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...

Aaron Draper Shattuck (1832-1928) was an American painter of the White Mountain School. He was born in Francestown, New Hampshire. A second-generation artist affiliated with the Hudson River School, Shattuck differed from most of his contemporaries in that he never studied abroad, and appears to have spent his entire life in New...

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...

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...

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...

Junius' connection with Kewanee began in 1853 when his parents purchased 500 acres in Wethersfield and Kewanee townships. It was one year before the founding of Kewanee, but parents Seymour and Drusilla Sloan certainly knew the railroad was on its way and that their investment in Illinois farmland had a promising future. The Sloans came from...

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...

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...

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...

John Rubens Smith (January 23, 1775 London - August 21, 1849 New York City) was a London-born painter, printmaker and art instructor who worked in the United States. Biography Smith was born in England where he first studied art with his father, John Raphael Smith, a mezzotint engraver. He later studied art at the Royal Academy. Smith emigrated...

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...

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,...

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,...

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 portraitist Frederick Randolph Spencer was born June 7, 1806 in Lennox, New York, one of four children of the lawyer and first postmaster of Canastota, General Ichabod Smith Spencer (1780-1857), and Mary Pierson Spencer (1785-1865). He evinced an early interest for art, and at the age of fifteen saw an exhibition of portraits by Ezra Ames at...

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...

Although the details of Abram Ross Stanley's life are not certain, he was probably born March 16, 1816, in Salisbury, Herkimer County, New York, to Jedediah and Prudence Stanley, who had moved there six years earlier from New Hampshire. Based on his middle name, the artist is sometimes identified as a descendant of Betsy Ross, but there is no...

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...

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...

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,...

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....

Gilbert Charles Stuart (born Stewart) (December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter from Rhode Island. Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists.[2] His best known work, the unfinished portrait of George Washington that is sometimes referred to as The Athenaeum, was begun in 1796 and never...

Thomas Sully (June 19, 1783 – November 5, 1872) was a well-known American (English-born) painter, mostly of portraits. Life and career Early life Sully was born in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England, to the actors Matthew and Sarah Sully. In March 1792 the Sullys and their nine children immigrated to Richmond, Virginia, where Thomas’s uncle...

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...

A landscape and marine artist, George Symons was one of America's more noted plein-air painters who combined styles of impressionism and realism. His works are cited for their energy and simplicity, and he often did panoramic views. He was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1861, with the name of George Gardner Simon, but he changed his last name to...

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859 – May 25, 1937) was an African American artist best known for his style of painting. He was the first African American painter to gain international acclaim.[1][2] Education In 1879 Tanner enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His decision to attend the school came at an...

Edmund Charles Tarbell (April 26, 1862 – August 1, 1938) was an American Impressionist painter. He was a member of the Ten American Painters. His work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery and the National Academy of Design, among others. Early life and education Edmund Charles Tarbell, called "Ned" as a boy, was...

Abbott Handerson Thayer (August 12, 1849 – May 29, 1921) was an American artist, naturalist and teacher. As a painter of portraits, figures, animals and landscapes, he enjoyed a certain prominence during his lifetime, as indicated by the fact that his paintings are part of the most important U.S. art collections. During the last third of his...

Approximately eleven portraits can be attributed to this unidentified painter. His identification as The Conant Limner is derived from the last name of four sitters who constitute the largest family group by his hand. The Conants lived in Sterling, Massachusetts, where several of this limner's works remain. Although likenesses by this hand have...

The Pollard Limner, identified on the basis of his portrait of Ann Pollard, 1721, was active in the Boston area from around the last decade of the seventeenth century through the first third of the eighteenth century. So far some twenty paintings by this hand have been identified. Stylistically, all of The Pollard Limner's portraits are related by...