Charles Victor Thirion was born in Langres (Haute-Saone) France, May 30, 1833 and died in Paris, April 27, 1878. Thirion was considered an academic portrait painter from the French school. He also was a very accomplished engraver. Thirion received his first art education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) and Charles Gleyre (1806-1874). Being accepted into the academy was done through testing and many artists failed to meet the standards elected by the governing body. His work was judged by Bougereau and Gleyre who became his teachers.

In 1850, Thirion moved to Paris aided by a stipend from the city of Lille. Thirion had his first exhibition in the 1861 Salon. The competition was tremendous; Jules Breton, Jean Antoine Ball, Meissonnier and other very important painters of the day. It was during this exhibition that French-American art dealer Michel Knoedler saw Thirion’s work and began to handle it at the Goupil and Cie in Paris. In many ways Thirion was caught as others were in the middle of a political and artistic battle for control. By 1870 the Franco Prussian War had begun. Many of the French artists had either joined the military or left for England.

Thirion joined the French Army in 1870 and was wounded during a skirmish in 1871 just before the end of the war. Wounded and ill, Thirion returned to his painting but found that his academic style was in little demand. Charles Victor Thirion died at the age of 45 on April 27, 1878. His last sale was to the Museum of Langres in the town of his birth. The painting ” Apres l’ecole ” was a good example of his very accomplished style. The small city of Lille also owns a painting ” Portrait de ‘enfant”.

Born in Pomona, California and living much of his life in Southern California, Millard Sheets earned a reputation as one of the foremost watercolorists of his era. Of all the Depression era artists, he was the most representative of the California School, part of the American Scene movement. According to Susan Anderson in her essay, ‘California Holiday’, for “American Art Review” June 2002, he was a “colorful, larger-than-life character possessing equal measures of talent and ambition” and he “set the direction for the school.” He was willing to be called a regionalist only if you accepted the idea that his work embraced a large region.

In addition to having painting talents, he was a master architect, mural designer, and maker of tapestries and mosaics. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles with Clarence Hinkle and F. Tolles Chamberlin. After graduation in 1929, he taught watercolor classes at Chouinard and his use of this medium encouraged many others to follow suit including Phil Dike, Lee Blair, Hardie Gramatky, Barse Miller, Phil Paradise and Paul Sample.

They had much camaraderie amongst themselves and joined the California Water Color Society, stirring state-wide interest and ultimately a national revival of interest in that medium. Water color with its quick drying, fast moving qualities seemed to reflect the mood of the country of going fast and being flexible.

Later, beginning 1938 Sheets chaired both the art departments at Scripps College in Claremont and was director of the Claremont Graduate School. He remained there until 1954 to 1960 when he headed the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.

After that time period, he had a studio for architectural design, mosaics and murals, and for the next twenty years executed over 100 buildings throughout the United States, mostly with mosaics and murals.

His national recognition began in 1930 when his work was selected for inclusion in the Carnegie Institute’s International Exhibition of Paintings, the most important United States exhibition at that time. In World War II, he was an artist reporter in Burma and India, and he designed Luke Air Force base in Phoenix, Arizona.

Member:
National Academy of Design.

Museums:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Whitney Museum in New York
Chicago Art Institute
National Gallery in Washington D.C.
DeYoung Museum in San Francisco
Los Angeles County Museum

Partial Credit: “American Art Review,” June 2002 This biography from the archives of AskART.com.

Landscape painter Jervis McEntee was born in Rondout, New York in the Hudson River Valley, in 1828; he died in 1891, in the same community.

The nearby Catskill Mountains were reflected in his paintings of rural New York State. His artistic career was influenced by a friend, Henry Pickering, and by artist Frederic E. Church. Pickering was a cultured man and a poet, who boarded with the McEntee family and spent considerable time with young Jervis.

At age 22, McEntee went to New York City; he studied with Church during the winter of 1850. McEntee married a minister’s daughter in 1854 and tried his hand unsuccessfully at business in Rondout, before returning to art as a profession.

