Paintings Exhibited at the Fair page 6

Will Hicok Low was born in Albany, New York, in 1853, was a leading muralist and figurative painter who explored both Barbizon landscape and a colorful Victorian style.

At age seventeen, he worked in New York City as an illustrator and three years later traveled to Paris to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Carolus-Duran from 1872-1877, in Paris, France.

Will H. Low had his earliest training with the sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer.

During his years in France he summered. with the Barbizon artists where he was especially influenced by the work of François Millet.

He was the second husband of artist Mary MacMonnies Low, and a friend of writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

He was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York City

He was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York City. In the United States, he became active as a muralist, illustrator, and decorative painter, performing prominent commissions such as the ceiling murals and decorations of New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. His Beaux Arts classicism inspired Louis Comfort Tiffany and other of his younger colleagues.

After 1900, as artistic styles changed, there was less demand for his work. He died in Bronxville, NY in 1932.

Bryson Burroughs was born in Hyde Park, MA (Boston area), in 1869

Burroughs studied at the Art Students League, NY, between1889-1891, leaving for Paris that year to study at the Academie Julian under Puvis de Chavannes. He married Edith Woodman in England in 1893.

He spent the year 1894 in Florence, returning to the United States in 1895.

Burroughs wrote enthusiastically about the modern French artists Cézanne and the Impressionists, yet his personal painting style was ironically the pallid academic genre of Puvis de Chevannes

In 1906 the curator of painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Roger Fry (q.v.) appointed Burroughs his assistant, later, he was made acting curator and then Associate in 1909. He was responsible for updating the paintings catalog for the museum. After his first wife's death, he married Louise Guerber (later a curator at the Metropolitan) in 1928. Although he was responsible for purchase of many European paintings for the museum (Brueghel'sHarvesters and a Michelangelo drawing of the Lybian Sybil), he is most noted for adding American artists to the Metropolitan's collection.

He died of tuberculosis in New York, NY, at his home at age 65.

Franz von Defregger was born at Stronach in Tyrol, Austria, in 1835. After his father's death, he sold the family's farm and went to Innsbruck, where he began a carver-apprenticeship under Michael Stolz.

On the Karl Theodor von Piloty's suggestion, Defregger attended the preparatory class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich under Hermann Dyck and switched to Hermann Anschütz' painter's class at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in autumn 1861.

In 1863, Defregger became acquainted with the school of Barbizon, in Paris. After returning home, he stayed in Munich and Eastern Tyrol, where he mainly painted scenes from the every-day-life of Tyrolean farmlife.

Defregger soon became one of the most popular genre-painters of the `Munich School' and in 1878 the artist was appointed professor for history painting at the composing class of the academy in Munich.

In the following years Defregger received numerous honours and awards, which culminated in the bestowal of the Bavarian Crown Order, combined with a title of nobility, Franz von Defregger died in Munich in 1921.

Alexander Koester was born in Germany in 1864. In his youth he trained in the field of apothecary in Wintzheim near Colmar in 1882. He later enrolled at the Karlsruhe academy in order to study art under Carl Hoff and Claus Meyer. Even as a student, Koester earned his livelihood with portrait commissions. After finishing his studies, Koester moved to Klausen where the new working conditions led him to great productivity.

As his art work,- particularly his paintings became more mature, he discovered a subject which would preoccupy him for thirty years: the duck. He produced reflecting surfaces and duck's feathers shimmering in shadow and light, reminiscent of late-impressionism.

In 1904, Koester was awarded the gold medal at the world fair in St Louis for his painting 'Enten' (pictured to the right). He was awarded another gold medal by prince regent Luitpold of Bavaria for the painting 'Dem Ufer zu'. Several years later, he began showing great enthusiasm to flower still lives, though the subject of the duck always remained highly visible in his works until he died on December 21, 1932 in Munich.

Phoebe Anna Traquair was a multi-talented artist during the Celtic

Revival/ Scottish renaissance in Arts and Crafts of the early

twentieth century, Though considered a Scottish artist, she was

born in Dublin. Traquair attended the School of Design in Dublin

before moving to Edinburgh in 1874 after her marriage to Dr Ramsay

Traquair (who later appointed Keeper of Natural History at

Edinburgh's Museum of Science and Art in 1874.)

A correspondent of John Ruskin, friend of William Holman Hunt

and Robert Lorimer, she pursued a successful career as an artist,

designer and craft worker and achieved international recognition.

Phoebe was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, she painted murals for several religious and charitable organizations in Edinburgh, including the Catholic Apostolic Church in Broughton Street. A brilliant embroiderer, she made exquisite enamel jeweler and left a staggering body of work throughout her career. Notably, she illuminated the book "Sonnets from the Portuguese" by the poet Elizabeth Barratt Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam.

The above four silk pieces, together named- 'The Progress of a Soul' was produced by Traquair between 1895 and 1902 and were based on the short story by Walter Pater 'Denys l'Auxerrois'. A mixture of Christian and Pagan imagery. The work was supposedly an 'homage' to the memory of Walter Pater who died a year before Traquair started the panels, though at the time, the family tried to downplay the embroidered panels.

Because she refused to accept traditional boundaries of "'fine" and '"applied" art she was refused membership of the Royal Scottish Academy, and it was not until 1920 that she was elected an honorary member.

