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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) established a reputation as one of the premier portrait artists of her generation, whose skill and aesthetic were compared to those of Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. Beaux grew up in Philadelphia, raised by a grandmother and two aunts who ensured that fine art, music, and literature were an integral part of her childhood. Skilled at drawing, Beaux attended art classes as a teenager, and made frequent visits to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she encountered many American and European masterworks that would influence her later paintings. Read More

Syracuse native Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916) was primarily a self-taught artist. He likely learned the basics of image composition from his father, a successful portrait and landscape photographer, before enrolling in the newly founded College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University in 1873. After leaving school without a degree in 1875, Ranger worked in his father’s photography studio, retouching landscape negatives. Outside of work, he painted watercolor landscapes, first displaying his work at local businesses and then nationally in major cities, such as Boston and New York. Read More

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), an accomplished Hudson River School landscape painter, grew up in Hudson, New York, where his father’s business ventures in banking and ownership of an iron foundry provided the family with great wealth. Gifford attended Brown University from 1842 to 1843 before leaving school in pursuit of becoming an artist. In 1845, Gifford began to study at the New York City studio of John Rubens Smith, a painter, printmaker, and influential art instructor, and in 1846, Gifford enrolled at the Antique School of the National Academy of Design, where he received further artistic training. Inspired by the work of Thomas Cole, often referred to as the father of American landscape painting, Gifford became consumed by his love for landscapes and departed from portraiture to focus solely on painting the natural world. Read More

Reginald Marsh’s (1898-1954) paintings capture the expansive growth and frenetic energy of everyday urban life in New York City in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Marsh moved to New York after graduating from Yale University in 1920, and quickly found success as an illustrator and political cartoonist, working for publications such as New York Daily News, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and New Masses. Already an adept illustrator, Marsh began taking painting classes at the Art Students League in 1921 (where one of his first teachers was John Sloan), and after a trip to Paris in 1925 where he met Social Realist painter Thomas Hart Benton, Marsh returned to the city with an eye towards painting the characters that filled its streets. Read More

Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), often referred to as the “American Rembrandt,” is noted as one of the most gifted genre and portrait painters of the nineteenth century. Johnson was born in the remote town of Lovell, Maine, grew up in Fryeburg (just south of Lovell), and moved with his family to Augusta in 1834 when his father became involved with the state government. In the early 1840s, Johnson briefly apprenticed with a lithographer in Boston before moving to Washington D.C. for a few years, where he drew portraits of notable figures, including John Quincy Adams. He eventually returned to Boston, where he became close with the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his family. Read More