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Biography
Painter of landscapes and marines. inspired by the landscapes of Brabant Wallon. Deceased about 1945. Exhibited at the Triennial "Exposition of Antwerp "in 1901 ("Mill in Dordrecht"). Lived in Saint-Gilles at that time. Listed in BOTTOM II and "Two Centuries of Signatures of Artists of Belgium". ...
Richard DeTreville was born in Beaufort, South Carolina on November 17, 1864 into a prominent, old family of French ancestry. His grandfather fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary War and at the time of his birth during the Civil War, his father was Lt Governor of South Carolina. Little is known about his art training; he was possibly self-taught. In 1892 he moved to California and settled in Stockton where he established a small newspaper called Det's Magazine. Shortly after 1910 he moved from Stockton to San Francisco where he worked as a cartoonist for the Park Presidio News. In his studio on Clement Street he exhibited his paintings as well as in local department stores and art galleries. His works were handled locally by Schussler Brothers and Sanborn & Vail. The last few years of his life were spent across the bay in Alameda where he died on February 25, 1929. DeTreville worked in oil and, on rare occasions, in watercolor. He was known to be an excellent portraitist although his portraits are rare. The most prolific of early California painters, his thousands of small landscapes are invariably of the San Francisco Bay area, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, and northern California. He sometimes signed his works "DeT". Member: American Art Bureau. Exhibited: White House Department Store (San Francisco), 1926 (250 oils). Works held: California Historical Society; Oakland Museum; Alameda Historical Society.
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The Sroufe family came to California in a prairie schooner in 1850 with the Gold Rush. On October 2, 1853 Susan was born in Petaluma. In 1870 the family settled in San Francisco where Susan showed a marked talent for drawing while a student in the public schools. She later studied art under some of the finest local artists and then for three years in Munich and Paris. While there she exhibited at the Paris Salon and received an honorable mention. After returning to San Francisco, the artist established a studio at 13 Pine Street. In 1892 she wed John R. Loosley and continued to be active in the local art sceSne. The earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed her studio and many of her early works. After settling across the Golden Gate in Sausalito, she built a home at 141 San Carlos where she lived until her demise on Jan. 3, 1940. Her landscapes include local scenes and those painted on trips with her husband, a salesman, to Arizona and New Mexico. As well as oils and watercolors, she also excelled at wood carving and china painting. Exh: Mechanics' Inst. (SF), 1878-99; Calif. State Fair, 1880-1902; SFAA, 1885-97; Calif. State Bldg, World's Columbian Expo (Chicago), 1893; Calif. Midwinter Expo, 1894; Mark Hopkins Inst., 1898; Alaska Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909; Sketch Club (SF), 1909; Sorosis Club, 1913. In: Sausalito (CA) Women's Club; CHS. Source: Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
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Biography
Charles Robinson was born in East Monmouth, Maine, and his father, David Robinson, was a theatre producer for Gold Rush mining towns and constructed the first theatres and plays for stage productions in San Francisco. In 1850, his family moved to San Francisco where he was educated in the public schools and grew up sketching harbor scenes. He took lessons at the age of seven from Charles Nahl, a painter of mining genre and landscape, and earned a diploma at age 13 from the Mechanics' Institute for best marine drawing for a juvenile. From 1861 to 1873, he lived in Vermont because the family was forced out of San Francisco by threats resulting from his father being on the Vigilance Committee. On the East Coast, he became the pupil of marine artists William Bradford and M.F.H. De Haas as well as Impressionist George Inness. He was also much influenced by Albert Bierstadt and James Hamilton. He lived in Clinton, Iowa from 1873 to 1874 to court and marry Kathryn Wright, and then returned to San Francisco. He first worked as a retoucher of photos, and he and his wife wrote and did illustrations for "Overland Monthly" and "Century" magazine. By 1876, Robinson was exhibiting regularly as a painter, and in 1880 began making trips to Yosemite Valley. He was also in Paris between 1899 and 1901 and offered the Paris Exposition in 1900 a painting of Yosemite that was 50 x 380 feet and weighed five tons. When the committee rejected the panorama, he cut it into pieces, which he sold for passage money home. In the earthquake and fire of 1906, many of his paintings were destroyed in a warehouse where he had thought they would be safe. In 1921, a fire in his home destroyed twenty years worth of Yosemite paintings. He died May 8, 1933 in San Rafael, California. Source: Edan Hughes,
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george h. Gay was well known for his watercolor landscapes, seascapes and paintings of rivers and ships, mostly along the shores of new england. Gay also painted snowscapes, but these are scarcer. It is unusual to find an oil painting by this artist, as he worked mainly in watercolor. Some of his works display a tonalist aesthetic. He was born in milwaukee, wisconsin on july 2, 1858, and lived in chicago and then in 1889, settled in bronxville, new york. Gay was a pupil of paul brown and henry elkins in chicago. He is known to have exhibited at the national academy of design in 1890; boston art club, 1890-1900; and boston art club, 1897. Shortly before his death in 1931, george gay's address in 1929 was known to be 100 kraft ave., bronxville, ny.
