Nathaniel Currier (March 27, 1813 – November 20, 1888) was an American lithographer, who headed the company Currier & Ives with James Ives. Early years Currier was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts to Nathaniel and Hannah Currier. He attended public school until age fifteen, when he was apprenticed to the Boston printing firm of William and...

American painter of historical, literary and portrait subjects, Louis Lang was born in Wurtemberg, Germany into an artistic family. At the age of 16, he was already producing accomplished pastels. He began his art studies in Stuttgart and later worked in Paris before he immigrated to the United States in 1838. He settled in Philadelphia and from...

Albertus, born in Tarrytown, New York in 1814, was the son of a sculptor, John Henri Isaac Browere (1790-1834), famous for his plaster life masks of Thomas Jefferson, Gilbert Stuart, and others. Washington Irving’s History of New York inspired Albertus to depict Peter Stuyvesant’s Arrival at Hartford (1833), Recruiting Peter Stuyvesant’s Army...

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...

George Hewitt Cushman (June 5, 1814 in Windham, Connecticut-August 3, 1876 in Jersey City Heights, New Jersey), a top American engraver and painter of miniature paintings and portraits of his time (second only to Edward Greene Malbone), turned early to these professions after family financial misfortunes prevented him from entering West Point and...

James Bard was a marine artist of the 19th century. He is known for his paintings of watercraft, particularly of steamboats. His works are sometimes characterized as naïve art. Although Bard died poor and almost forgotten, his works have since become valuable. Bard had a twin brother, John (1815–1856) and they collaborated on earlier...

Severin Roesen (ca. 1815 – after 1872) is a painter known for his abundant fruit and flower still lifes and is today recognized as one of the major American still-life painters of the mid-nineteenth century. Life Little is known about Roesen. He is believed to have been born in or near Cologne, and to have exhibited a floral painting at the...

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...

Henry John Van Lennep (AC 1837), a noted 19th-century Christian minister, missionary, writer and educator, was born in Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey) in 1815. In 1830 he was sent to the United States for his education. He prepared for college at Mount Pleasant Institute, Amherst, Mass., and Hartford (Conn.) Grammar School. After graduating from...

Joseph Alexander Ames (1816–1872) was an American artist, primarily known for portrait and genre painting. Originally named Joseph Emes, he was born in Roxbury, New Hampshire. Ames began painting at a young age. At the age of twelve Henry Theodore Tuckerman wrote about one of his paintings. After moderate success at home in Saugus, Massachusetts,...

John Frederick Kensett (March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut - December 14, 1872 in New York City) was an American artist and engraver. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838,...

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (May 24, 1816, Schwäbisch Gmünd – July 18, 1868) was a German American history painter best known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Biography Philadelphia Leutze was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Württemberg (Germany), and was brought to America as a child. His parents settled first in Philadelphia,...

William Rimmer (20 February 1816 – 20 August 1879) was an American artist born in Liverpool, England. He was the son of a French refugee, who emigrated to Nova Scotia, where he was joined by his wife and child in 1818, and who in 1826 moved to Boston, where he earned a living as a shoemaker. The son learned the father's trade; at fifteen became a...

George Whiting Flagg (June 26, 1816 - January 5, 1897)(DOD- verified New York Times Jan. 12, 1897- Death List Of A Day) from New Haven, Connecticut, was an American painter of historical scenes and genre pictures. He was the brother of the artist Jared Bradley Flagg. George Whiting Flagg lived out his later years at his home located at 12...

American marine artist Mary Blood Mellen is most well known as a collaborative artist and friend to American Luminist master Fitz Henry Lane. Her known works are mostly of the greater Gloucester, Massachusetts region, although she studied art early in Sterling, Mass. Married at 21 to Rev. Charles Mellen in 1840, Mellen would visit family living in...

Richard William Hubbard was a prominent member of the Hudson River School known for his luminous, delicately-painted landscapes. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, Hubbard attended Yale College before moving to New York City to pursue his painting career. He trained under Samuel F.B. Morse at New York University and spent two years in Europe studying...

Richard Morrell Staigg (7 September 1817 Leeds, England - 11 October 1881 Newport, Rhode Island) was a portrait painter. Biography When he was about thirteen years of age he was placed in an architect's office, and he subsequently received a few weeks' instruction in portrait painting. In 1831 he came to the United States with his father, and...

