Paintings Exhibited at the Fair page 8

Willard Leroy Metcalf (born July 1, 1858, was an American artist born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and illustration, he became prominent as a landscape painter. For some years he was an instructor in the Women's Art School, Cooper Union, New York. Metcalf began painting in 1874. In 1876 he opened a studio in Boston, and received a scholarship at the Boston Museum school, where he studied until 1878.

Afteer travelling in Europe, and upon his return to the United States Metcalf had a solo exhibition at the St. Botolph Club in Boston. After living briefly in Philadelphia, in 1890 he opened a studio in New York, working for several years as a portrait painter, illustrator, and teacher.

The Corcoran Gallery held a large exhibition of Metcalf's work in 1925, during which the artist died of a heart attack in New York City, on March 6. He was 66.

His ashes were scattered in Cornish, New Hampshire, by his longtime friend Charles Platt.

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies was 1858 in New Haven, Connecticut; an American painter who specialized in landscapes, genre paintings, and portraits.

She studied at the St. Louis Art School (where she won a three years' scholarship), and in Paris at the Académie Julian and under Carolus Duran. She had her own studio at 11 Impasse du Maine, (now part of Musée Bourdelle).

She married Frederick MacMonnies in 1888 and divorced him in 1909, then married Will H. Low that same year.

In April 1892, Low (then MacMonnies) was approached by Sarah Tyson Hallowell, agent for Bertha Palmer, the prime mover behind the Women's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, to paint one of the two mural tympana planned for the building's interior. The other was Modern Woman, by Mary Cassatt. The topic of Low's mural was Primitive Women and it was by all accounts at the time deemed to be the more successful of the two. These were to be the only murals by these two painters.

She is represented in the Museum of Rouen, France, where she won a gold medal in 1903 and again in 1911. She died in 1946)

Louis Aston Knight was born on 1873, was a French-born American artist noted for his paintings of landscapes. One of his paintings, The Afterglow, was purchased by U.S. President Warren G. Harding in 1922 to hang in the White House.

Aston Knight, the son of Daniel Ridgway Knight and Rebecca Morris Webster Knight, was born in Paris. He was raised in Europe and received his early training with his father. He later continued his studies with Tony Robert-Fleury and Jules Lefebvre.

Aston Knight exhibited his first work at the Paris Salon in 1894 and continued exhibiting there throughout his lifetime, winning an honorable mention in 1901, a third class gold medal in 1905, and second glass gold medal in 1906. His favorite subjects were the cottages and gardens in the towns surrounding his home in Beaumont-le-Roger. He was noted for his ability to render "the transparency, the reflections and the movements of water."

Aston died in 1948.

His auction record is $108,000, for 'A Cottage Along the River,' secured at Sotheby's, New York on 30 November 2005.

Theodore Clement Steele was an American Impressionist painter born on September 11, 1847 known for his Indiana landscapes. Steele was an innovator and leader in American Midwest painting and is one of the most famous of Indiana's Hoosier Group painters.

Steele’s work has appeared in a number of prestigious exhibitions, including the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) in Chicago, and Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904) in Saint Louis.

The eldest child of Samuel Hamilton and Harriett Newell Evans Steele, in 1852 the family moved to Waveland in Montgomery County, Indiana, where Steele developed an interest in art and learned to draw. Steele began formal art training as a boy at the Waveland Collegiate Institute (Waveland Academy). Steele also studied briefly in Chicago, Illinois, and Cincinnati, Ohio, before returning to Indiana to paint portraits on commission.

To help Steele obtain additional art training in Europe, his friend and art patron, Herman Lieber, arranged to provide financial support for the family so Steele could study at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

Steele’s paintings showed a notable change in style after his return from Munich. Steele’s Munich paintings sported dark, drab colors and high contrasts, but his work in Indiana gradually shifted toward a brighter, more vivid color palette. Steele was especially interested in capturing the beauty of nature through expressions of light and color.

Steele was invited to be a juror on the selection committee of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1904 world’s fair at Saint Louis. Four of Steele’s paintings were selected for the exposition and an additional five paintings were shown in the Indiana Building.

In December 1925, Steele suffered a heart attack. Although he recovered and continued to paint, he became ill the following June and died at home in Brown County on July 24, 1926

Antonio Mancini was born in Rome on November 14, 1852

Mancini, at the age of twelve, he was admitted to the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples, where he studied under Domenico Morelli.

