Paintings Exhibited at the Fair page 8

Alexey Denisov-Uralsky was born on November 6, 1863, he studied art of stone cutting under the guidance of his father.. In 1887, he moved to St. Petersburg. There he attended classes in the Drawing School under the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (OPKh, 1887–1888). Denisov-Uralsky started to study painting. During traveling through the Urals, he painted a lot of landscapes, depicted many different acts of nature, flora and geological peculiarities of the region, and began his obsession with nature on fire- from grass fores to forests ablaze. . Alexey got his big 'break' from an exhibit that he had in 1900-“The Urals in Art,” in which he displayed his climactic effort, Lesnoi pozhar, or “The Forest Fire.”

Denisov-Uralsky was engaged not only in painting, but also in art of stone cutting; he created inkpots, letterpress, statuettes of semiprecious stones, decorative pictures (mountain landscapes of semiprecious stones on watercolor background) and hills (collections of stones combined in miniature grottos). He also created jewelry of gold, emerald, ruby and pearls.

The painting on the left,'Lesnoi Pozhar', headed to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. However because Russia was angry at the United States support for Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Fair Pavilion was dismantled shortly before the Exposition opened. Instead, the 'The Forest Fire,' along with 600 other paintings were displayed on consignment to a Russian entrepreneur named Edward Grunwaldt. Denisov-Uralsky’s masterpiece won a silver medal and was reproduced in color by several newspapers under the title 'The Untamed Element.'

On a side note: Somehow the large oil- 'Lesnoi pozhar' (78 x 106 inches), ended up in the hands of Adolphus Busch, the beer magnate, who in 1926 hung it in the foyer of a hotel, The Adolphus, he was refurbishing in Dallas. Where it hangs now, or whether it has again been destroyed, stolen, smuggled, or has returned to Russia, is unknown.

Works by Alexey Denisov-Uralsky are in many museum collections, including the State Russian Museum, Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, Perm State Art Gallery, the State Stone Cutting and Jewels.

John Henry Vanderpoel (November 15, 1857 – May 2, 1911), born Johannes (Jan) van der Poel,[ was a Dutch-American artist and teacher, best known as an instructor of figure drawing.

Vanderpoel was born in the Haarlemmermeer, Netherlands, the seventh of ten children. His mother died in 1867, and in 1869 he emigrated with his father and siblings to the United States. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Design, which later became the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1886, he went to Europe, studying for two years at Académie Julian in Paris.

Vanderpoel exhibited five paintings at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and received a bronze medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis.

Vanderpoel was better known as an instructor at the Art Institute,[4] where he taught from 1880 until 1910. He was an influential teacher who adhered to the beaux-arts tradition while denouncing modernism. Among Vanderpoel's many students were artists J. C. Leyendecker, Frederick Carl Frieseke, and Georgia O'Keeffe,

In 1910, Vanderpoel moved to St. Louis, accepting an offer from Edward Gardner Lewis to join the faculty of People's University as head of the Art Academy's drawing and painting department. He died in St. Louis on May 2, 1911, of heart disease.

Two years after his death, the Vanderpoel Memorial Art Galleries were established in Chicago's Beverly Hills neighborhood. The collection features works by Vanderpoel, including drawings that were published in The Human Figure, as well as those of other artists associated with Chicago.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was born

February 18, 1848, was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his master work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels, and metalwork. He was the first Design Director at his family company, Tiffany & Co., founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany. He started out as a painter, but became interested in glass-making from about 1875 and worked at several glasshouses in Brooklyn between then and 1878.

In 1889 at the Paris Exposition, Tiffany was said to have been "overwhelmed" by the glass work of Émile Gallé, French Art Nouveau artisan. He also met artist Alphonse Mucha.

In 1893, Tiffany built a new factory called the Stourbridge Glass Company, later called Tiffany Glass Furnaces, in Corona, Queens, New York. In 1893, his company also introduced the term Favrile in conjunction with his first production of blown glass at his new glass factory. Some early examples of his lamps were exhibited in the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago in which he received 44 medals.. At the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, he won a gold medal with his stained glass windows The Four Seasons.

He trademarked Favrile (from the old French word for handmade) on November 13, 1894. He later used this word to apply to all of his glass, enamel and pottery. Tiffany's first commercially produced lamps date from around 1895. Much of his company's production was in making stained glass windows and Tiffany lamps, but his company designed a complete range of interior decorations. At its peak, his factory employed more than 300 artisans.

The necklace shown, was among one of the twenty-seven pieces that Tiffany made for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The piece showcased opals (which Tiffany was extremely fond of), that represented the clusters of fruit, and finely executed enameling in shades of green on gold, which forms the delicate leaves. And although the subject matter seems slightly ambiguous, it showcased the natural forms and Tiffany's signature simplification of form and design. The photo includes two alterations since its original conception: first by the addition of "grape clusters" on either side of the main pendant and later by the adding a double bar-link chain. These changes were overseen by Tiffany himself.

Tiffany received a gold medal at the 1904 Fair.

He died on January 17, 1933