Artists

William D. Washington[1] (October 7, 1833 – December 2, 1870[2]) was an American painter and teacher of art. He is most famous for his painting The Burial of Latané, which became a symbol of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy in the years following the American Civil War[3], and for the work he did in establishing the fine arts program of the...

Fidelia Bridges (May 19, either 1834 or 1835–1923) was one of the minute population of successful female artists in the 19th century and early 20th century. She painted small aspects of nature: flowers, birds, and other plants in their natural settings. She first was an oil painter and later took up watercolor painting. She was known for her...

Marcus Waterman graduated from Brown University and then moved to New York City, where he had a studio from 1857 to 1874. He became an associate member of the National Academy in 1861. After 1874, Waterman made his home in Boston and spent much of his time around New England in Vermont and Cape Cod. From 1879 to 1884, the artist traveled to...

William Stanley Haseltine (June 11, 1835-February 3, 1900) was an American painter and draftsman who was associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting, the Hudson River School and Luminism. Early life and education Born in Philadelphia to John Haseltine, a successful businessman, and Elizabeth Shinn Haseltine, an amateur landscape painter,...

Julie Hart Beers Kempson is regarded as among the best and perhaps the only woman artist of nineteenth-century America to specialize in landscapes. Biography Julie Hart Beers Kempson, a painter of the Hudson River School, was one of very few professional women landscape painters in nineteenth-century America and the only one to achieve any...

Francis Augustus Silva painted coastal, beach, and river scenes that represent the culmination of the landscape mode, dubbed “luminism” by modern scholars, characterized by broad, horizontal compositions with low horizons, delicate color, and crystalline light. Silva was a native of New York City and the son of a barber. Apprenticed to a sign...

John Henry Dolph is one of America's finest animal painters and he is most famous for his depictions of playful kittens and puppies that frolic on oriental rugs within Victorian interiors. Playful terrier and Kittens shows Dolph’s expertise at handling, in an academic manner, how fur, woven wool and anatomy can be painted with sureness and...

Alexander Helwig Wyant, was born January 11, 1836, in Ohio - and he died November 29, 1892 in New York, New York. He was an American landscape painter. Also known as Alexander Wyant, A. H. Wyant, he was active as an artist in Arkville, New York, and Keene Valley, New York among other places. Biography Alexander Wyant was born at Port Washington,...

Homer Dodge Martin (October 28, 1836 - February 2, 1897) was an American artist, particularly known for his landscapes. Biography Martin was born at Albany, New York. A pupil for a short time of William Hart, his earlier work was closely aligned with the Hudson River School. He was elected as associate of the National Academy of Design, New York,...

Ransome Gillett Holdridge was an early San Francisco school painter, specializing in Northern California landscapes. Biography Holdridge was born in New York City (or possibly London, England[1]) in 1836, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1850s, where he became head draughtsman at Mare Island Naval Yard. In 1874, with the...

Elihu Vedder (February 26, 1836 – January 29, 1923) was an American symbolist painter, book illustrator, and poet, born in New York City. He is best known for his fifty-five illustrations for Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (deluxe edition, published by Houghton Mifflin). Biography Elihu Vedder was born February 26,...

Elizabeth Jane Gardner (October 4, 1837-January 28, 1922) was an American academic and salon painter, who was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. She was an American expatriate who died in Paris where she had lived most of her life. She studied in Paris under the figurative painter Hugues Merle (1823-1881), the well-known salon painter Jules Joseph...

Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 - August 25, 1926) from Bolton, England was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Moran was hired as an...

Harriet Powers (October 29, 1837 – January 1, 1910) was an African American slave, folk artist and quilt maker from rural Georgia. She used traditional appliqué techniques to record local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events on her quilts. Only two of her quilts have survived: Bible Quilt 1886 and Pictorial Quilt 1898. Her quilts are...

Carducius Plantagenet Ream was one of the most important still life painters of the 19th century. Born in Lancaster, Ohio, Ream began his artistic career painting in New York and Cincinnati before he moved to Chicago in 1878. It was in Chicago that Ream became the city's leading still life painter and gained national and international recognition for...

Edward L. Custer was a portrait, animal, and landscape painter.  He was born in Basel, Switzerland, on January 24, 1837.  Custer came to the United States in 1846 or 1847 with his family at about the age of ten, living first in Syracuse, NY and later in Manchester, NH.  His father became a doctor while in Manchester.   He went to Germany to study...

William Keith (November 18, 1838 – April 13, 1911) was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes. Early life Keith was born in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1850. He lived in New York City, and became an apprentice wood engraver in 1856. He first traveled to the American West...

William Aiken Walker (March 11, 1839 – January 3, 1921) is an American artist who was born to an Irish Protestant father and a mother of South Carolina background in Charleston, South Carolina in 1839. In 1842, when his father died, Walker's mother moved the family to Baltimore, Maryland, where they remained until returning to Charleston in...