Mancini worked at the forefront of the Verismo movement, an indigenous Italian response to 19th-century Realist aesthetics. His usual subjects included children of the poor, juvenile circus performers, and musicians he observed in the streets of Naples. His portrait of a young acrobat in Il Saltimbanco captures the fragility of the boy whose impoverished childhood is spent entertaining pedestrian crowds.

While in Paris in the 1870s, Mancini met the Impressionist painters Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. He became friends with John Singer Sargent, who famously pronounced him to be the greatest living painter. His mature works show a brightened palette with a striking impasto technique on canvas and a bold command of pastels on paper.

In 1881, Mancini suffered a disabling mental illness. He settled in Rome in 1883 for twenty years, then moved to Frascati where he lived until 1918. He died December 28, 1930.

Julius Garibaldi Melchers was born on August 11, 1860– was an American artist. He was one of the leading American proponents of naturalism.

The son of German-born American sculptor Julius Theodore Melchers, Gari Melchers was a native of Detroit, Michigan, who at seventeen studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under von Gebhardt. Attracted by the pictorial side of Holland, he settled at Egmond.

He became a member of the National Academy of Design, New York; the Royal Academy of Berlin. In 1889, he and John Singer Sargent became the first American painters to win a Grand Prize at the Paris Universal Exposition.

He spent his final years at Belmont Estate in Falmouth, Virginia, near Fredericksburg. He died there on November 30, 1932.

Besides portraits, his chief works are: The Supper at Emmaus, in the Krupp collection at Essen; The Family, National Gallery, Berlin; Mother and Child, Luxembourg; and the decoration, at the Library of Congress, Washington, Peace and War.

The panels Peace and War were commissioned for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago of 1893.

Melchers died on November 30, 1932.

Harry Chase was born in Woodstock, Vermont in 1853, and apecialized in marine painting. While studying art in Munich, he completed scenes on the North Sea coast of Denmark. After a brief stint in Saint Louis, he returned to Europe, painting the French coast while working for two years in France.

The artist also spent three years in Holland, primarily in the Hague, where he studied with Hendrik Willem Mesdag. William Gerdts (Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710-1920), who chronicles these experiences and training, notes that Chase became one of the major American proponents of the Hague School of Dutch Impressionist painters before returning to Saint Louis in 1879. His work wse exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair.

Chase traveled extensively. He became mentally ill and was institutionalized in Poughkeepsie, NY, then transferred to Sewanee, Tennessee where he died in 1889

Robert Frederick Blum was born on July 9, 1857 He was employed for a time in a lithographic shop, and studied at the McMicken Art School of Design in Cincinnati, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but he was practically self-taught, and early on showed great and original talent.

His first published sketches of Japanese jugglers appeared in the St. Nicholas Magazine. His most important work is a large frieze in the Mendelssohn Music Hall, New York, Music and the Dance. His pen-and-ink work for the Century Magazine attracted wide attention, as did his illustrations for Sir Edwin Arnold's Japonica.

Blum's chief patron, Alfred Corning Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, commissioned twin canvasses, 50 feet long and 12 feet high, for the proscenium of Mendelssohn Hall in downtown New York, which he had constructed to house the famous Mendelssohn Glee Club.

Robert Frederick Blum died of pneumonia at his home at 90 Grove Street, New York City on 8 June 1903.

William Merritt Chase was born on November 1, 1849 – was known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons School of Design.

Chase showed an early interest in art, and studied under local, self-taught artists Barton S. Hays and Jacob Cox.He arrived in New York in 1869, met and studied with Joseph Oriel Eaton for a short time, then enrolled in the National Academy of Design under Lemuel Wilmarth, a student of the famous French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

In New York City, however, Chase became known for his flamboyance, especially in his dress, his manners, and most of all in his studio. At Tenth Street, Chase had moved into Albert Bierstadt's old studio and had decorated it as an extension of his own art.

In addition to his painting, Chase actively developed an interest in teaching. He is perhaps best known for his portraits, and his sitters including some of the most important men and women of his time. Chase also frequently painted his wife Alice and their children.

Chase died on October 25, 1916, at his home in New York City.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was born on December 14, 1824. He was a French painter best known for his mural painting. He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work influenced many other artists, notably Robert Genin.

Puvis de Chavannes was educated at the Amiens College. A journey to Italy opened his mind to fresh ideas, and on his return to Paris in 1846 he announced his intention to become a painter. He studied first under Eugène Delacroix, but only very briefly, as Delacroix closed his studio shortly afterwards due to ill health. He studied subsequently under Henri Scheffer and then Thomas Couture.

Puvis de Chavannes made his Salon debut in 1850 with Dead Christ, Negro Boy, The Reading Lesson, and Portrait of a Man.

