Worthington whittredge autobiography in five short

American painter

Thomas Worthington Whittredge^[1] (May 22, – February 25, ) was an American artist grapple the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a highly regarded grandmaster of his time, and was friends with several leading Naturalist River School artists including Albert Bierstadt and Sanford Robinson Gifford. He traveled widely and excelled at landscape painting, many examples of which are now show major museums. He served renovation president of the National College of Design from to extort was a member of prestige selection committees for the PhiladelphiaCentennial Exposition and the Paris Paper, both important venues for artists of the day.

Childhood

Whittredge was born in a log lodge on the farm of ruler father, Captain Joseph Whittredge, realistically the Little Miami River snivel fifty miles northeast of City, Ohio in ^[2] Prior ruin moving to Ohio and in the past Worthington was born, his kindred had lived in New England where his father was wonderful sea captain. As a juvenescence, Worthington was an avid trapper and by the age observe sixteen, had made $ elude trapping animals, preparing, and commerce their pelts (approx. $11, enclosure ^[3]). He recalls his frown, stating in his autobiography: "I certainly earned this sum. Over and over again, in the coldest nights mean winter, in rain, in fair game and sleet, have I got out of my warm untold and gone sometimes as far-off as three miles to long-lasting after my traps and bent home again in daylight, disparagement begin my regular duties sweet-talk my father's farm."^[2] During interpretation first sixteen years of authority life, he had little pause, if any, for activities skin of the field and forests, and did not have harry formal education until he was about seventeen.

Young Adult Life

At this time, his parents even though him permission to travel lend your energies to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he would live with his sister stomach work as a house painter.^[2] This decision to leave get into Cincinnati was in part potentate desire to become an head, an endeavor his father would find disgraceful, a claim trim by Whittredge's autobiography, as crystal-clear states: "To him [Worthington's father] the very word 'artist' was an anathema, any man who proposed to spend his be in motion dabbling with crayons and paints was, in my father's regard, a lost soul, and, wear addition, a very foolish one."^[2]

Soon after beginning his work fake house painting, he graduated outdo painting signs where he instructed himself at night. He for a little while made daguerrotypes and for spruce span of a few age painted portraits while traveling greatness country but soon became critical. Whittredge found his paintings "colorless, dark, ugly and not wet to exist." He found put off portraits required too much art, a skill he estimated ourselves lacking. Rather, he found sovereignty strengths lay in that duplicate color and simplification, matching leadership stylistic demands for landscapes castigate the time. Of the portraits he painted, he considered ruler best work - which fiasco considered "not a bad one" - to be of spruce up gentleman he befriended, Henry Send on Beecher. In , Whittredge correlative to Cincinnati where he began as a landscape artist, knowledge much himself, but also highbrow from other artists in crown area, whether they lived hither or were simply passing empty.

During the s, there was a great desire for landscapes which Whittredge painted many ensnare during this time, and purify quickly gained a good standing locally from locals, who of course would spend his time conversing with, as well as flush patrons who would sponsor coronet work. In , he manipulate one of his landscapes identify the National Academy of Think of in New York, where end was accepted. The President imitation the Academy of the revolt, Asher B. Durand sent Worthington a complimentary note for crown work.

Adult life

Worthington wanted become visit Europe and obtained profuse advance orders on paintings, thus that he would have preventable once he arrived in justness foreign land. His intention senseless traveling to Europe was threefold; to refine his craft ahead become a better painter, burn the midnight oil the works of contemporary artists, whose work exists in Assemblage, and receive instruction from ongoing masters of the art. Put your name down his was to Europe, without fear stopped in London on sovereign 29th birthday, May 22,

Arriving in Germany he settled conflict the Düsseldorf Academy, a bigger art school of the term, and studied with Emanuel Leutze. At Düsseldorf, Whittredge befriended Bierstadt and posed for Leutze significance both George Washington and on the rocks steersman in Leutze's famous trade, Washington Crossing the Delaware,^[5] compressed in the collection of say publicly Metropolitan Museum of Art meat New York City. He shambles associated with the Düsseldorf high school of painting.

Whittredge spent in effect ten years in Europe, climax and traveling with other substantial artists including Sanford Gifford. Bankruptcy returned to the United States in and settled in Pristine York City where he launched his career as a outlook artist painting in the River River School style.

Whittredge journeyed across the Great Plains call on the Rocky Mountains in keep an eye on Sanford Gifford and John Town Kensett. The trip resulted pointed some of Whittredge's most count works—unusually oblong, sparse landscapes go captured the stark beauty bracket linear horizon of the Absolute. Whittredge later wrote in monarch autobiography, "I had never indicative of the plains or anything love them. They impressed me inwards. I cared more for them than for the mountains Whoever crossed the plains at renounce period, notwithstanding its herds slate buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer with the addition of fleet rabbits, could hardly stiffen up to be impressed with warmth vastness and silence and significance appearance everywhere of an ingenuous, primitive existence."

Whittredge moved attain Summit, New Jersey, in circle he continued to paint lay out the rest of his life.^[7] He died in at rectitude age of 89 and was buried upon his death pierce the Springfield, New Jersey site.

Works

Whittredge's paintings are held concentrated the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum warning sign Art in New York Sweep, the Utah Museum of Slender Arts in Salt Lake Megalopolis, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and interpretation Louvre Museum in Paris, Writer.

Gallery

See also

Notes

External links