In 1858, he opened a studio in New York City. Spending winters in the city, he returned in the summers to river-valley and mountain locations, his prime subjects. At the beginning of the Civil War, Mc Entee enlisted in the Union Army. In 1868, he toured Europe with artist Sanford R. Gifford.

McEntee’s landscapes are characterized by colors of autumn and winter. He usually painted small views rather than wide panoramas. They are simple, naturalistic and detailed, and critics have noted the presence of a melancholy mood, perhaps even a feeling of desolation. He added an unusual touch to his painting The Melancholy Days Have Come (1861, National Academy of Design), by attaching part of “The Death of the Flowers,” a poem by William Cullen Bryant which complemented the painting. Melancholy Days enlarged McEntee’s reputation. Another notable painting was Eastern Sky at Sunset (date unknown, Corcoran Art Gallery).

Elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1860, McEntee became a full member in 1861.

Memberships:
National Academy of Design

Public Collections:
Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington D.C.
National Academy of Design, New York City
Peabody Institute, Baltimore

Walter Bambrook was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 11, 1910. He remained a true native of Albuquerque until his death on June 1, 1984. He attended art school at the University of New Mexico and then studied for four years under noted New Mexico artist Carl von Hassler. Later in his life, he became an art instructor, teaching at UNM, Height’s Community Club, and the Women’s Club of Albuquerque.

Throughout his career, Bambrook’s focus was on capturing the landscape of his home state. He was an adventurous outdoorsman in his younger years and his far-ranging trips provided varied, myriad scenes for him to paint. His later years would find him on simple painting trips, either to sketch for future reference or to paint on-site.

Recognition for his work came at a young age. He received his first award at the age of only thirteen from a national art show at the Chicago Art Institute. Later awards came from institutions including the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, DC), L.O.M. Sweat Memorial Museum (Portland, ME), the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the Santa Fe State Museum. His work has also been exhibited at institutions including the White Memorial Museum (San Antonio, TX) and the High Plains Historical Museum (Canyon, TX). Additionally, Bambrook was a member of the Artists Equity and served as its national vice-president in 1969-70.

Steve Huston was born and raised in Alaska. He studied at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, while working construction each summer to pay his tuition. Even before graduating with his BFA, Huston began illustrating for such clients as Ceasar’s Palace, MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Studios among others.

After nearly a decade of doing commercial work, Huston decided a change was in order. He began teaching life drawing and painting, composition and anatomy, first at is alma mater, then at the Disney, Warner Brothers, and Dreamworks Studios. The allowed him the privilege of passing on the knowledge he had be given, while further honing his craft and seeking out new influences for the career he now envisioned.

Such influences came to included Titian and Rembrandt, the early American Tonalists, the homespun character of the WPA art projects, and the heroic and graphic power of the American Comic Book from.

1995 began his career as a fine artist, winning top prizes at the California Art Club Gold Medal Show that year and the following. A string of gallery shows has followed, first in Los Angeles and then in New York and elsewhere.

Paul Chaigneau was especially adept painting pastoral scenes incorporating flocks of sheep. Troupeau de Moutons avec Berger highlights this specialty. In the scene, we find a flock being led by a shepherd and his dog; the setting sun highlights their movement home. Chaigneau includes iconic haystacks in the background, which are similarly set alight by the glowing sunset.

Paul Chaigneau was a 19th century French artist who specialized in landscapes and animal paintings. His work bears a striking resemblance to that of Jean Ferdinand Chaigneau, who was also a landscape and animal painter.

Olaf began his art training at the age of 12. His family, with their meager means, managed to enroll him in the Danish equivalent of a private school. Here his deft drawing abilities were discovered inspiring his family and teacher to install him at the Technical Society. The Society was a primer for promising young artists considered potential material for the Royal Academy. His hopes for a continued education were dashed when an upheaval in his family resulted in his mother and himself boarding a ship bound for America.