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Nels Hagerup (1864-1922) was born in Christiania, Norway in 1864 into a family that included the composer Edward Hagerup Grieg. Nels Hagerup studied at the Christiania Art School, Royal Academy in Berlin, and in Copenhagen with Carl Locher. After sailing to the West Coast as a merchant seaman in 1882, he settled in Portland, Oregon. There he was an instructor of drawing at the Bishop Scott Academy (now called Hill Academy) and was a founder of the Portland Art Association. About 1892 he moved to San Francisco where he remained. He worked there as a stevedore on the waterfront and later established a home and studio in the Sunset District at 1224 46th Avenue within walking distance of the ocean. Hagerup painted nearly 6,000 oils of sand dunes, ships and marine scenes. One of his more important works is the 16' x 18' mural in the Assembly Room of the San Francisco Merchants' Exchange Building. Hagerup was a master of atmospheric seascapes. He died of a heart attack in his studio on March 13, 1922. Exhibited: Lewis & Clark Expo (Portland), 1905 (gold medal); Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909 (gold medal); California Historical Society, 1963 (retrospective). Works held: California Historical Society; San Bruno (CA) Public Library.
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A painting Sunset Glow Mt. Hood sold for $12,000 at Santa Fe Art auction 11/14/1998 lot no. 121
Biography
Born in Bangor, Maine, James Everett Stuart became known for his panoramic landscapes from Maine to California to Alaska to the Panama Canal, but especially of the American West with focus on Northern California and Oregon. Reportedly he painted more than 5000 paintings during his lifetime and originated a method of painting on aluminum and wood with a special adhering process that he thought made his work quite durable but proved not to be so. He also wrote on the back of most of his paintings His parents took him to California at the age of eight, and the family settled in San Francisco where he attended the public schools and studied art with Virgil Williams, Raymond Yelland, Thomas Hill, and William Keith at the San Francisco School of Design. His early work was dramatic California landscape including the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and in style the works were moody and mysterious and suggestive of the French Barbizon School. He first traveled to the Northwest in 1876, and in 1881, he opened his studio in Portland, Oregon and from there traveled throughout the West and East Coast and into Mexico. Subjects included Yosemite as well as California missions and adobes. He painted landscapes whose sales ultimately were financially remunerative and which established his reputation. Of those years, he expressed that he much preferred being in the park to studio painting, but he stopped visiting in 1889 and instead traveled to Alaska and the Coastal Range. During much of the 1890s, he lived in Chicago, but in 1912 returned to San Francisco until his death in 1941. There, from his studio near Union Square, he was highly successful and popular among his peers, underscored by his membership in the Bohemian Club. Many of the owners of old homes in California have his paintings on the wall, suggestive of a time of grandeur. One of his paintings is in the White House, and his work is in the historical societies of Oregon, Washington, and Montana.
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Biography
Fredrick Wagner was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1864. He received a scholarship to study art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins and in 1884 was made chief Demonstrator of Anatomy there. In 1885, Wagner left the Academy to make a painting tour of San Antonio, Texas, and then went on to Los Angeles, California, where he painted a number of landscapes and portraits. He returned to Philadelphia as an illustrator for the Philadelphia Press until 1902, and then moved to Norristown, Pennsylvania to paint full time. In 1912, Wagner opened a Philadelphia studio and taught classes in outdoor painting at Addingham, and later, at the Pennsylvania Academy's summer school in Chester Springs. His reputation grew, and he took on additional classes at his studio in the Fuller Building. In 1913, Wagner exhibited in the now famous Armory Show in New York City. He exhibited frequently at the Pennsylvania Academy's annual exhibitions, and in 1914, was awarded the Fellowship Prize. He was awarded Honorable Mentions from the Pittsburgh International, the Philadelphia Art Club, and the Carnegie Institute in 1922. His paintings are in the collections of the Cleveland Museum; St. Louis Museum, MO; Fort Wayne Museum, IN; Kalamazoo Museum, MI; Rochester Museum, NY; Worcester Art Museum, MA, and the Reading Museum, PA. Fred Wagner died in Philadelphia in 1940.
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A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Van Soelen trained in art at the St. Paul Institute from 1908 to 1911, and then attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1911-1915. The Pennsylvania Academy awarded Van Soelen a Cresson Traveling Scholarship which enabled him to tour and study in Europe in 1913 and 1914. Shortly after launching his art career back in the United States, Van Soelen headed west, seeking relief from tuberculosis. After spending time in Utah and Nevada, he settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1916. Working as a commercial illustrator, he also began to sell his fine art paintings. To acquaint himself with the people and landscapes of New Mexico, Van Soelen spent time in the small towns and ranches of the region. Early on, scenes of ranch life became his favorite subjects. Van Soelen married Virginia Carr in 1922 and the couple moved to Santa Fe before permanently settling in nearby Tesuque, New Mexico in 1926. Van Soelen's reputation grew rapidly throughout this time, but like other New Mexico's easel painters, most of his customers were in the East. In the 1930s he established a second studio in Cornwall, Connecticut to be closer to that market. Van Soelen painted in a detailed, realistic style with a slightly muted palette and strong draftsmanship. Though most famous for his ranch-life genre paintings, he also painted landscapes and formal portraits, and produced several popular lithographs on cowboy themes. In 1938 Van Soelen won a mural commission for the Post Office in Portales, New Mexico. He was a Fellow of the National Academy and exhibited in various juried exhibitions including the National Academy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Chicago Art Institute. In 1960 he was named Honorary Fellow in Fine Arts by the School of American Research.
