The Painters Archives - Page 3 sur 9

James Crawford Thom E

New York City, March 22nd 1835 – February 16th 1898, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.

James Crawford Thom was born on March 22, 1835, in New York City, the son of James Thom (1802-1850), a sculptor, and Jessie Thom (died 1868).
James married Louise Giles (died in 1881). They had a son named Salvatore Thom, born in France in 1865. They then had Ada (born in 1866), James (1867-1946), Blanche and Jessie, all four born in England. It is interesting to mention that Ada married Frank Hoffman, from New Jersey. They had four sons, one named Harold G. Hoffman, the future Governor of New Jersey. He became known as « the most corrupt Governor New Jersey has ever had.
James Crawford Thom studied at the Perth Amboy Artists Colony and then, in 1853, at the National Academy. He came to France with Corot and stayed at Ecouen at 13 rue de Paris. In the 1861 census, he is listed as Croquefort (misunderstood by Crawford). His paintings of children playing in the snow show the great influence of Pierre Edouard Frère. One of his paintings is titled « Study at Ecouen« . The style of genre painting is clearly visible in « Feeding the ducks » and « Circus scene« .
After the death of Louise Giles, James Crawford Thom remarried in 1884 to Sarah Bloodgood, the daughter of a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer.
From 1884 until his death, James Crawford Thom lived in Old Bridge, NJ. He died of pneumonia in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. He is buried in the family plot in Old Bridge Cemetery.

For further information, please read the book “L’Ecole d’Ecouen, une colonie de peintres au XIXe siècle” (bilingual French-English).

Samuel Frost Johnson E

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Painters Listing

New York, 1835 – 1879, ?

Originally from New York, Samuel Frost Johnson was an academic painter who spent several years studying and exhibiting in Europe, notably in Düsseldorf (Germany), Antwerp (Belgium), Ecouen and Paris.
Between 1865 and 1869, as a student of Pierre Edouard Frère, he lived in Ecouen at 22 rue d’Ezanville and exhibited « Pomme de terre » at the Paris Salon of 1869.
His works « The Interior » and « The Dilemma » were painted in Ecouen. His signature (SF Johnson/Ecouen) is also found on three other genre paintings.
In the 1870s he returned to the United States where he became a professor of art and science at Fordham University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
At the same time, he exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the Brooklyn Academy of Art.
He died in 1879 in an unknown location.

For further information, please read the book “L’Ecole d’Ecouen, une colonie de peintres au XIXe siècle” (bilingual French-English).

James William Pattisson E

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Painters Listing

Boston, July 14th 1844 – May 29th 1915, Ashville

James William Pattison is the son of the principal of the Oread Institute, a college for girls in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Towards the end of the Civil War, he was drafted into the Union armies and published some drawings of the conflict in the weekly magazine Harper’s. At the end of the war, he began private art studies in St. Louis where he met his first wife. In 1866, in New York, he took courses in landscape drawing with Sanford, R. W. Gifford, the brothers William, James Hart and George Inness.
After five years as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, James William Pattison went to Düsseldorf to further his education. In 1876, he remarried to Helen Searle.
Helen Searle (1834-1884) was the daughter of the well-known and very wealthy architect Henry Robinson Searle (1836-1882). She was born in Burlington VT. She lived since the age of ten in Rochester NY, in the « finger lakes » region of upstate New York, near Lake Ontario.
She began painting still lifes of flowers and fruit at an early age.
In 1864, she exhibited at the Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts. She taught painting and drawing at Mrs. Bryan’s Female Seminary in Batavia.
In 1866, she had her first major exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York.
From 1867 to 1871 she studied at the Düsseldorf School of Painting with Wilhem Preyer (1803-1889). In 1870, her exhibition at the art dealers Bismeyer & Kraus was highly praised by the specialized press. It was in Düsseldorf that she met James William Pattisson (1844-1915).
In 1879, James William Pattison, his wife Helen and their two children moved to Ecouen. He studied with Luigi Chialiva. They lived at the hotel located at 9 Place de la Mairie.
James William Pattison exhibited « Two Children » and « Figures in a street of Ecouen » at the 1880 Paris Salon.

Returning to New York for two years, James William Pattison exhibited at the National Academy of Drawing and the American Association of Watercolorists. He became director of the School of Fine Arts in Jacksonville, Illinois. In 1896, again a widower, he moved to Chicago and lectured at the local Art Institute. He taught at the College of Art in Rockford, Illinois, being very active in the Municipal Art League and other local organizations. In 1907, the Municipal Art League of Chicago purchased his famous painting « Serenity ».
James William Pattison was a writer about the arts. He began in 1886 with a series « Art talks of Pattisson » in the Jacksonville Journal and the Chicago Journal. He published several books on painters from the Renaissance to modern times.
James William Pattison retired to Ashville, North Carolina and died at the age of seventy.

For further information, please read the book “L’Ecole d’Ecouen, une colonie de peintres au XIXe siècle” (bilingual French-English).

