Ralph Wormeley Curtis (1854-1922)
American painter, was Boston born and a graduate of Harvard. He eventually lived in Europe and was a painter of portraits, genres, and interiors.
Ralph and John would become good friends. They were 2nd cousins (their father's were cousins) though they didn't meet until Curtis went to Paris to study art. It's not exactly clear when that was. 1880 seems to be the best account. It would be through Francis B Chadwick that they met and all three traveled to the Netherlands in August of '80 to excape the heat and study Frans Hals. It was here at Scheveningen that he paints Ralph on the beach.
Here Sargent combines drawing and brushwork in a single action, as Hals did to capture Curtis's air of carefree sophistication.
(The High museum of art)
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Born into a prominent Boston family, after Harvard in 1878 at the age of twenty-four, Ralph Wormeley Curtis went to Europe with his family. They eventually set up their primary residence in Venice on the Grand Canal buying part of the Palazzo Barbaro. It would be here that he would do most of his painting and would find himself at the center of a cosmopolitan circles of artists including Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Vernon Lee, and of course his cousin and friend: John Singer Sargent.
He joined Carolus-Duran's atelier and studied at the Academe Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre [1].
Between 1881 and 1893, he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon, eventually winning an honorable mention at the Paris Exposition Universal of 1889.
In 1897, he married his wife (Lisa de Wolfe Colt) and settled in the Maritime Alps, though often returing to Venice and his parent's palazzo. He, like Sargent, traveled all over Europe and painted where he went, but wasn't nearly as successful. From what I can gather (so far) Curtis didn't really make a living off his paintings. Independently wealthy he was an gentleman artist.
His father Daniel Curtis was an attorney, also Harvard trained, an agent for Brown, Shipley & Co, of Liverpool and London; and was also a Trustee for the Boston Public Library.
The influence of Sargent on Ralph's art was significant. One can see the two working on similar subjects
Sargent would later paint a number of portraits of Ralph's family:
Portrait of Mrs. Daniel Sargent Curtis; 1882; Ralph's mother
Mrs Ralph Curtis (Lisa de Wolfe Colt);1898; Ralph's wife
An Interior in Venice; 1898; Group portrait of Ralph's parents and he and his wife
Ralph Wormeley Curtis, Mrs with Her Daughter, Sylvia; 1902; watercolor; group family portrait [n/a]
John Singer Sargent, An Exhibition -- Whitney Museum, NY & The Art Institute of Chicago 1986-1987
Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle, 2004