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Artist Biography.
Brought to New York City in 1850, William Keith was apprenticed to a wood engraver in 1856 working for "Harper’s" magazine. In 1858 (or 1859) he visited California for "Harper’s" and then after a trip to Great Britain, settled in California as an engraver in 1862. He began exhibiting paintings in 1864 in San Francisco where he opened his studio, after having been taught painting by his wife. The Northern Pacific Railroad commissioned him to do landscape paintings along its route about 1868. In 1869-70 he studied in Dusseldorf, Germany; in 1871-72, he shared a studio in Boston with William Hahn; and in 1872, he returned to California. A nature lover, he found there was “scarcely a mountain in three-fourths of California where he had not kept vigil for days as a time, studying every detail of color, flower, rock, forge, shadow, and sunshine.” Keith became Thomas Hill’s rival in monumental landscapes, saying, “I’d be satisfied if I could reach the power and success of Tom Hill.” When George Inness visited California in 1890, he worked in Keith’s studio for many weeks, and they made sketching trips together. The result for Keith was an influenced style reflecting the subjective rather than the spectacular. His "Majesty of the Oaks" painting sold at auction in New York City in 1903 for $2,300., and about the same time "Glory of the Heaven" sold at auction in San Francisco for $12,000. Of medium height with unruly curly hair, Keith had his studio next to the live oaks on the Berkeley campus where it was the center of the university-oriented California culture. The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed 2,000 of Keith’s works.
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Biography
Born in New York City, Ralph Blakelock earned a reputation for nocturnal, misty scenes, especially moonlit landscapes, large oak trees, and Indian encampments. He also did a small number of floral still lifes. His work has a mysterious quality, which some associated with the type of music he habitually played on the piano during interludes from his painting. Towards the end of his career, his paintings became increasingly haunting, a reflection of his insanity brought on by horrible poverty and his inability to support his family of nine children. He was both a late exponent of the Hudson River School of painting and also of the American West. He also foreshadowed the romantic, visionary, and modern tendencies that marked the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. This romanticism, especially of escapism, was increasingly pronounced towards the end of his career. Blakelock was the son of a prominent English-born, New York physician, and first took medical studies, but his love of music and art led him away from medicine. He graduated from the College of the City of New York, studied briefly at Cooper Union, and at the Free Academy of the City of New York. In 1867, he first exhibited at the National Academy of Design to which he was ultimately elected, after he was incarcerated for insanity. During this time, he painted a series of New York City scenes, primarily of un-glamorous areas such as his work, Shanties, New York City. He also painted in Hudson River Style and was in locations that included the Adirondacks and the White Mountain. It is thought he learned this style during his brief and only art education at Cooper Union. Primarily self taught, he declined his father's offer to pay for more extensive art schooling, and instead, at age 22, embarked on a three-year (1869-1972) horseback tour of the West. He lived with plains Indians, painting pictures of their villages, and traveled and painted through the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. In San Francisco and Oakland, he painted city scenes, the tree landscapes, and coastal views, and then he headed south to Mexico. These western paintings were also in the Hudson River style, although they were rough and more painterly. Returning to New York, he developed what became his signature expression: quiet, moody, nocturnal scenes accented with bright colors depicting light, and trees silhouetted against the sky. He had a labor-intensive technique, which was building up of multi layers of thick paint, scraping some away, and "adding more to build a complex tonality". (Zellman 420) It is said that his real travels were introspective from which he created these moody, dark landscapes, and they did not satisfy the current public taste for uplifting Hudson River style painting. Ahead of popular taste, his work was overlooked, and crooked dealers took advantage of him. With the desperation of trying to support his huge family, he sold his work cheaply. Ironically, many years after his death, his work became so valuable that forgers, including a dealer who changed the signature on canvases of Blakelock's artist daughter, Marian, to that of her father, sold paintings at very high prices by using his signature. Norman Geske, Director Emeritus of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, became the authenticator of Blakelock's work, and has seen many, many illegitimate so-called Blakelocks. Under Geske's direction, a catalogue raisonne has been published that classifies paintings with Blakelock's signature into three categories according to their degree of perceived authenticity. In 1899, the artist had a mental breakdown and spent the last twenty years of his life in an asylum in Middleton, New York. He died on August 9, 1919. However, his work had already begun increasing in value, and by 1916 was bringing as high as $20,000. Of Blakelock's career, Norman Geske wrote: "Considered in the context of American landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, Ralph Albert Blakelock can be seen first as a late exponent of the Hudson River School, second as a highly personal contributor to the painting of the American West, and third and most important, as part of the romantic, visionary, and modern tendencies that marked the turn of the century."(16)