Artists

Isaac Sprague (September 5, 1811–1895) was a self-taught landscape, botanical, and ornithological painter. He was America's best known botanical illustrator of his day. Sprague was born in Hingham, Massachusetts and apprenticed with his uncle as a carriage painter. In 1843, Sprague served as an assistant to John James Audubon on an ornithological...

Sir James Jebusa Shannon (1862 - 1923), Anglo-American artist, was born in Auburn, New York, and at the age of eight was taken by his parents to Canada. When he was sixteen, he went to England, where he studied at South Kensington, and after three years won the gold medal for figure painting. His portrait of the Hon. Horatia Stopford , one of the...

Otto Stark (1859–1926) was an American Impressionist painter who was considered to be a member of the Hoosier Group of Indiana artists. Stark's work most clearly showed the influence of Impressionism, and he often featured children in his work. He began his career as a commercial woodcarver's apprentice in Indianapolis until an ankle injury...

Joseph Steward (1753–1822) was a prominent American artist. Early years Joseph Steward was born on July 6, 1753. He was the son of Joseph and Jane (Wilson) Steward of Upton, Massachusetts. Stewart went to Dartmouth College, graduating in 1780. Joseph Steward continued his studies under the guidance of Reverend Doctor Levi Hart of Preston,...

Julian A. Scott (February 14, 1846 – July 4, 1901), he was born in Johnson, Vermont, and served as a Union Army drummer during the American Civil War where he received America's highest military decoration the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Lee's Mills; he was also an American painter and Civil War artist. Family Julian was the...

William Sonntag was one of the central figures of the Hudson River School. Primarily self-taught, his early landscapes were executed during painting excursions from Cincinnati to the Ohio River Valley and in Kentucky and West Virginia (1856 and 1859). Born in East Liberty, Pennsylvania March 2, 1822, it is believed Sonntag studied for a short period...

The work of James Augustus Suydam, characterized by idealized tranquil landscapes and seascapes illuminated by softly sunlit skies, is emblematic of the American Luminist movement of the nineteenth century. Biography James Augustus Suydam was born on March 27, 1819 in New York City. Suydam’s family was of Dutch decedent, tracing their ancestry...

Jane Stuart was born sometime between 1808 and 1812, the youngest child of artist Gilbert Stuart and his wife, Charlotte Coates. Gilbert Stuart was the famed New England painter of European kings, American presidents, prominent citizens and a particularly well-known depiction of Sir William Grant known as The Skater. Stuart's George Washington...

Nothing but the name, given in the inscription as D. G. Stouter, / Artist, is known about the artist who created the National Gallery's painting, On Point (1980.62.68). However, the source he copied has been identified as an 1854 Gleason's Pictorial article on grouse shooting, which is accompanied by a print almost identical to Stouter's painting....

Joseph Whiting Stock was born on 30 January 1815 in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1826 an oxcart fell on him, paralyzing him from the waist down, and in 1832, on the advice of his physician, he began to study art so that he might make a living. His teacher was Franklin White, a pupil of Chester Harding (1792-1866). In 1834, when Stock was...

William Stearns has not been positively identified, but is believed to have been active circa 1830 to 1840. The name comes from the inscription on the National Gallery's Bowl of Fruit (1953.5.34), which reads PAINTED BY (at lower left) WILLIAM STEARNS (at lower right), and was probably applied with a stamp. There are two other known pictures by...

Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia School of Design. She traveled to Europe and studied in Spain, France and Italy.  Until 1922, she lived primarily in New Hampshire, but then made her permanent home in Princeton, New Jersey.  In 1924, she became a member of the National...

Walter Granville Smith was born in Bellport, New York on January 26, 1870 and he died in Granville, New York in 1938. He was a painter and illustrator who studied with W. Satterlee, C. Beckwith and Willard Metcalf at the Arts Student League in New York City and in Paris at the Academie Julian. He was a member of the American Water Color Society,...

Born in Buxton, Maine, 7 August 1801, the artist was probably named after the Smith family's physician, Dr. Royal Brewster. As the eleventh of fourteen children of John McCurdy and Elizabeth McLellan Smith, Royall successfully survived a childhood of limited financial means and some illness to become a successful artisan. Between 1830 and 1837,...

A traditional American marine artist in ever sense, it is unusual for an artist to exhibit such a high level of quality, which Joseph B. Smith does, and have only two dozen or so known surviving works to his credit. The majority of works were performed in conjunction with his son, William S. Smith; born in 1821. Their partnership appears to have...

Allen Smith, Jr., met with considerable success in the Midwest as a portraitist. He studied briefly with William D. Parisen (1800-1832) while attending the antique classes at the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York. Smith also attended the antique class of the National Academy of Design, where he won a prize in 1833. He exhibited at the...