Olaf and his mother arrived in New York on July 12, 1892 and boarded the transcontinental train. Five days later they disembarked in Great Falls, Montana. Olaf worked as a cowboy his first year in Montana, supplying horses for the Yellowstone Stage Lines. The next year he was an apprentice machinist for the Great Northern Railroad, then a locomotive repairman.

At 20 he was inspired by a Canadian patron to begin working in oil. Seltzer’s style reflects the influence of his friend Charlie Russell, who had encouraged him as well and painted with him on the many outings they took together. His friend ship with Russell brought Seltzer into the company of many famous patrons and bolstered his growing success.

When he was 44 he was laid off by the railroad company and took up painting full time. As a traditional Russell-school Western painter he was very successful. In 1926 he moved to New York to complete several Russell commissions and continue his own work. In 1930 he was commissioned by the wealthy Dr. Philip Cole to paint the series of miniatures on Montana history. Going nearly blind he completed over 2,500 paintings. By 1936, he returned to Montana where he lived for the rest of his life.

His works are held at the Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art ( 234 paintings), Amon Carter Museum, and several private collections.

From the time Joseph Henry Sharp was a small child, he had a fascination with the West. Through the Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper and seeing “the noble red man” at the Ohio Railway Station, Sharp developed a permanent interest in Indian culture. At the age of fourteen, an accident left him deaf and in his mother’s care. She became his teacher and encouraged him to develop his artistic talents. His mother was so confident of her son’s growing talent that she submitted some of his drawings to the McMicken School of Design at the University of Cincinnati. So impressed were they by Sharp’s talent, he was admitted into the school despite his young age.

Sharp was fully absorbed by his studies and inspired by his new surroundings. The art community was flourishing in Cincinnati and had drawn to it many great artists like Frank Duveneck, Robert Blum, Kenyon Cox, Edward Potthast, and Henry Farny. Farny was already using Indian subjects in his paintings and gained the immediate attention of Sharp. He tried to dissuade Sharp from going West by telling him of all its great dangers. This only served to fascinate the young artist and in the spring of 1883 he set off on his first journey west. He traveled and sketched Indian tribes in New Mexico, California, and the Northwest. Understanding that this was a disappearing culture, he made his studies as scientifically accurate as possible.

To further his training he made another trip to Europe in 1886. Sharp studied in Munich with Karl Marr and traveled to Italy and Spain with his good friend and Master Painter Frank Duveneck. Upon returning to Ohio in 1892 he taught painting for ten years at the Cincinnati Art Academy. Feeling the pressure and noise of a rapidly growing city, Sharp began making trips to the Southwest more frequently. Having spent consecutive summers sketching Indians, and winters completing the paintings, he decided to move to Taos. He is considered the “father of the Taos art colony” where he became a permanent resident in 1912.

His works are held by the Amon Carter Museum, Wyoming State Art Gallery, Bradford Brinton Memorial, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Museum of New Mexico, Cincinnati Art Museum, University of California, Smithsonian Institute, the Anschutz Collection and many other important private collections throughout the world.

One of the premier watercolorists of this century, Donald Teague was born in Brooklyn, New York. From 1916 to 1917 he studied under Bridgman and DuMond at the famed Art Students League in New York. After serving in the navy during WWI he became the pupil of Norman Wilkinson in London. Upon his return to New York he continued his studies at the Art Students League under the tutelage of Dean Cornwell, who helped Teague begin his long art career as an illustrator in 1921. Because he was the primary illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, he signed Collier’s illustrations with another name, Edwin Dawes.

In the 1920’s Teague spent several summers on a Colorado ranch. When he moved to California in 1938, he specialized as a Western illustrator until Collier’s ceased publication in 1958. After finishing his career as an illustrator, Teague devoted his entire time to painting.

