BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

A New Jersey woman known for painting landscapes along the Hudson River By Alexandra A Jopp Julie Hart Beers Kempson, a painter of the Hudson River School, was one of very few professional women landscape painters in nineteenth-century America and the only one to achieve any renown. Born Julie Hart in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1835, she was the daughter of Scottish immigrants who had settled in Albany, N.Y., in 1831. Her two older brothers, James and William, were both painters, with James studying art in Europe, primarily Germany, from 1850 until 1853, and William studying for several years in Great Britain. Julie’s artistic education was not recorded, but it is often assumed that she was trained by her brothers and later by her first husband, painter Marion Beers. In the 1850s, William, James and Julie (with Marion) each moved separately to New York City. A year after Marion’s death in 1876, Julie married Peter Kempson and moved to Metuchen, N.J; however, she continued to...

Asher Brown Durand was a man who practices what he preached - "Go first to nature to learn to paint landscapes." The revolutionary aspect of that statement can only be understood in historical context. Coming at a time when American nature painting was dominated by European esthetics, he may well have been the first to advocate a direct response to nature, placing highest value on seeing and feeling for oneself. he urged painters to be influenced by weather, by atmosphere and light. And he took to the hills  and return with fresh, moisture-filled pictures. In 1855 he painted In the Woods, large and refined, and no doubt based on sketches completed in the field. From North Conway, New Hampshire, that year he wrote a letter describing in great detail the scene he found. In the Woods , 1855 Asher B. Durand (American, 1796–1886) The region of the White Mountains is justly famed for its impressive scenery: passages of the sublime and beautiful are not infrequent, and for th...

A master of form, influenced by French and English patrons, Carleton Wiggins became famous for painting pastoral scenes of New England By Alexandra A. Jopp John Carleton Wiggins (more commonly known as just Carleton Wiggins) was born to Guy and Adelaide Ludlum Wiggins on March 4, 1848, in Turners (now Harriman), N। Y., west of the Hudson River. Wiggins received his early education in Middletown N.Y., and later attended public schools in Brooklyn. As a youth, he took a job at an insurance company on Wall Street, but he worked there for only two years before realizing that he had neither the courage nor the talent to devote himself to the business world. Instead, he began to study art under Johann Carmiencke, a romantic landscape painter of the Hudson River School. Under Carmiencke, Carleton turned his attention primarily to the study of landscapes. After dedicating some time to drawing at the National Academy, Wiggins followed the guidance and encouragement of his patron, Jos...

Pennsylvania Landscape. Painter of Pennsylvania landscapes and marine subjects of New Jersey By Alexandra A Jopp Influenced early in his career by the Hudson River School and Luminist preferences, Frederick DeBourg Richards specialized in landscape and maritime scene. By the middle of the 19th century, he ranked among the most accomplished artists practicing realism in the United States. Over time, his brushwork became somewhat more painterly, however he never abandoned his dedication to meticulously accurate observation. Frederick DeBourg Richards was born on June 24, 1822, in Wilmington, Del. He lived in New York in the 1840s before moving to Philadelphia in 1848, where he spent most of his remaining years with his wife and two daughters. Richards considered himself mostly self-taught as a painter, and he achieved success as a landscape artist by exhibiting his paintings at the American Art-Union, an exclusive association in New York City where the finest American ...