Biography
A native of New York and the son of an engraver, James David Smillie earned his early reputation for his etching skills but later for watercolor landscapes. He began etching at age 8, learning from his father, James Smillie (1807-1885). At age 14, he did a set of plates illustrating John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost. He had a job as a bank note engraver, and then he and his father had a business, collaborating as engravers with a specialty of bank-notes. They also did the engravings for the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey Report. James David Smillie helped organize the New York Etching Club, and he was the U.S. representative to supply examples of American etchers' work to the Painters-Etchers Society of London. Although he continued working with etching, drypoint, aquatint and lithography, in 1865, he began doing landscape painting and was especially interested in mountain scenery. Smillie traveled in California in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, and in the eastern United States in the Catskills and Adirondacks. From these trips he did illustrations that were published in 1872 in the magazine Picturesque America. In 1881, Smillie got married, and the couple had two sons. By 1884, he was in France, and spent much time there doing prints of landscapes, figures, portraits and cityscapes. Between 1888 and 1896, he produced a set of drypoint floral still-life prints. James David Smillie founded the American Watercolor Society and served as president and treasurer. He also taught classes at the National Academy of Design in 1868 and from 1894 to 1903.
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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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Biography
Émile Baes was born in Brussels in either 1879 or 1889. He studied with J. Stallaert at l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles. He completed his education with Bonnet and Cabanel in Paris. Baes worked as a painter, illustrator, and writer. He was known for his diverse subject matter including historical paintings, portraits, nudes and landscapes. Most noteworthy among his subject matter are femme fatale figures including Salomé, Messaline, and Cleopatra. The writings of Flaubert and the style and composition of Symbolism influenced the development of his work. Baes’ work exemplifies the Orientaliste compositional elements found in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Parisian work. In 1903 and 1904 he exhibited at the Salon de Bruxelles. Between 1928 and 1933 Baes exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1929 to 1938 and the Salon des Tuileries between 1933 and 1939. Baes wrote Les dieux sadiques, Princesesse d’ Amour. Baes died in Paris in 1954.
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RODERIC O’CONOR An exact contemporary of Charles Gruppe, O’Conor is listed as both Irish and Irish-American (by Bénézit, in error). His place of birth was Roscommon, Ireland (on 17 October 1860). Regarded as Ireland’s most progressive painter of his time, O’Conor was close to both Gauguin and Armand Seguin in the Pont-Aven region, and he was wealthy enough to purchase paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Manet, and others. O’Conor studied art in Dublin (1879-83), Antwerp (1883), then in Paris under Carolus-Duran and at the Académie Julian. He was working in Grèz-sur-Loing in the 1880s (Jacobs, 1985, p. 33), and began exhibiting his works at the Salon des Indépendants in 1890. Later he would take part in the Salon d’Automne. O’Conor first came to Brittany in 1890, and two years later he executed Yellow Landscape at Pont-Aven (Barnet Shine Collection, London). At Pont-Aven, O’Conor also did engravings. The Irishman befriended Gauguin there, also in 1892. The latter tried to persuade his “drinking buddy” O’Conor to accompany him to Tahiti. The Irish painter was certainly as avant-garde as Gauguin. Breton Peasant Knitting, already post-impressionistic, was painted in 1893, and The Farm at Lezaven, Finistère (National Gallery of Ireland), a year later. According to tradition, O’Conor inspired the character of Clutton, the failed artist in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. The letters between Seguin and O’Conor were published in 1989, as Une vie de bohème. In the introduction, Denys Sutton describes how O’Conor served as Seguin’s “father confessor.” O’Conor’s friend Clive Bell (in Old Friends, 1956, p. 163), pointed out that O’Conor “seems to have known . . . most of the more interesting French painters of his generation — the Nabis for instance.” O’Conor’s use of bold color anticipates the Fauves and the German Expressionists. His knowledge of avant-garde painting had a direct impact on the formalist critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell. O’Conor influenced both Robert Vonnoh and Edward Potthast in Grèz, and he oriented Alden Brooks (1840-1931) to Vincent van Gogh’s innovative techniques. Brooks stated that O’Conor was “considered by all the one genius of the crowd.” (Hill, 1987, p. 14). He died at Neuil-sur-Layon on 18 March 1940.
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Charles Henry Harmon (1859-1936) was born on December 23, 1859 in Mansfield, Ohio. He moved to San Jose, California with his family in 1874 and at an early age was apprenticed to local portrait painter Louis Lussier. He later spent one year working in a local photography studio re-touching negatives. His youth was spent visiting the art galleries of San Francisco and, with no formal training, he began sketching and painting in 1883 in the beautiful Santa Clara Valley. He painted many landscapes of that area and made trips to the remotest parts of the Sierra and the Monterey Peninsula where he painted many coastal scenes. He began exhibiting in San Jose in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, his works were handled exclusively by Gump's and he was recognized as one of California's foremost painters. In 1905 he established a studio in Denver and for seven years concentrated on the rugged landscape of the Rocky Mountains. While there, the Santa Fe, Western Pacific, and Colorado Midland railroads commissioned him to paint scenes along their routes. After his time in Colorado, he returned to San Jose where he remained for the rest of his life. Harmon died there on October 14, 1936 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Exhibited: Mark Hopkins Institute, 1897-98; Gump's (San Francisco), 1899; Berkeley League of Fine Arts; California Artists, Golden Gate Park Museum, 1915; Stanford Art Gallery, 1923; Rosicrucian Art Gallery, 1949 and Triton Museum, 1971 (retrospectives). Works held: San Jose Civic Auditorium; Clarke Museum (Eureka); California State Library; Denver Public Library; Santa Fe Railway. Source : Edan Hughes Artists in California.
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Biography
SIMONPIETRI, Alfred H. (1916-2001). Painter. Born in Puerto Rico on June 20, 1916. While serving in the Army during World War Two, Simonpietri was in a plane crash. After the war he settled into a home in the Sunset District of San Francisco where he remained until his demise on December 2, 2001. A talented artist, he created hundreds of paintings, mostly nudes and still lifes. Biography provided courtesy of Edan Hughes Author Artists in California 1850-1940
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biography
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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