Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) was the best portrait-painter(AMERICAN PAINTING)

Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) was the best portrait-painter of all the early men, and his work holds very high rank even in the schools of to-day. He was one of the first in American art-history to show skilful accuracy of the brush, a good knowledge of color, and some artistic sense of dignity and carriage in the sitter. He was not always a good draughtsman, and he had a manner of laying on pure colors without blending them that sometimes produced sharpness in modelling; but as a general rule he painted a portrait with force and with truth. He was a pupil of Alexander, a Scotchman, and afterward an assistant to West. He settled in Boston, and during his life painted most of the great men of his time, including Washington. Single Piece Paintigns

FIG. 104.—W. M. HUNT. LUTE PLAYER.

Vanderlyn (1776-1852) met with adversity all his life long, and perhaps never expressed himself fully. He was a pupil of Stuart, studied in Paris and Italy, and his associations with Aaron Burr made him quite as famous as his pictures. Washington Allston (1779-1843) was a painter whom the Bostonians have ranked high in their art-history, but he hardly deserved such position. Intellectually he was a man of lofty and poetic aspirations,decorative painting, but as an artist he never had the painter's sense or the painter's skill. He was an aspiration rather than a consummation. He cherished notions about ideals, dealt in imaginative allegories, and failed to observe the pictorial character of the world about him. As a result of this, and poor artistic training, his art had too little basis on nature, though it was very often satisfactory as decoration. Rembrandt Peale(1787-1860),oil paintings on canvas for sale, like his father, was a painter of Washington portraits of mediocre quality. Jarvis (1780-1834) and Sully (1783-1872) were both British born, but their work belongs here in America, where most of their days were spent. Sully could paint a very good portrait occasionally, though he always inclined toward the weak and the sentimental, especially in his portraits of women. Leslie (1794-1859) and Newton (1795-1835) were Americans, but, like West and Copley, they belong in their art more to England than to America. In all the early American painting the British influence may be traced, with sometimes an inclination to follow Italy in large compositions. canvas paintings for sale

THE MIDDLE PERIOD in American art dates from 1825 to about 1878. During that time, something distinctly American began to appear in the landscape work of Doughty (1793-1856) and Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Both men were substantially self-taught, though Cole received some instruction from a portrait-painter named Stein. Cole during his life was famous for his Hudson River landscapes, and for two series of pictures called The Voyage of Life and The Course of Empire. The latter were really epic poems upon canvas,art oil painting for sale, done with much blare of color and literary explanation in the title. His best work was in pure landscape, which he pictured with considerable accuracy in drawing, though it was faulty in lighting and gaudy in coloring. Brilliant autumn scenes were his favorite subjects. His work had the merit of originality and, moreover, it must be remembered that Cole was one of the beginners in American landscape art. Durand (1796-1886) was an engraver until 1835,art oil paintings online, when he began painting portraits, and afterward developed landscape with considerable power. He was usually simple in subject and realistic in treatment, with not so much insistence upon brilliant color as some of his contemporaries. Kensett (1818-1872) was a follower in landscape of the so-called Hudson River School of Cole and others, though he studied seven years in Europe. His color was rather warm, his air hazy, and the general effect of his landscape that of a dreamy autumn day with poetic suggestions. F. E. Church(1826-[A]) was a pupil of Cole,modern abstract art oil painting, and has followed him in seeking the grand and the startling in mountain scenery. With Church should be mentioned a number of artists—Hubbard (1817-1888), Hill (1829-,)Bierstadt (1830-),Thomas Moran (1837-)—who have achieved reputation by canvases of the Rocky Mountains and other expansive scenes. Some other painters of smaller canvases belong in point of time, and also in spirit, with the Hudson River landscapists—painters, too, of considerable merit, as David Johnson (1827-), Bristol (1826-), Sandford Gifford (1823-1880), McEntee(1828-1891), and Whittredge (1820-), the last two very good portrayers of autumn scenes; A. H. Wyant (1836-1892), one of the best and strongest of the American landscapists; Bradford (1830-1892) and W. T. Richards (1833-), the marine-painters. modern oil paintings of flowers