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...

Census records indicate that Frederick Kemmelmeyer was more than forty-five years old in 1800, and therefore born sometime prior to 1755, but no record of his birth has been found. A Frederick Kimmelmeiger listed in naturalization papers issued at Annapolis, Maryland, on 8 October 1788 is presumed to be the artist. He first advertised in the...

John Ross Key was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, author of the patriotic song The Star Spangled Banner.  He was born in Hagerstown, Maryland in 1832 and studied art in Munich and Paris.  He worked in a number of American cities including Boston where he showed over 100 works in 1877.  Critics praised his work as "firm and masterly, strong...

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...

Robert Koehler (November 28, 1850 - April 23, 1917) was a German-born painter and art teacher who spent most of his career in the United States of America. Biography Koehler was born in Hamburg; his family spelled their name Köhler until they moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1854. There he attended the historic German-English Academy. He...

Paul LaCroix, an immigrant from France, appeared in New York some time before 1855. Urban centers such as New York and Philadelphia witnessed an influx of foreign artists at mid-century who left “to escape the turmoil of the revolutions of 1848” (1). European immigrants such as LaCroix brought with them the Dutch, German, and French traditions...

The attribution to Salome Hensel and date (1823) of the National Gallery's To the Memory of the Benevolent Howard (1971.83.22), an unsigned theorem painting, are based on a label that was once afixed to the reverse. It reads: "This painting was done in 1823 by Salome Hensel eldest daughter of George and Catherine Noon Hensel. Salome was afterwards...

Charles Herbert Woodbury (July 14, 1864—January 21, 1940), United States marine painter, was born at Lynn, Massachusetts. Biography Charles H. Woodbury was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, where his earliest work was part of the oeuvre of the group later known as the Lynn Beach Painters. While an undergraduate at MIT he became a regular exhibitor...

John Douglas Woodward (12 July 1846 – 1924) was an American landscape artist and illustrator described by Joseph Pennell as one of the country's "best-known painters and illustrators". He produced hundreds of scenes of Europe, the Holy Land, and the United States, many of which were reproduced in popular magazines of the day.[1] Life and...

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...

The designation "Schuyler Limner" or "Schuyler Painter" can be applied to the anonymous maker, active circa 1717 to circa 1725, of some two dozen early eighteenth-century portraits of subjects from the Albany, New York, area. The name is derived from what appears to be the earliest and most ambitious effort by the artist, the full-length portrait...

Thomas Waterman Wood (November 12, 1823 – April 14, 1903) was an American painter born in Montpelier, Vermont. Origins Thomas Waterman Wood's father, John Wood, came to Montpelier from Lebanon, New Hampshire in 1814. The Wood family was of Puritan stock, and it was from Lebanon that John Wood, the father of the artist, married his wife Mary...

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...

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...

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,...

The Beardsley Limner was an itinerant artist who worked along the old Boston Post Road, in Connecticut and Massachusetts, from about 1785 to 1805. He executed some of the most striking naive portraits in New England, and was given the name The Beardsley Limner based on his handsome paintings of Elizabeth and Hezekiah Beardsley, c....

The identity of the artist who created the Denison family portraits has long eluded scholars. His sitters are all from Stonington, Connecticut, and their portraits are part of the tradition of Connecticut portraiture that flourished from c. 1790/1810. One of the first to suggest an identity for The Denison Limner was Ralph Thomas of the New Haven...

A famous French and American flower painter, Paul de Longpre was the most significant watercolor specialist to arrive in Los Angeles in the late 19th century and became the city's first major still-life painter. It is likely he was the first southern California painter to earn a major national reputation. He was born in Lyons, France, where he was...

William Hillock Low was a prominent force in the New York art world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known primarily as a muralist, Low studied with the French neo-classicist painter, Jean-Léon-Gérôme during the 1870s. Although the artist created a number of works in the style of his teacher, he eventually expanded his...

Painter and illustrator Fernand Lungren is best known for vibrantly colored images of the scenic wonders of the American Southwest. Lungren was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, but grew up in Toledo, Ohio. In 1876, he abandoned his studies in mining engineering at the University of Michigan and went to Cincinnati. There, painters Alfred Laurens...

Louis Mader was born in Germany in 1842 and came to the United States in 1867, during a period when the almshouses were filling with recent immigrants. He was first admitted to the Berks County Almshouse in 1892 and over the next three years painted at least eight views of that institution. Unlike Charles Hofmann, the best-known "Pennsylvania...

Most scholars list Pinckney Marcius-Simons' birth date as 1867, but some art historians assert that he was born in 1865. A New York City native, visionary symbolist painter Pinckney Marcius-Simons spent most of his adult life in Europe, having been taken there as a baby by his parents. He did not return until he was age 25. He was especially known...

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,...

Alfred Henry Maurer (April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932) was an American modernist painter. He exhibited his work in avant-garde circles internationally and in New York City during the early 20th century. Biography Maurer was born in New York City. He was the son of German-born Louis Maurer, a lithographer. At age sixteen, Maurer quit school to...

A native of the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Frederick W. Mayhew was born in Chilmark on 6 July 1785. Although Mayhew has been known for some time through his works, several of them signed, the biographical details of his life eluded scholars until recently. Difficulty arose from his misidentification as Nathaniel Mayhew and confusion...