Puvis de Chavannes' work is seen as symbolist in nature, even though he studied with some of the romanticists, and he is credited with influencing an entire generation of painters and sculptors, particularly the works of the Modernists. One of his protégés was Georges de Feure.

Over the course of his career, Puvis received a substantial number of commissions for works to be carried out in public and private institutions throughout France. His early work at the Musée de Picardie had helped him to develop his classicizing style, and the decorative aesthetic of his mural wor

He died on October 24, 1898.

Robert Harris was born on September 18, 1849, he was a Welsh-born Canadian painter most noted for his portrait of the Fathers of Confederation.

Born in Caerhun, Conwy, Wales, he came to Prince Edward Island via Liverpool with his family as a youth. He later studied art in Boston, London's Slade School of Art, in Paris under Léon Bonnat, and in Rome. He traveled extensively, finally settling in Montreal.

His commission to paint the Fathers of Confederation came early in 1883, and it established his reputation as a portrait artist.

He was later commissioned by news publications of the day to create portraits of notable personalities, ranging from politicians to scoundrels. For example, he made portraits of those accused of murdering the Donnelley's for the Toronto Globe. He was a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and elected president of the RCA in 1893. An important collection of his works is housed at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown.

His painting, A Meeting of the School Trustees illustrating a confrontation between PEI teacher Kate Henderson and her school's trustees appeared on a Canadian stamp in 1980 and was dramatised by a Heritage Minute.

He was married but had no children. He was the brother of the architect William Critchlow Harris and took an active interest in the artwork of his cousin Kathleen Morris. He died on February 27, 1919.

Arnold Böcklin was born on October 16, 1827. He was a Swiss symbolist painter.

Arnold studied at the Düsseldorf academy under Schirmer, and became a friend of Anselm Feuerbach. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.

After serving his time in the army, Böcklin set out for Rome in March 1850.

He then exhibited the Great Park, one of his earliest works, in which he treated ancient mythology. Of this period are his Nymph and Satyr, Heroic Landscape (Diana Hunting), both of 1858, and Sappho (1859).

He returned to Rome from 1862 to 1866. From 1886 to 1892 he settled at Zürich. Of this period are the Naiads at Play, A Sea Idyll, and War. After 1892 Böcklin resided at San Domenico, near Florence.

He was influenced by Romanticism, his painting was symbolic with mythological subjects often overlapping with the Pre-Raphaelites. His pictures portray mythological, fantastical figures along classical architecture constructions (often revealing an obsession with death) creating a strange, fantasy world.

Böcklin exercised an influence on Giorgio de Chirico,[5] and on Surrealist painters like Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí.

Böcklin died on 16 January 1901 in Fiesole, (Italy).

David Ericson was born in Motola, Sweden and emigrated to Duluth, Minnesota at the age of four. Ericson began as a self-taught artist and won a prize in painting at the Minnesota State Fair in 1885. Two years after winning the prize, Ericson moved to New York and joined the Art Students League. While in New York he was a student of William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox. David Ericson continued his studies in Paris and London where he studied with James McNeill Whistler.

Ericson returned to Duluth, Minnesota in 1902 and taught at the Duluth Art Institute. He would travel around the world extensively, but always returned home. His paintings can be found in the Duluth Art Association, the Tweed Museum, American Swedish Institute, and the Minnesota Historical Society. The painting to the left- Aven Pont was exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair.

Károly Ferenczy (February 8, 1862 – March 18, 1917) was a Hungarian painter and leading member of the Nagybánya artists' colony.

He was among several artists who went to Munich for study in the late nineteenth century, where he attended free classes by the Hungarian painter, Simon Hollósy. Upon his return to Hungary, Ferenczy helped found the artists colony in 1896, and became one of its major figures. Ferenczy helped found the artists colony in 1896, and became one of its major figures. Ferenczy is considered the "father of Hungarian impressionism and post-impressionism" and the "founder of modern Hungarian painting."

In Hungary, Ferenczy started painting in a naturalistic style, as he had been influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage.His studio paintings were most important to his art, and he painted a traditional array of genres: nudes, still lifes, the urban scenes of circus performers. By his own work and his teaching, Ferenczy is considered the "father of Hungarian impressionism and post-impressionism" and the "founder of modern Hungarian painting."

In his later years, Ferenczy painted subjects ranging from portraits, to nudes, and Biblical scenes. The painting to the right, entitled 'A Paintress' was created in 1903 and exhibited at the World's Fair.