Austrian
b.1896
Related Paintings of Franz Wolf :. | Le Pont-au-Change et le Palais de Justice (mk11) | Alexander Hamilton | gambling scene at an lnn | The Church at Varengeville and the Gorge des Moutiers | Landscape with Waterfall | Related Artists:
Jules GuerinMural painter and Illustrator.
American
1866-1946
American muralist, painter and illustrator. Guerin was born in St Louis, Missouri on November 18, 1866 and moved to Chicago to study art in 1880. Later he was to follow a parade of other American artists and architects of his day to Paris, where he studied with Benjamin-Constant and Jean Paul Laurens. Returning to America after his European sojourn, he began his career as an artist illustrating books, often travel books about exotic places. It is likely that these designs are based on his own travels through North Africa and Palestine. The designs that he did then as well as his ability to romantically depict exotic peoples and places stood him well later when he began painting murals. His mural work typically featured large areas of gold with vermilion, salmon and rose hues and blue and green accents. As with many of the artists of his time Guerin took an active part in the international expositions of his day, showing at the Paris Expo 1900, where he received an honorable mention, the Pan American Expo in Buffalo, New York, 1901, the Louisiana Purchase Expo held in St Louis in 1904 at which he won a silver medal, and the Lewis & Clark Expo in Portland, Oregon in 1905. In 1915, Guerin was asked to serve as color co-ordinator of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. It is likely that connections that he made there led to his one man show at the University of California, Berkeley two years later, followed by several large murals in the Federal reserve Bank in San Francisco. Daniel Burnham, one of Chicago's most influential architects, and his colleague Edward H. Bennett were commissioned to create the Chicago Plan in 1907, a major milestone in the international City Beautiful movement. In pursuit of this effort, Burnham invited Guerin paint a series of renderings of Burnham and Bennett's proposed cityscape to complement the numerous maps and plans that gave more technical information. The majority of these original renderings--by Guerin and other artists--are in the collection of the Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago, while others are currently owned by the Chicago Historical Society. In 1903, he travelled to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and painted "Pittsburgh as Hell with the Lid Off" for Lincoln Steffens, a renouned Muckraker. Lincoln Steffens mentions this in his autobiography. In 1912, when architect Henry Bacon began working on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., he hired Guerin to create renderings of his proposed designs. After he received the commission, Bacon retained Guerin to paint the two large murals, Reunion and Emancipation, that decorate the interior of the memorial, allegorical figures that today serve primarily as the backdrop to Daniel Chester Frenches Seated Lincoln statue.
Charles ParsonsAmerican Painter , 1821-1910
David Hunter Strother1816-1888
Strother was born in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia). He studied drawing under Pietro Aneora in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1829 to 1836 when he became a student of Samuel F. B. Morse in New York. Strother was an artist for The Crayon, the leading art journal of the United States at the time, and a frequent contributor to Harper's Monthly. Most of his early work was comprised of landscapes and other outdoor scenes. His art pertained mostly to Virginia and the Southern United States. Prior to the American Civil War, his art was published in books titled The Blackwater Chronicle (1853) and Virginia Illustrated (1857).
During the Civil War, Strother was commissioned by the U.S. Army and assigned as a topographer due to his detailed knowledge of the Shenandoah Valley. During this time, Strother recorded his experiences in the war which he would later publish in Harper's Monthly as "Personal Recollections of the War." His accounts are considered to be unique and are highly praised for their objective viewpoint. He was involved in 30 battles, though never wounded, and was brevetted brigadier general by the War's end.
After the war, topics of his pieces covered a wider range of subjects. Strother began to make works which commented on politics and race relations. He even sketched a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull. Some of his drawings were merely of individuals and groups going about their daily lives.
Strother ended his career as an artist when he was appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to be the General Consul to Mexico City in 1879. He returned to West Virginia in 1885 and died there three years later. The New York Times published an obituary in which it is stated that his name was a household one during his career. Strother is buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Martinsburg, West Virginia.