Lee Gaskins' AT THE FAIR The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
Web Design and Art/Illustration copyrighted 2008
Gaetano Esposito was born in Salerno, Italy on November 17th, 1858. This Italian painter studied privately with Gaetano D’Agostino (1837–1914) and later enrolled at the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Naples, where he was a pupil of Filippo Palizzi, Domenico Morelli and Stanislao Lista (1824–1908). From 1875 to 1906 he regularly participated in the exhibitions organized by the Naples Società Promotrice di Belle Arti and had his first real success
at the Esposizione Nazionale held in Naples in 1877.
Esposito’s paintings were clearly influenced by the work of Antonio Mancini, particularly in their sentimental attitude towards squalor or poverty.
At the 1880 Esposizione Nazionale in Turin his Christ among the Children (Rome, G.N.A. Mod.) was bought by the Ministry of Education, while at exhibitions in Rome (1893), Florence (1896–7), St Petersburg (1902).
The painting to the right- In the Harbor of Naples, won a Gold medal at the St. Louis World's Fair. Esposito won additional medals at the 1904 Exposition for his fine art. He died in Sala Consilina, Italy on the eighth of April in 1911.
F.I. Bulgakov, painted `Awaiting the Pasha,' a large 109 X 58 inch oil in 1889 (the left painting). It was also either named or misinterrepted as "Captive in a Harem" and even "Imprisoned."
Bulgarov exhibited this painting in Moscow in March 1892 and in Kiev in Jan-Feb of 1891.
It was exhibited officially at the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis and was part of the Russian art debacle at the Exposition. The work was sold at Piedmont Gallery in Oakland California in October 1916.
Thank you to Mike Truax for finding this image. So far, I have not yet found any bio. or info. on the artist.
The picture to the right is entitled- Nana, again painted by F. I. Bulgakov. Nana was the main character in the novel Nana, by Emile Zola.
In 1885 this painting was exhibited in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, London and Paris. After being shown at the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago, and Baltimore in 1901; the oil was exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair. The painting is presently shown at the Nana Grill, Wyndham Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas.
Bulgakov, who liked to paint large, rendered Nana as a 6 foot X 9 foot long oil, starting it in 1878 (completion- 1881). C. L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), mentions this painting in his diary.
This image originally from a 35 degree angle was heavily undistorted to attempt to show the picture straight on., hemce it may not look exactly like the original.
John Ottis Adams created `Iridescence of A Shallow Stream' in 1902. The piece is an oil on canvas, 28 x 42 1/16 in. Inscribed lower left: J. Ottis Adams 1902.
Adams was best known as a nature-loving artist. A landscape painter who was a key member of the Hoosier Group of Indiana painters, Adams, along with William Forsyth and Theodore Steele, was committed to depicting his own native region.
John Adams was born in Amitz, Indiana and in the mid 1880s went to Munich, Germany where he followed the regular routine of the Royal Academy. Adams also studied with J. Frank Currier at Schleisheim, Germany and with John Parker in London. After studying in England and Germany, J. Ottis Adams returned to Indiana and opened an art school in Muncie in 1887. Adams painted the artwork in Brooklyn, Morgan County, Indiana. To convey the illusion of light dancing across the surface of the stream, Adams applied pure, unblended tones to the canvas in short brushstrokes.
The work garnered enthusiastic critical acclaim and won a bronze medal at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904.
It was purchased by the school children of Terre Haute for the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library and in 1961, transferred to the Swope Art Museum.
Douglas Volk was son of the noted sculptor Leonard Wells Volk (1828-1895). Volk was born in 1856 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and named fter his mother's cousin, Abraham Lincoln's political rival Stephan A. Douglas, whose surname he adopted as his first name.
At the age of fourteen he began to attend classes at the Accademia di San Luca; as well as received informal guidance from George Inness.
Volk exhibited his first major painting, En Bretagne, at the Salon of 1875, and in the following year he visited America and was one of the youngest exhibitors at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Continuing to study with Gerôme in Paris until 1879, when he permanently returned to America and initiated a lifelong career in art education by accepting a professorship at the Cooper Institute in New York City, where he taught until 1884. He married Marion B. Larrabee of Chicago in 1881 and had four children.
He was elected to membership in the Society of American Artists. In 1886 he founded the Minneapolis School of Fine Art and served as its director until 1893.
Volk established his reputation by painting romanticized historical subjects depicting life in Colonial America, especially scenes of seventeenth century Puritan society.
The painting to the right- `The Boy with Arrow,' was created by Volk in 1903, (46 1/8 x 36 1/8 in.). Volk’s son, Leo, posed for the image, the boy holds the arrow in a relaxed grip, as a confident young hunter would carry his spear. Volk exhibited the painting in Gallery 4 of the Palace of Fine Art at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair to great acclaim and a silver medal.
Leo Volk died at his retreat in Fryeburg, Maine, in 1935.
He was made a member of the national jury of selection for the 1893 Chicago Colombian Exposition where he also exhibited three paintings, one of which was awarded a medal.
Charles Schreyvogel was born on January 4, 1861 in New York City and was a painter that mainly worked with Western subject matter in the days of the disappearing frontier.