David Dalhoff Neal (October 20, 1838 – May 2, 1915), was an American artist. Early years David Dalhoff Neal was born to father Stephen Bryant Neal and mother Mary (Dalhoff) Neal, on Middlesex Street, in Lowell, Massachusetts. His grandparents were Stephen Neal, and David Dalhoff and Sally (Bean) Dalhoff of Canterbury, New Hampshire, Dolhoffs...

Walter Shirlaw (August 6, 1838 – December 30, 1909) was a Scottish-American artist. Shirlaw was born in Paisley, Scotland, and moved to the United States with his parents in 1840. He worked as a bank-note engraver, and his work was first exhibited at the National Academy in 1861. He was elected an academician of the Chicago Academy of Design in...

Charles H. Gifford was born in New Bedford, MA.  He was a late second-generation Hudson River School painter.  His canvases show a distinct preference for quiet scenes in which a luminous atmosphere veils roughness, light shines with clarity and stillness is achieved by means of even brushstrokes. The luminist quality of his paintings was an...

Edgar Melville Ward (1839–1915) was an American genre painter. Ward was born in Urbana, Ohio. His elder brother was the sculptor, John Quincy Adams Ward. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and in Paris under Cabanel. In 1883 he became a member of the Institut de France and was made a professor there. His paintings which are...

Robert Wylie (1839 - February 4, 1877), American artist, was born in the Isle of Man and relocated with his parents to the United States as a child. Wylie studied in the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, later serving a curator. In 1860, he helped found the Philadelphia Sketch Club, now one of the nation's oldest...

Edwin Austin Forbes (1839 – March 6, 1895) was an American landscape painter and etcher who first gained fame during the American Civil Warfor his detailed and dramatic sketches of military subjects, including battlefield combat scenes. Biography Forbes was born in New York, studied under A. F. Tait, and began as an animal and landscape...

Miss Fanny R. Thurston was active in the period 1876 to 1885.  An F. Thurston (presumably Fanny) exhibited in the 1876 exhibition of the American Society of Painters in Watercolor.  Fanny R. Thurston exhibited at the Boston Art Club in 1880, 1881, and 1882.  She also exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1885 giving her address as New...

Robert Swain Gifford was born on a small island called Nonamesset, which adjoins Naushon in the chain of Elizabeth Islands off the coast of southeastern Massachusetts. When Gifford was two years old his family moved to Fairhaven where his father was employed as a boatman and fisherman. Two famous New Bedford artists worked on the Fairhaven...

Artist, professor, architectural historian and first Director of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, Charles Herbert Moore was born on April 10, 1840 to Charles and Jane Maria Moore. He grew up in New York City, where he attended public schools. Moore never attended college. He began a career as a landscape painter in the 1850s, having studied at the...

George Henry Smillie (1840 - 1921), brother of artist James David Smillie, was a painter. He studied under his father, James Smillie, and under James McDougal Hart, and became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1882. Like his brother, he painted both in oils and in water colour. His favourite subjects were scenes along the New England...

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...

Alden Finney Brooks was born April 3, 1840, in Williamsfield, Ashtabula Co., Ohio, of Charles and Isabel [Thompson] Brooks. He received an academic education in J L. Pickard's institution at Platteville, Wis., from 1857 to 1859. Being in poor health he made the journey to Eureka, Cal., on foot in 1859. In 1861 he returned home and enlisted early in...

When Enneking was orphaned at the age of 16, he left his father's farm to live with an aunt.  His first art lessons, taken at Mount St. Mary's College in Cincinnati, were interrupted when he enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War.  Severely wounded in action and discharged from service, Enneking eventually made his way to Boston to...

Born in 1845 in Glens Falls, New York, Ferguson was a landscape painter and highy energetic world traveler, both in years spent and distances covered, exploring exotic motifs for his paintings. Europe, Mexico, South America, Egypt, were some of his destinations, including the daunting Andes Mountains, which he traveled over a half dozen...

William Lees Judson was a pioneering California Impressionist artist of many talents.  With his three sons, he founded the Judson Stained Glass Studios in 1897, which are still in operation in Los Angeles.  He was founding Dean of the USC College of Fine Arts, and an important mentor to many local artists; he also served as the president of the...

Arthur Parton was born in Hudson, New York March 26, 1842. He enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, studying under William Trost Richards. Gaining a keen grounding in the technical aspects of his art, Richards remained a strong influence. Parton was known as a Hudson River School painter, especially of river and...

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...

Mary Russell Smith was born at Edgehill, close to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. She was a true lover of nature and all the things of nature, wandering the fields and woods near her childhood home, gathering objects that caught her eye. Smith had much influence to become an an artist because all in her family were painters. Her father, Russell, was a...

James Wells Champney (July 16, 1843 – May 1, 1903) was an American genre and portrait painter. He was born in Boston and first studied wood engraving there, then went to Europe and studied at the Antwerp Academy and under Edouard Frère in Paris. His paintings include landscape and genre subjects, but he is best known for his excellent pastel...