles before rejecting it all for being too esoteric and distorted. He held a very abrasive attitude towards abstraction. Unfortunately, much of his early work was destroyed in a fire in 1913. Benton’s paintings reflect a Realist attitude meant to be a reminder of the strength of the American people with a dynamic, changing character. In the 1920s he developed his style of jerky figured, long limbed bodies in muralistic settings, which were meant to draw viewers into a powerful narrative. A joint exhibition with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry helped Benton acquire fame as a Regionalist painter. He also taught at the Kansas City Art Institute, School of Art and Design and the Art Students League and mentored Jackson Pollack. In 1942 Benton produced an anti-fascist series called “The Year of the Peril” that were reproduced by the U.S. government on stamps, cards and posters. Thomas Hart Benton died in 1975.
John George Brown was born in 1831 in England and immigrated to America in 1853. While in England he studied under William B. Scott and continuing his education at the National Academy of Design in NYC. Brown was one of the most successful genre painters of the late 19th century. He worked as a glassblower in Brooklyn and proceeded to open a studio in 1860, launching his artistic career with a painting entitled “His First Cigar”. His paintings of cheery street urchins, vendors and shoeshine boys were quite popular with wealthy collectors. However, Brown falsified his subjects as always happy and healthy with just a touch of grime for cosmetics. These scenes were really below his artistic ability but he did not want to cause social alarm among patrons.
Many of Brown’s works were reproduced in lithography and widely distributed with packaged teas. The royalties earned from one litho were $25,000. Brown’s financial success allowed for him to paint country landscapes for pleasure. He exhibited much of his work at the National Academy of Design from 1858-1900, where he also taught for many years.
George DeForest Brush was born in 1855 and studied at the National Academy of Design from 1870-74. He traveled to Paris to finish his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1874-80. Brush painted largely in an academic manner due to the influence of his European training. When he returned to America, Brush traveled out West for five years, living with Native American Indians in their villages throughout Wyoming. He produced romanticized, domestic views of this life for Harper’s and Century magazine. However, these themes were not very popular with the public. Brush went to Florence in 1890 and focused on the Renaissance theme of mother and child that he is best known for. Every year from 1898-1917, he returned to visit Florence. Brush had two major exhibitions in NYC in the 1930s and taught at the Art Student League on and off for years. He later moved to New Hampshire but unfortunately a fire destroyed his studio in 1937, brining to an end Brush’s artistic endeavors. He died in 1941.
Dennis Miller Bunker, born in 1861, studied under William Merritt Chase at the National Academy of Design, NYC from 1878-81. He then traveled to Paris to complete his education at Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Academie Julian in 1882. Bunker helped introduce Impressionism to America. He was a close friend of John Singer Sargent, who shared the influence of Monet’s teachings with Bunker. In the summer of 1882, after finishing school, Bunker traveled to Brittney with several other Americans to paint en-plein-air. He showed a talent for portraying the play of light across green fields and costal villages.
Bunker’s earlier landscapes reflected more mannerism of Courbet and Barbizon painters. As he developed his own form of modified Impressionism, Bunker created a more open form composition with a brighter palette. Bunker married in the fall of 1890 but died of heart failure that year while home for the Christmas holiday.
Charles Burchfield was born in 1893. He studied at the Cleveland School of Art from 1912-16. His work is generally divided into three periods. Up until 1918, Burchfield painted fantasy like woodlands and watercolor landscapes. From 1918 to 1934, he painted the streets of midwestern towns with grimy, rundown houses. This worked gained wide public acceptance. Burchfield experimented with converting sounds of nature into a system of symbolic brushstrokes. Later in his career, this system became an interpretation of his own thought processes and appears frequently in his work. His last works returned to more fantastical themes with enormous butterflies and dragonflies.
In 1921, Burchfield moved to Buffalo, NY and worked as the head of the design department of a wallpaper company. He also taught at the Art Institute of Buffalo from 1949-52 and University of Buffalo from 1950-52. The Burchfield-Penny Art Center in Buffalo holds the largest collection of his work and published a comprehensive catalogue of Burchfield’s paintings and journals.
Walter L. Palmer studied art under Charles Elliott and F.E. Church, a member of the Hudson River School, in 1870. He was the son of sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer and is best known for his winter landscapes and scenes of Venice. Palmer exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design for 60 years and was one of the first American artists to draw inspiration from Chinese and Japanese culture.
Palmer lived in Albany and traveled several times to Europe. In 1899 he and his wife took an influential trip to Japan. Palmer’s subtle color and controlled light have the characteristics of a Colorist with the amazing capacity for revealing the potential of snow in painting. His most well known painting “Silent Dawn” hangs at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC and shows snow laden tress near a still brook.