During his lifetime he won international recognition and numerous awards for his paintings, including five First Prizes from the National Academy of Western Art, both the Gold and Silver Medal Honors from the American Watercolor Society, the S.F.B. Morse Gold Medal from the National Academy of Western Art, and two Gold Medals from the Cowboy Artists of America. His work has been exhibited in major museum collections throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Watercolour Society, the Tokyo Museum, the Peking National Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Watercolor in Mexico City, Chicago’s Art Institute, the Sydney Museum in Australia, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

The uniqueness of Donald Teague’s work lies in his own personality and in his ability to transmit it into a painting, to tell in watercolor what he saw and felt when he discovered the subject of the painting. His watercolors are a kind of realism he calls synthesis, for rarely, if you returned to the spot and the moment where a Teague painting began, could you find the same image as that in the painting.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a German immigrant who was a master engraver, Walter Ufer began his art training as an apprentice to a Louisville commercial lithographer. Having excelled in his field, he continued his education at the Royal Applied Art Schools and the Royal Academy in Dresden, Germany. Already a successful printer, Ufer decided to utilize his realistic painting style developed in Europe by becoming a fine artist. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, then the J. Francis Smith Art School in Chicago from 1901 to 1903, where he became a teacher and concentrated mostly on portrait painting. He worked with Armour & Co’s advertising department from 1905 to 1911. For the next two years he furthered his studies under the tutelage of Walter Thor in Munich. Upon completing his studies, he traveled to Paris, Italy and throughout North Africa painting as he went.
In 1914 Ufer moved to Taos. Called “energetic, outspoken and uninhibited” as well as “stormy, irascible and intransigent,” he quickly made his mark on the art community. He was said to paint “easily recognizable forms in an anecdotal manner.” He was the only Taos artist to ever be compared to Cezanne.

In 1920 he won third prize at the Carnegie International, a breakthrough in prestige for Taos and a real feather in Ufer’s cap, whose prices went from $3,000 per painting to an annual income of approximately $50,000.

In 1923, Ufer’s dealer persuaded him to specialize in paintings of an Indian on a white horse against the background of Taos Mountain. This contrived approach soon failed and Ufer was left broken emotionally. He borrowed money, gambled it all away and drank heavilyWALTER UFER, NA (1837-1936)
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a German immigrant who was a master engraver, Walter Ufer began his art training as an apprentice to a Louisville commercial lithographer. Having excelled in his field, he continued his education at the Royal Applied Art Schools and the Royal Academy in Dresden, Germany. Already a successful printer, Ufer decided to utilize his realistic painting style developed in Europe by becoming a fine artist. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago, then the J. Francis Smith Art School in Chicago from 1901 to 1903, where he became a teacher and concentrated mostly on portrait painting. He worked with Armour & Co’s advertising department from 1905 to 1911. For the next two years he furthered his studies under the tutelage of Walter Thor in Munich. Upon completing his studies, he traveled to Paris, Italy and throughout North Africa painting as he went.
In 1914 Ufer moved to Taos. Called “energetic, outspoken and uninhibited” as well as “stormy, irascible and intransigent,” he quickly made his mark on the art community. He was said to paint “easily recognizable forms in an anecdotal manner.” He was the only Taos artist to ever be compared to Cezanne.

In 1920 he won third prize at the Carnegie International, a breakthrough in prestige for Taos and a real feather in Ufer’s cap, whose prices went from $3,000 per painting to an annual income of approximately $50,000.

In 1923, Ufer’s dealer persuaded him to specialize in paintings of an Indian on a white horse against the background of Taos Mountain. This contrived approach soon failed and Ufer was left broken emotionally. He borrowed money, gambled it all away and drank heavily
. In a 1927 letter to Ernest Blumenschein, Ufer wrote “If I had money, I would be doing something more manly than paint pictures. My regret is that I cannot compete with real towering men.” Today his paintings are highly sought after and he is considered one of the most important artists to ever have come out of Taos.