The siege of Petersburgh (Le siège de Petersburgh)

Thomas Allen E

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Painters Listing

Saint-Louis, October 19th 1849 – 1924, Worcester

Thomas Allen was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His ancestors were among the founders of Windsor, Connecticut, in the wake of the Mayflower. The son of a railroad tycoon Congressman, he studied art in his hometown of St. Louis at Washington University and then traveled widely. It was a school trip to the Rocky Mountains with J.W. Pattison in 1869 that decided him to become an artist. He became an animal painter as well as a landscape artist and caricaturist.
In 1871, Thomas Allen came to Paris but found the weather was not conducive to his art because of the destruction caused by the war of 1870. He then visited Düsseldorf and in 1872 entered the local Royal Academy. He stayed there for four years. In 1877, his teachers declared him fit to open his own studio. He used his vacations to visit other cities and countries, such as Holland, Belgium, England and France.
In 1878, he resided in Ecouen at 36 rue de Paris with his wife, Eleanor Godard Whitney (married June 30, 1880, died in Ecouen on May 14, 1882 after giving birth to Eleanor Whitney Allen on April 18, 1882). He was part of the colony of painters of Ecouen with Luigi Chialiva, Pierre Edouard Frère, Auguste Schenck and others. He remarried to Alice Ranine (1862-1949) on October 23, 1884 with whom he had a son, Robert Fletcher Allen (1892-1903) and a daughter, Dorothy Fletcher Allen Preston (1898-1987).
He traveled to the American West and to Texas where he painted a work entitled « Evening at the Market in San Antonio » which received a medal at the Paris Salon of 1882. That same year he settled permanently in Boston, where he had a long and distinguished career.
He chaired the faculty of the Boston Museum School of Drawing and Painting and was also president of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
His paintings are on display at the Berkshire Museum, the Joslyn Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Antonia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

For further information, please read the book “L’Ecole d’Ecouen, une colonie de peintres au XIXe siècle” (bilingual French-English).

James Lewis Strange Digman Wingfield E

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Painters Listing

Powers-Court, 1842 – 1891, Londres

James Lewis Strange Digman Wingfield was an Irish traveler, actor, costume designer, writer, painter and much more as the circumstances of his life dictated.
Born on February 25, 1842, James Lewis Wingfield was the third and last son of Richard Wingfield, 6th Viscount Powerscourt and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Frances Charlotte, eldest daughter of Robert Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Roden.
He studied at Eton College and the University of Bonn. He was destined for the army, but gave up the career at the request of his mother.
He was a stage actor, most notably on August 21, 1865 when he played at the Haymarket theater.
He was also a journalist and incidentally a surgeon during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. He painted the siege of Paris, communicating by balloon with The Times, The Daily Telegraph and other English newspapers. After a short stay in London, he returned to Paris to cover the events of the Commune.
He had his studio in a barn and rented for three years, for 300 F per year, a house on rue de Paris, in the village of Ecouen, on August 5, 1868 from Mr. Bourgeois. It is a large shed belonging to a property. He lived in the house of Pierre Edouard Frère at 9 rue de la Beauvette.
Back in London, he rents a house at 8 Maida Vale with a large studio attached. Lewis Wingfield, focused on painting, became a member of the Royal Hiberian Academy. Between 1868 and 1875, he presented four works to the Royal Academy and one to the Street Gallery Suffolk.
After giving up painting, Lewis Wingfield became a theatrical costume designer.
After tiring of this occupation, he traveled widely. Wingfield was one of the first British to visit the interior of China and then, in 1880, Hong Kong, Fuzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, Tianjin with trips around. He then continued to Tokyo. James Lewis Wingfield also worked as a war correspondent embedded in the military staff. He joined the British army in Sudan in 1884. He was then hospitalized for a long time in Egypt and never quite recovered his health. He also traveled to Australia.
On November 12, 1891, James Lewis Wingfield died at 14 Montague Place, London and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

For further information, please read the book “L’Ecole d’Ecouen, une colonie de peintres au XIXe siècle” (bilingual French-English).

George Henry Boughton E

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Painters Listing

Norwich (UK), 1833 – 1905, London (UK)

Although George Henry Boughton was born in Norwich, England in 1833 and lived in London for the latter part of his life, his formative years as a freelance artist began in Albany, New York, where his family settled in the 1830s.
By the age of 19 he was a landscape painter and opened his first studio in 1852.
The American Art Union bought one of his first paintings. This institution encouraged him to exhibit his work and helped him to spend six months studying in England.
In 1857, George Henry Boughton exhibited at the Washington Art Association and in 1859 and 1860, worked in New York. In 1860 he went to Paris where he studied with Pierre Edouard Frère and Edouard May. The French influence was then visible in his style.
George Henry Boughton opened a studio in London in 1861. Although he lived in England from then on, his favorite subject was American colonial history. If ever there was a painter who could tell a story with sincere feeling using soft colors and tones, it was George Henry Boughton. A London critic stated that « he learned to put natural feelings into a rustic environment, which most English painters lack. The history of the New England Puritans is the subject of one of his most famous paintings « Pilgrims Going to Church, » now in the New York Historical Society.
As an accomplished painter, his work is exhibited in the major academies of which he was also a member.
George Henry Boughton continued his career in England until his death in 1905 in Campden Hill. His paintings are now exhibited in museums in both the United States and England.

For further information, please read the book “L’Ecole d’Ecouen, une colonie de peintres au XIXe siècle” (bilingual French-English).