Lhermitte painted scenes of village and rural life. He won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris at age 19. The following year, in 1864, Lhermitte exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time and continued to show work in the Salon for the rest of his long career.
Lhermitte turned down painter Edgar Degas’ invitation to exhibit with the artists’ group that came to be known as the Impressionists in 1879. His reputation blossomed in the 1880s. Lhermitte was made a member of the Legion of Honor in 1884; in the next few years, the French government purchased several of his works.
Lhermitte and the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) were close friends; in 1889, Rodin’s student and companion Camille Claudel sculpted Lhermitte’s eldest son. The 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris saw Lhermitte awarded its coveted grand prize. The artist’s commissions and sales mounted. Throughout the 1890s, British and American collectors sought his works. Lhermitte exhibited regularly in London, New York, and Boston.
As a young woman, Marie Laurencin studied porcelain painting at the Sèvres factory school before enrolling at the Académie Humbert in Paris. Laurencin became part of the circle of artists who worked in the Bateau-Lavoir. This heady cocktail of creativity led to Cubism.
Laurencin developed a style that was similar to early Cubist works with their shallow sense of space and flat planes of color. Laurencin spent the years of World War I in Spain. During this period, her style and subject matter evolved.
After World War I, Laurencin returned to Paris, where she remained for the rest of her life. She enjoyed success as an avant-garde portraitist during the 1920s, painting the fashion designer Coco Chanel. Laurencin designed costumes for Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes productions. She exhibited interior designs at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes.
In addition to painting in oils and watercolors, Laurencin worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, creating stage designs, posters, and lithographs.
Kensett was born in Connecticut, the son of an engraver. He trained under his father. In 1840, he sailed for Europe. Kensett studied the old masters. In Europe, Kensett began to sketch from nature. In 1847, Kensett returned to New York and his career took off. He showed at the National Academy of Design that year. He also took a studio in the New York University Building.
The work that Kensett produced between 1847 and 1855 brought a sense of measured space, warm light, and tranquility to the depiction of raw American wilderness. As his work developed, so did his style; in about 1855, Kensett shifted towards simpler compositions. Kensett turned his brush to quiet, familiar views of New England. Kensett’s mature landscapes show a sense of calm. Kensett succeeded as a painter, but he also succeeded as a public figure where he served on a variety of committees.
Born in Scotland, Keith immigrated with his family to New York in 1850. Keith found his way to San Francisco in the early 1860s after traveling first to London. In 1868, he exhibited his first oil paintings and soon after accepted a contract with the Oregon Navigation & Railroad Company to produce scenic views of their lands in Oregon.
Keith traveled to Düsseldorf and then explored Italy and Switzerland before going to Paris. In 1871, Keith showed at National Academy of Design. He then returned to California and met John Muir; the two men, both immigrants, both lovers of California, would work together to found the Sierra Club.
Keith initially favored panoramic views of the Sierras and California’s Coastal Range. As time went on, however, his work evolved toward a more subjective style, influenced perhaps by painters of the Barbizon School. Later he became friends with George Inness and adopted a Tonalist style. Keith’s works in this style were popular and he continued to experiment with new methods.
A native of New York City, David Johnson taught himself to paint. Johnson was a member of the Hudson River School and he first exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1849. The next year, he studied under Jasper Cropsey, painting alongside him in the New Jersey countryside.
Johnson had established a studio on East 15th street by 1857. He joined the National Academy of Design in 1859 and his career as an artist blossomed. His popularity crested in the mid-1870s with the flourishing of the Hudson River School. In 1877, the Paris Salon committee accepted Johnson’s Housatonic River. After that time, his work began to echo the French Barbizon School.
The large landscapes of the Hudson River School passed out of fashion in the late 1870s, as more young American artists returned from their European studies with news of continental experiments. Johnson’s work retained a popular audience but gradually lost professional acclaim. The artist retained a studio in New York until the late 1890s.