James David Smillie (January 16, 1833 - September 14, 1909), American artist, was born in New York City. His father, James Smillie (1807-1885), a Scottish engraver, emigrated to New York in 1829, was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1851, did much, with his brother William C. (1813-1908), to develop the engraving of bank-notes, and was an...

William Thomas Smedley (March 26, 1858 – 1920), American artist, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, of a Quaker. He worked on a newspaper, then studied engraving and art in Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and—after making a tour of the South Seas—in Paris under Jean-Paul Laurens. He settled in New York...

Virtually nothing is known about Thomas Skynner, although a significant body of work is now associated with his name. The attribution to Skynner of two pairs of portraits at the National Gallery (John Stone, 1953.5.55; Eliza Welch Stone, 1953.5.56; Portrait of a Man, 1967.20.4; Portrait of a Woman, 1967.20.5) was made on the basis of...

Ruth W. Shute and her physician husband Dr. Samuel A. Shute were itinerant portrait painters known for their individual and collaborated watercolor portraits of individuals living in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and northern New York State beginning in 1827. It appears Samuel became very ill around 1834-35 and was unable to...

Joshua Shaw (1776-1860) was an Anglo-American artist and inventor.[1] Early life Shaw was born in Ellesmere Port, England in 1776 and was orphaned at the age of 7. To survive he worked for a local farmer as a bird scarer. During the three years he spent doing this work he discovered his artistic talent and began drawing the animals he...

Frank H. Shapleigh was born in Boston and studied painting at the Lowell Institute of Drawing.  In 1867-1868, he sailed to Europe where he studied in the studio of Emile Lambinet (1815-1877). Shapleigh painted throughout New England, in St. Augustine, Florida, California, and in Europe.  For sixteen years, from 1877 to 1893, he was...

Christian Schussele (born Guebwiller, Alsace, 16 April 1824; died Merchantville, New Jersey, 20 August 1879) was an artist. He studied under Adolphe Yvon and Paul Delaroche 1842-1848 and then came to the United States. Here, for some time, he worked at chromolithography which he had also pursued in France. Later he devoted himself almost entirely...

Morton Livingston Schamberg (October 15, 1881 - October 13, 1918) was an American painter and photographer. He was one of the first American artists to explore the aesthetic qualities of industrial subjects.[1] Schamberg is considered a pioneer of the Precisionism art movement, and one of the first American adopters of Cubist...

William Harrison Scarborough was born on November 7, 1812 in Dover, Tennessee. While his family heritage was English, the Scarboroughs had been living in America for two generations at the time of William's birth. Growing up, William's parents encouraged each of their thirteen children to pursue their educations, and at sixteen he left home to...

John Sartain (October 24, 1808 - October 25, 1897) was an artist who pioneered mezzotint engraving in the United States.[1] Biography John Sartain was born in London, England on October 24, 1808. He learned line engraving, and produced several of the plates in William Young Ottley's Early Florentine School (1826). In 1828, he began to do...

Jules Émile Saintin (1829-1894) was born in Lemée (Aisne), France on October 14, 1829 and died in Paris on July 14, 1894. He is considered a portrait, historical and genre painter from the academic French school. He received his formal art education in 1845 at the Ecole des Beaux-arts under Michel-Martin Drolling (1786-1851), Achille-Jean-...

Theodore Clement Steele (September 11, 1847-July 24, 1926) was an American Impressionist painter known for his Indiana landscapes. Theodore Steele's paintings are in many public collections, including those of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington, Indiana (for...

John Mix Stanley (January 17, 1814 – April 10, 1872) was an artist-explorer, an American painter of landscapes, and Native American portraits and tribal life. Born in the Finger Lakes region of New York, he started painting signs and portraits as a young man, but in 1842 traveled to the American West to paint Native American life. In 1846 he...

Lilly Martin Spencer (born Angelique Marie Martin) (November 26, 1822 – May 22, 1902) was one of the most popular and widely reproduced American female genre painters in the mid-nineteenth century. She painted domestic scenes, women and children in a warm happy atmosphere. Although she did have an audience for her work Spencer had difficulties...

John Smybert (or Smibert) (1688–1751), Scottish American artist, was born in Edinburgh and died in Boston, Massachusetts. Smibert began drawing while apprenticed as a painter and plasterer, on moving to London he worked as a painter of coach carriages and a copyist. He studied under Sir James Thornhill at his academy, then travelled to Edinburgh...

John White Allen Scott (1815-1907) or John W.A. Scott was an artist in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century.[1][2] He worked for Pendleton's Lithography early in his career. In the 1840s he started a lithography business in partnership with Fitz Hugh Lane ("Lane & Scott's Lithography").[3][4] Around 1852 he kept a studio in Boston's...