In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries American artists copied the techniques, and worked in the shadows of, European watercolorists. Watercolors in America were used to make maps, record forays into the country and illustrate texts. Winslow Homer’s watercolor paintings changed all that and influenced many other painters to produce such great works in watercolors that, [...]
Photograph of Winslow Homer taken in N. Y., 1880 Albumen print by Napoleon Sarony, American, 1821-1896. Gift of the Homer Family, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Quiet, thoughtful and seclusive, Winslow Homer became one of America’s most beloved artists. Homer was able to capture the raw beauty of people, the land and, especially, the sea. [...]
Louis Aston Knight (1873-1948) was the son of the American expatriate painter, Daniel Ridgway Knight. Louis Aston Knight was born in America and began studying art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. In 1872, he traveled to Paris and continued to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Thereafter, he remained in Europe, and studied in the academic [...]
William McGregor Paxton(June 22, 1869 – 1941) William McGregor Paxton’s great talent and skill gave him entrée into a world he wasn’t born to, but which he captured beautifully on canvas. Paxton was born into a working class family. His father ran a catering business in Newton Corner, Massachusetts in the mid-1870s. Finding His Muse [...]
Maurice Prendergast was one of America’s most original painters. His works, although labeled Impressionist, have both a European and American sensibility, but are unlike the works of other artists of his time. Maurice Prendergast, 1913 Prendergast was, during much of his lifetime, a painter’s painter. It wasn’t until around the start of World War 1, [...]
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, James Whistler (1834-1903) became one of the most influential late 19th-century American painters and etchers, although he lived primarily in England. He worked in a wide variety of styles that included Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau. He was especially influential in the Tonalist movement and was a catalyst for those who wanted to [...]
