James Carroll Beckwith (September 23, 1852 – October 24, 1917) was an American landscape, portrait and genre painter whose Impressionist style led to his recognition in the late nineteenth century as a prominent figure in American art. Biography Carroll Beckwith, as he preferred to be known, was born in Hannibal, Missouri on 23 September 1852,...

Frank Duveneck (October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919) was an American figure and portrait painter. Youth Duveneck was born in Covington, Kentucky, the son of German immigrant Bernard Decker. Decker died when Frank was only a year old and his widow remarried Joseph Duveneck. By the age of fifteen Frank had begun the study of art under the tutelage...

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...

William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849 – October 25, 1916) was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design. Early life and training He was born in Williamsburg (now Nineveh), Indiana, to the...

Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – June 22, 1900) was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School. Biography Cropsey was born on his father Jacob Rezeau Cropsey's farm in Rossville on Staten Island, New York, the oldest of eight children. As a young boy, Cropsey had recurring periods of poor health. While absent from...

The portraitist Samuel Lovett Waldo was born April 6, 1783, in Windham, Connecticut, one of eight children born to farmer Zacheus Waldo and his wife Esther Stevens Waldo. At the age of sixteen he went to Hartford and took drawing lessons from an obscure painter named Joseph Steward. He set up a studio there in 1803, but found few clients and...

Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 – April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. While committed to the natural sciences, he was "always concerned with including a spiritual dimension in his works."[1] Biography Beginnings The...

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 10, 1834 — July 17, 1903) was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail.[1]...

Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 - September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Early life and education Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine,[1] where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of nine children.[2] His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried four years later to Martha...

Ernest Haskell was born in Woodstock, Connecticut. In 1897 he left to study in Paris, returning to New York in 1899 and supporting himself with portrait work and poster design. The mountain lake in Ernest Haskell's etching The Sylvan Sea was one of many different locales--from California to Florida to Maine--he depicted in his work. In addition to...

Thomas Hicks  (b Newtown, PA, 18 Oct 1823; d Trenton Falls, NY, 8 Oct 1890). Cousin of (1) Edward Hicks. After being apprenticed (c. 1835–9) in the sign-painting shop of his cousin, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1839–40) and at the National Academy of Design in New York (1840–44). He then sketched...

Edward Hicks (April 4, 1780 – August 23, 1849) was an American folk painter, a distinguished minister of the Society of Friends, and he also became a Quaker icon because of his paintings. Life and career Early life Edward Hicks was born in his grandfather's mansion at Attleboro (now Langhorne), in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His parents were...

John Hesselius (1728–1778) was a portraitist who worked mostly in Virginia and Maryland. He was the son of the Swedish-born portraitist Gustavus Hesselius. Background John Hesselius was most likely born in Philadelphia, where his father owned a house to satisfy clients. Claims that he was born in Prince Georges County, Maryland are unfounded,...

Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1863 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and patron. Biography He was born in Utica, New York and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882. He briefly attended the Art Institute of Chicago and then moved to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League. Davies was a...

An innovative artist and influential art theorist and teacher, Arthur Wesley Dow was a proponent of pure design principles rather than literal naturalism as the basis for art. Dow was a native of Ipswich, Massachusetts, whose flat coastal landscape and subtly shifting light proved a powerful source of aesthetic inspiration. He studied art privately...

Charles Caryl Coleman resided on the breathtaking Italian island of Capri from 1886 until his death in 1928, becoming an individual leader in the local art community. Coleman’s paintings from this period depict Capri’s flawless beauty and reveal his devotion to the island’s historical legacy. Born in Buffalo, New York, Coleman to many...

Charles Codman (circa 1800–1842) was a landscape painter of Portland, Maine. His art is featured at the Portland Museum of Art as mature, fine early American landscape painting. Codman was probably from Boston and was apprenticed to the ornamental painter, John Ritto Penniman. Codman began as a decorative painter and had no formal training...

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....

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 Warren Eaton (1857–1937) was an American artist best known for his tonalist landscapes. He earned the nickname "the pine tree painter" for his numerous depictions of Eastern White Pine trees. Eaton was born in Albany, New York to a family of limited means. He starting working at age nine, and worked at a dry goods store in Albany into...

Edward Gay was a landscape painter who really didn't fit into any  particular category or school. He learned technique from several artists with whom he studied, but was not markedly influenced by them. His paintings depicted what he saw - no more, no less. He did not romanticize or idealize.  Born in Ireland in 1837, Gay came to America with...

Eanger Irving Couse (1866–1936) was an American artist and a founding member and first president of the Taos Society of Artists. He is noted for paintings of Native Americans, New Mexico, and the American Southwest. His house and studio in Taos have been preserved as the Couse/Sharp Historic Site, which is listed on the National Register of Historic...

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,...

Henry Farrer (March 23, 1844 – February 24, 1903) was an English-born American artist known for his tonalist watercolor landscapes and etchings. Life Farrer was born in London, the younger brother of artist Thomas Charles Farrer. Thomas had studied under John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in...

Joseph Rodefer DeCamp was a successful portrait painter; he also created exquisite interior views with a soft-edged luminosity, as well as landscapes characterized by the broken brushwork, bright light and color, and contemporary subjects of impressionism. DeCamp began his art studies as a teenager at the McMicken School of Design in his native...