Artists

Thomas Doughty was born in Philadelphia on July 19, 1793, and lived there until 1828. Although little is known about his formal education, he apparently showed a strong talent for drawing from an early age. When he was fifteen or sixteen Doughty was apprenticed to a leather worker, and by 1814 he was listed in the Philadelphia directory as a...

Although Joseph Decker never achieved an important artistic reputation during his lifetime, his varied career encompassed more than thirty productive years. Born to a carpenter and his wife in 1853 in Wurtemberg, Germany, Decker emigrated with his family to America at the age of fourteen. He was first apprenticed to a Brooklyn house painter, then...

Anson Dickinson, a painter of miniature portraits, was born in Milton, Connecticut, in 1779. He was the eldest of ten children born to Oliver Dickinson Junior (1757-1847) and Anna Landon Dickinson (1760-1849). As a boy, Anson Dickinson was apprenticed to Litchfield silversmith Isaac Thompson. Little else is known about his early art training. He first...

Felix Octavius Carr Darley (June 23, 1822 – March 27, 1888) often credited as F. O. C. Darley, was an American painter in watercolor and illustrator, known for his illustrations in works by well-known 19th century authors, including: James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Mary Maples Dodge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, George Lippard,...

One of the most critically successful landscape painters of the turn of the twentieth century, Charles Harold Davis created works in which nature reflects subjective mood and emotion. Davis was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, the son of a schoolteacher. An avid draftsman by his early teens, he studied drawing for two years at Boston’s Museum of...

Charles Demuth (November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935) was an American watercolorist who turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism. "Search the history of American art," wrote Ken Johnson in the New York Times, "and you will discover few watercolors more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth....

Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796 – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School. Early life Durand was born in and eventually died in Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village), the eighth of eleven children; his father was a watchmaker and a silversmith. Durand was apprenticed to an engraver from 1812...

Robert Scott Duncanson (1821 – December 21, 1872) was born in Seneca County, New York in 1821.[1] Duncanson’s father was a Canadian of Scottish descent and his mother was an African American, thus making him “a freeborn person of color.”[2] Duncanson, an artist who is relatively unknown today, painted America, both physically and figuratively,...

Thomas Dewing was born on May 4, 1851, in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts. As a child he was interested in both drawing and in playing the violin; this early interest in music would later reappear in the themes of many of his paintings. By 1872, after a period of apprenticeship in a lithography shop, Dewing was listing his profession as "artist." He...

Henry Golden Dearth (22 April 1864 – 27 March 1918) was a distinguished American painter[1] who studied in Paris and continued to spend his summers in France painting in the Normandy region. He would return to New York in winter, and became known for his moody paintings of the Long Island area. Around 1912, Dearth changed his artistic style, and...

William Herbert Dunton, known later in life as “Buck,” was born in Augusta, Maine, in 1878. His lifelong passion for the outdoors was nurtured from an early age by his grandfather, who took him on expeditions, teaching him about hunting and fishing. Drawing the outdoors followed naturally. As a child, Dunton was self-taught, developing a precise...

Clement Drew (1806-1889) was an artist and "dealer in picture-frames" in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century.[1] He specialized in marine paintings. He kept a studio on Court Street (ca.1840s-1860s),[2][3] Tremont Street (in the Boston Museum building, ca.1873), Copeland Street (ca.1888),[4] and Tremont Temple (1889).[5] He married Elizabeth...

William M.S. Doyle was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1769. His father was a British soldier, but Doyle seems to have lived and worked his entire life in Boston. Doyle was a silhouettist, artist of portraits of both full-size and miniature. He worked in silhouette cutting, watercolor, oil and pastel. His silhouettes were beautifully rendered in...

Ann Sophia Towne Darrah was a pupil of Paul Weber.  She was a competent artist whose long career included executing pastel portraits, landscapes, and marine views.  Her later works were done in plein air. In 1858 she took part in the Bierstadt Exhibition in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  She exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum from 1855 to 1865 and at...

I. Biography Little is known about the life of French artist Victor de Grailly, famous for his Hudson River School-style landscapes of the United States. Born in France in 1804, he studied with neo-classical painter Jean Victor Bertin, who also mentored the great Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Surprisingly, it is unlikely that de Grailly ever traveled to...