c.1700-60   Related Paintings of Gerrit Bakhuizen :. | St Francis of Assisi sh | Sacrifice of Iphigeneia | Le jour des morts (mk26) | composition vlll (the cow) | The Battle of Trafalgar by J. M. W. Turner |
Related Artists:
Murano, Andrea da
Russian, approx. 1670-1740
Levi Wells Prentice
1850-1935 Levi Wells Prentice Gallery Prentice was associated with the Hudson River School, a group of artists known throughout art circles. According to the book Nature Staged by Barbara Jones, Prentice followed a self-prescribed educational path, begun by the Hudson River School and reinforced by John Ruskin's (1819-1900) truth-to-nature principles laid out in his book Modern Painters. Although he can be allied to both schools of thought, Prentice can not be considered a member of either. This book has a photo of the artist in his early Brooklyn studio surrounded by his paintings and a complete essay on his life and work. Levi grew up on a farm in Lewis County, New York. By 1872, Prentice had traveled through the Adirondack Mountains, painting the views as well as the surrounding region. He opened his first studio as a landscape painter in Syracuse, New York in 1875. Self-taught artist Levi Wells Prentice is best known for his realistic still life compositions of fruit arranged within a landscape, or abundantly spilling from bushel baskets. Early in his career, he painted portraits and landscapes of the Adirondack Mountain region of Lewis County, New York, his birthplace. Levi married an English woman Emma Roseloe Sparks in Buffalo, New York in 1882 and had two children, Leigh (born 22 March 1887) and Imogene (born 17 September 1889). Prentice then turned to painting still life subjects when he moved briefly to Brooklyn, New York in 1883, focusing on fruit, in order of frequency apples, strawberries, peaches, plums, raspberries, cherries, muskmelons, pears, currants, pineapples, gooseberries, grapes and bananas usually piled high in pots or in natural settings. Prentice subsequently moved around from 1903-07 before settling in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. However, his work did not gain much recognition with historians until the 1970s. He was a member of the Brooklyn Art Association and frequently exhibited his paintings there. In addition to his artistic talents, he was a craftsman who enjoyed making his own brushes, palettes and frames. In his painting, Prentice placed an emphasis on dark outlining with a concern for textual precision, creating dramatic contrasts. The shift between dark background areas and the vibrant hues of the fruit are done to give the compositions an exciting, visual energy. The fruit is presented with clarity and precision. An emphasis appears to be placed on the idea of man versus nature. The wooden baskets with hand-wrought nails represent a structured, man-made object, while the overly ripe fruit represents the fleeting qualities of nature. These paintings also demonstrate Prentice's remarkable skills at rendering color, form, and texture. Noted art historian William H. Gerdts observed: there are several works by Prentice in which he achieves a quality of illusionism which is unsurpassed. In 1993, the skillful 'illusionism' of Levi Wells Prentice was celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the Adirondack Museum in New York. His works continue to receive a high degree of appreciation by collectors today. He is represented in many museums including the New York State Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Montclair Art Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art and Yale University Art Gallery. Levi died 28 November 1935 in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
John La Farge
1835-1910 John La Farge (March 31, 1835 ?C November 14, 1910) was an American painter, stained glass window maker, decorator, and writer. Born in New York City, New York, his interest in art was aroused during his training at Mount St. Mary's University and St. John's College (now Fordham University). He had only the study of law in view until he returned from his first visit to Paris, France where he studied with Thomas Couture and enjoyed the most brilliant literary society of the day. Even his earliest drawings and landscapes, done in Newport, Rhode Island, after his marriage in 1861 to Margaret Mason Perry, sister-in-law of Lilla Cabot Perry, show marked originality, especially in the handling of color values, and also the influence of Japanese art, in the study of which he was a pioneer. La Farge's inquiring mind led him to experiment with color problems, especially in the medium of stained glass. He succeeded not only in rivaling the gorgeousness of the medieval windows, but in adding new resources by his invention of opalescent glass and his original methods of superimposing and welding his material. Among his many masterpieces are the "Battle Window" at Harvard and the cloisonn?? "Peacock Window" in the Worcester Art Museum. Two of his largest windows are located in Unity Church in North Easton, Massachusetts. The earliest of these, the "Angel of Help" was completed in 1887 while the "Figure of Wisdom" dates to 1901. Both of these windows were restored by "Victor Rothman for Stained Glass Inc" of Yonkers, New York in the 1990's. Between 1859 and 1870, he illustrated Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Robert Browning's Men and Women. Breadth of observation and structural conception, and a vivid imagination and sense of color are shown by his mural decorations. His first work in mural painting was done in Trinity Church, Boston, in 1873. Then followed his decorations in the Church of the Ascension (the large altarpiece) and St. Paul's Church, New York. For the State Capitol at St. Paul he executed, in his seventy-first year, four great lunettes representing the history of religion, and for the Supreme Court building at Baltimore, a similar series with Justice as the theme. In addition there are his vast numbers of other paintings and water colors, notably those recording his extensive travels in the Orient and South Pacific. His labors in almost every field of art won for him from the French Government the Cross of the Legion of Honor and membership in the principal artistic societies of America, as well as the presidency of the Society of Mural Painters. Enjoying an extraordinary knowledge of languages (ancient and modern), literature, and art, by his cultured personality and reflective conversation he greatly influenced all who knew him. Though naturally a questioner he venerated the traditions of religious art, and preserved always his Catholic faith and reverence. In 1904, he was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. On his passing in 1910, John LaFarge was interred in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. During his life, he maintained a studio at 51 West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, which today is part of the site of Eugene Lang College