He also spent much of his childhood in Hoboken, New Jersey. He grew up in a poor family of German immigrant shopkeepers on the Lower East Side of New York. Schreyvogel was unable to afford art classes and he taught himself to draw. He spent most of his life as an impoverished artist until he suddenly became recognized and earned what seemed like overnight fame. Schreyvogel did much of his work in his studio (or its rooftop) in decidedly non-Western Hoboken
In 1901, he was awarded the Thomas Clarke Prize at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design.
The picture entitled- Custer's Demand won a Bronze Medal at the 1904 World's Fair.
Schreyvogel died on January 27, 1912.
Works by Schreyvogel are included in the collections of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma[ and the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, but also can be deiscovered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
William Sergeant Kendall was born in New York in 1869 and trained at the Art Students League and with Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He also traveled to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts
His subjects were most notably mothers and children as well as female nudes. He taught at the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and later, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Carnegie Institute. He was the dean of the School of Fine Arts at Yale from 1913 through 1922.
The painting to the right-`The End of the Day,' was one of Kendall's most famous canvases. The artist's wife and daughter posed for the picture. It is 33 x 34 inches and was created in 1900. Exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition, the painting was awarded a Gold Medal.
Ludwig Hans Fischer was an Austrian artist who was born in 1848 and died in 1915. `An Arab Caravan' was painted with oils on canvas and was created in 1903. It is 26.5 x 47.5 inches. it was well-received for it's striking use of perspective and was exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair.
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was born on July 25 1844 and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. He was a was a realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American history.
Eakins attended Central High School, a premier public school for applied science and arts in Philadelphia, where he excelled in mechanical drawing. Eakins studied drawing and anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts beginning in 1861, and attended courses in anatomy and dissection at Jefferson Medical College from 1864-65.
In 1876, Eakins returned to the Pennsylvania Academy to teach in 1876 as a volunteer, then becoming a salaried professor in 1878. He rose to director in 1882. Though he had prior troubles with womanizing, Eakins was forced to resign in 1886, for removing the loincloth of a male model in a class where female students were present.
Eakins has been credited with having introduced the camera to the American art studio. Hence, his work became increasingly realistic. Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy.
Eakins died on June 25, 1916.
The painting to the right- `The Agnew Clinic,' was painted in 1889 and depicts Dr. David Hayes Agnew performing a partial mastectomy in a medical amphitheater. Agnew stands in the left-foreground, holding a scalpel. The painting is Eakins's largest work (over 118 inches in length), and the artist placed himself in the painting, (although the actual painting of him is attributed to his wife (rightmost of the pair behind the nurse)).
Because the painting was rendered so realistic, art historians have identified every person depicted in the painting. The painting was commissioned for 750 dollars in 1889 by three undergraduate classes at the University of Pennsylvania, to honor Agnew on the occasion of his retirement.
Dr. Agnew died shortly after the painting was completed.
Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859) was an African American artist best known for his paintings of religious subjects and genre scenes. He was the first African American painter to gain international acclaim.
In 1880 Tanner enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Under the tutorage of the Professor of Drawing and Painting,- Thomas Eakins, Tanner was encouraged to study from live models, direct discussion of anatomy in male and female classes, and dissections of cadavers to further familiarity and understanding of the human body.
Tanner proved to be one of Eakins’s favorite students. Although he gained confidence as an artist and began to sell his work, racism was a prevalent condition in Philadelphia. After an unsuccessful attempt at opening a photography studio in Atlanta and teaching drawing at Clark University, Tanner left America for France in the winter of 1891. Except for occasional brief returns home, he would spend the rest of his life there.
In Paris, Tanner studied the works of Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Louis Le Nain. These artists had painted scenes of ordinary people in their environment.
Under the guidance of Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens, Tanner began to make a name for himself. Later that year he painted “The Resurrection of Lazarus”. The critical praise for this piece solidified Tanner’s position in the artistic elite and heralded the future direction of his paintings. His father, a minister in the African Methodist Church influenced Tanner;s love for biblical themes.
Art critic Rodman Wannamaker offered to cover an all expenses-paid trip for Tanner to the Middle East. Explorations of various mosques and biblical sites as well as character studies of the local population allowed Tanner to further his artistic training.
In 1893 on a short return visit to the United States, Tanner painted his most famous work, The Banjo Lesson.
During World War I, Tanner worked for the Red Cross Public Information Department, at which time he also painted images from the front lines of the war.
Tanner died in Paris, France on May 25, 1937.
Tanner's `Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City' (circa 1885 Oil on Canvas), hangs in the Green Room at the White House; it is the first painting by an African-American artist to enter the permanent collection of the White House.
His painting entitled “Daniel in the Lions Den,” was accepted into the 1896 Salon nad pictured above was exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair, where it received a Silver Meda
Johnson Eastman's 'A Falling Market' which depits a scene as the interior of the old Round Top Wind Mill, Nantucket, Ma; which was taken down in 1873. It shows a miller at work in his shop on Nantucket, and taking a brief rest from his duties. The image is 17 x 13".
He was know as a great portrait painter at the age of 18. He went to Dusseldorf and studied with E. Leutze between 1849-1851. he also studied in France and went to the Hague in 1851 and became known as the `American Rembrandt,' there, Eastman was offered the post of Court Painter. In the 1870's he began to visit and paint on Nantucket, Ma.; and produced many of his best genre paintings on the island.
The oil painting was exhibited a t the 1904 World's Fair and won a gold medal.
The painting was sold for 15,000 dollars in 2008 at an online Ruby Lane auction.