Inness grew up outside Newark, New Jersey, the son of an affluent family. He first exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1844; his earliest paintings echoed the tight brushwork of the Hudson River School yet added an impressionistic element. In 1851, the young painter traveled to Italy and France, visiting the annual Salon exhibition in Paris and seeing the work of Théodore Rousseau, a leader of the Barbizon School. Inness returned to Europe two years later for a longer trip. This time, he saw more Barbizon landscapes, which had a lasting influence on his work. By 1855, Inness was painting and exhibiting works in this style. Initially ignored by the critics, his work gained a following in the 1860s.
In 1884, the American Art Galleries in New York hosted an exhibition of 57 of Inness’ paintings. Shortly after this, Inness embraced the Tonalist mode in which his paintings became more “dreamscapes” than landscapes. Colored mists fuse with blurry forms; structure and location fall away, replaced by harmonic fusion.
Daniel Huntington, a native New Yorker, was born in 1816. He attended Yale and then Hamilton College; after graduating, he came home to New York to be a painter in about 1835. His first stop was Samuel F. B. Morse’s studio in New York. Huntington worked with Morse for about a year as his student, but knew Morse as a colleague for decades.
Huntington was elected into the National Academy of Design in 1839, and later served as its president twice, for a total of 22 years. He exhibited in every major national art institution as well as the Royal Academy, London and the Paris Salon. Huntington assisted in the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library.
Huntington followed Morse in his interest in painting allegorical and historical subjects. Huntington also painted portraits painting about a thousand portraits over about 50 years. Presidents and merchants, judges and poets, all came to sit in his studio on East 20th Street in New York.
Thomas Hill was born in Birmingham, England and immigrated to the United States in about 1834. He grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts, and found his way as a young man to Philadelphia, where he took classes in the early 1850s at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Sometime in the late 1850s or early 1860s, Hill moved to San Francisco, opened a studio and painted portraits.
After a six month stay in Paris, Hill returned to California and focused on painting landscapes. His massive canvases showed the highlights of California scenery. Hill also spent time in New England, where, like his Hudson River School compatriots, he painted scenes from the White Mountains and the Adirondacks. In California, Hill divided his time between San Francisco and the Sierras. He sketched throughout long summer days in Yosemite, often in company with San Francisco artist Virgil Williams, the naturalist John Muir, the artist William Keith, and his student Julian Rix. Hill spent the last years of his life in Wawona, at the entrance to Yosemite Valley.
Henry was born in Charleston but, orphaned early, was brought up by relatives in New York. He studied art first with the New York painter Walter M. Oddie and, in 1858, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1860, Henry traveled to Paris, where he studied with Charles Gleyre and Gustave Courbet. He returned to New York in 1860 and took a studio in the 10th Street Studio Building.
Henry was popular during his lifetime because of his high academic standards as a painter. His works were highly finished and filled with fine details. He used photographs, local models, and animals; he often painted horses outdoors, but when he could not, he had a papier-mâché horse made for his studio. He kept a collection of historical costumes and props for his models. Henry’s work was frequently reproduced during his lifetime as lithographs, and appeared in popular magazines. Like the work of J.C. Leyendecker, Henry’s paintings lent themselves to illustration.
Hassam began his career as an engraver and printmaker in Boston. He supported himself by designing book illustrations while painting on the side. In 1883, Hassam exhibited a watercolor at the National Academy of Design, and it was in that year that he began to identify himself as an artist. Hassam sailed for Paris in the fall of 1886. His work was accepted into the 1887 Salon.
Hassam returned to the United States in 1889 and settled in New York. He traveled during the summers in New England, and painted both scenes of urban life and more bucolic images of the seaside and gardens. Within a few years, he was a fixture of the annual exhibitions at the American Water Color Society, the National Academy of Design, and others.
Hassam’s career blossomed over the next years, as he exhibited throughout the United States and traveled regularly to Europe. Hassam sold his first painting to a museum in 1899 and by 1911 he was in the collections of most major American museums.