Charles Deas (December 22, 1818 – March 23, 1867), was an American painter noted for his oil paintings of Native Americans and fur trappers of the mid-19th century. Biography Charles Deas was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attempted, and failed, to obtain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.[1]...

Thomas LeClear was born in the village of Candor, near Oswego, in upstate New York, and demonstrated an early interest in painting. According to Henry T. Tuckerman's Book of the Artists, first published in 1867, LeClear, at the age of twelve, completed a painting of Saint Matthew, which was so admired by his neighbors that they were willing to pay...

Carl Christian Heinrich Nahl (Oct. 18, 1818 Kassel - March 1, 1878, San Francisco), later known as Charles Nahl, and sometimes Karl Nahl, Charles Christian Nahl or Charles C. Nahl, was a German-born painter who is called California's first significant artist[1]. Early years He was the son of Georg Valentin Friedrich Nahl (1791–1857) and Henriette...

Thomas Prichard Rossiter (1818-1871) was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He first learned painting as an apprentice for a Mr. John Boyd, and also studied with Nathaniel Jocelyn. In 1838 he exhibited two paintings at the National Academy of Design, and in 1939 moved to New York City and opened a studio. In 1840, Rossiter traveled to Europe with...

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...

Charles Lanman was an author, government official, artist, librarian, and explorer. Early life and education Charles Lanman was born at Monroe, Michigan, on June 14, 1819, the son of Charles James Lanman, and the grandson of United States Senator James Lanman.[1] Lanman's early life included newspaper work as editor of the Monroe Gazette in...

Henry Peters Gray (June 23, 1819 - November 12, 1877) was an American portrait and genre painter. Born in New York City he was a pupil of Daniel Huntington in New York, and subsequently studied in Rome and Florence. Elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1842, he succeeded Huntington as president in 1870, holding the position...

Esteemed by his peers as "our ablest marine painter," James Hamilton won fame as an artist who, "in his best works, exhibited the higher mental powers of the poet, as well as rare technical skill." Born in Entrien, near Belfast, Ireland, Hamilton emigrated with his family to the United States in 1834, settling in Philadelphia. He exhibited his...

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...

Born in New Haven in 1820, the son of a Connecticut stationer, George Henry Durrie remained in that city virtually his entire life. Married to a choirmaster's daughter, Sarah Perkins, in 1841, he immersed himself in the quiet pursuits of family and church. While he never achieved the fame of the most renowned nineteenth century American landscape...

DeWitt Clinton Boutelle was born on April 6, 1820 in Troy, New York. He was a self-educated artist but began painting “under the influence of Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand at an early age.”(1) Both men who influenced him were well known Hudson River School members. Boutelle created a mix of portrait and landscape paintings during his career....

During the first half of the nineteenth century artists fanned out across the northeastern United States to find aesthetic inspiration in nature. Thomas Addison Richards was one of the few who traveled extensively in the South. Through his paintings, illustrated magazine articles, and guidebooks, Richards introduced the natural beauty and distinct...

John Mackie Falconer (1820–1903) was a Scottish-born American etcher, painter, and watercolorist. Born in Edinburgh, he came to the United States in 1836. A full member of the New York Etching Club, he was made an honorary member of the National Academy of Design in 1856. He is known for studies of older buildings and ruins. Falconer was a...

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,...

George Fuller (January 17, 1822 – March 21, 1884)  was an American figure and portrait painter. Fuller was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts. His father, Aaron Fuller, was a farmer. His mother was Aaron's second wife, Fanny Negus of Petersham, Massachusetts. His parents were not in favor of Fuller becoming a painter. At age thirteen, he went to...

John Hilling was born in England in 1822 and arrived in America by the early 1840s, when he settled in the coastal town of Bath, Maine. He married his first wife, Jane (last name unknown), before 1844 and fathered at least three children, two of whom died in early childhood. Hill resided in Bath until he enlisted as a private in the Civil War...

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...

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...

Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880) was an American landscape painter and one of the leading members of the Hudson River School. Gifford's landscapes are known for their emphasis on light and soft atmospheric effects, and he is regarded as a practitioner of Luminism, an offshoot style of the Hudson River School. Not to...

Charles Wilson Knapp was a noted landscape artist of great ability.  He was born in Philadelphia in 1823 and spent most of his life in that city.   He worked primarily in Pennsylvania, New York State, New Jersey, the Susquehanna River Valley, the area around the Delaware Water Gap, and the Berkshire Mountains.  He especially enjoyed painting...