Traquair died in Edinburgh on August 4, 1936 and was buried at Colinton parish church.

Jehan-Georges Virbert was born on September 30, 1840 in Paris. He began his artistic training at a young age under the instruction of his maternal grandfather, engraver Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet. He the entered the studio of Félix-Joseph Barrias and eventually the École des Beaux-Arts when he was sixteen and remained there for six years under the instruction of François-Edouard Picot.

Vibert debuted at the Salon of 1863 with La Sieste (The Siesta) and Repentir (Repentance).

During the Franco-Prussian War, Vibert became a sharpshooter and was wounded at the battle of Malmaison in October 1870. He was awarded the Légion d’Honneur and became a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in recognition of his sacrifice. He became an Officer of the Légion d’Honneur in 1882.

Vibert submitted work to the Salon until 1899. The popularity of his works spread gained him fame in America and fetched high prices including commissions from John Jacob Astor IV and William Vanderbilt. A large collection of works by Vibert was amassed by the heiress May Louise Maytag on behalf of then bishop of Miami Coleman Carroll, who greatly fancied them. This large cache was then donated to the Florida seminary St. John Vianney College in Miami.

Thisoil was displayed at the 1904 World's Fair, and was located at the corner of the French Section of the Liberal Arts building, The above painting- The `Coronation of Napoleon,' is a 15 3/4 by 22 3/8 in. oil on panel. Napoleon's coronation was held at Notre Dame on December 2, 1804.

In the late 1890s, the Virbert painted a small number of Napoleonic subjects, including The Eagle and the Fox, a scene of Napoleon playing chess with Cardinal Fesch and at least two compositions of Napoleon with his young son, who was given the title the "King of Rome."

Virbert used a series of dolls to plan out the complex composition.

Frederic Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 4, 1826 and was an American landscape painter and the most celebrated of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. While committed to the natural sciences, he was "always concerned with including a spiritual dimension in his works.

Son of Joseph Church, a wealthy silversmith and watchmaker in Hartford, Connecticut, Frederic pursued his interest in art from a very early age. At eighteen years of age, Church became the pupil of Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York after Daniel Wadsworth, a family neighbor and founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum, introduced the two. In May 1848, Church was elected as the youngest Associate of the National Academy of Design and was promoted to Academician the following year. Soon after, he sold his first major work to Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum.

Church settled in New York where he taught his first pupil, William James Stillman. From the spring to autumn each year Church would travel, often by foot, sketching. He returned each winter to paint and to sell his work.

In 1853 and 1857, Church traveled in South America. One trip was financed by businessman Cyrus West Field, who wished to use Church's paintings to lure investors to his South American ventures. Two years after returning to America, Church painted his masterpiece- `The Heart of the Andes' (1859), which is more than five feet high and nearly ten feet in length The work was an instant success. Church eventually sold it for $10,000, at that time the highest price ever paid for a work by a living American artist.

Church showed his paintings at the annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design, the American Art Union, and at the Boston Art Club, alongside Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, John F. Kensett, and Jasper F. Cropsey. Critics and collectors appreciated the new art of landscape on display, and its progenitors came be to called the Hudson River School.

In 1860 Church bought a farm in Hudson, New York and married Isabel Carnes. Both Church's first son and daughter died in March, 1865 of diphtheria. A trip to Jamaica served Church extremely well in that it afforded him time and activity to heal his emotional wounds. His time in Jamaica yielded a remarkably large body of preparatory materials—oil sketches, ink, and pencil drawings which included: The After Glow, 1867 (shown above)). The material from the Jamaica excursion continued throughout his career to inform his many works on tropical subjects.

Church purchased the eighteen acres on the hilltop above his Hudson farm—land he had long wanted because of its magnificent views of the Hudson River and the Catskills. In 1870 he began the construction of a Persian-inspired mansion on the hilltop and the family moved into the home in the summer of 1872 in Olana .

Although he was enormously successful as an artist by 1876 Church was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis which greatly reduced his ability to paint. He eventually painted with his left hand and continued to produce his work although on a much slower pace. He devoted much of his energies during the final 20 years of his life to his house at Olana. Church died on April 7, 1900.

William Morris Hunt was born on March 31, 1824, American painter, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont and was raised by one of the preeminent families in American art. William Morris Hunt was the leading painter of mid-19th century Boston, Massachusetts.

Having been denied the opportunity to paint and draw by an overbearing father, but following the death of his Congressman father from cholera, Hunt's mother Jane took him and his brothers to Switzerland, the South of France and to Rome, where Hunt studied with Couture in Paris and then came under the influence of Jean-François Millet, from whom he learned the principles of the Barbizon school. The Hunt family remained in Europe for a dozen years.

Afterwards, leaving Paris, he painted and established art schools at Newport and Rhode Island.

Hunt became one of the biggest proponents of the Barbizon school in America, and he more than any other turned the rising generation of American painters towards Paris.

Sadly, many of Hunt's paintings and sketches, together with five large Millets and other art treasures collected by him in Europe, were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872. Hunt owned many canvases by Millet, including Millet's The Sower, for which Millet somewhat unwillingly accepted a payment of $60 from Hunt.

Among his later works American landscapes predominated. In the summer of 1878, the year before his death, Hunt painted a series of sweeping views of Niagara Falls. His later works also include the "Bathers: Twice Painted" (shown above), and "The Allegories" for the Senate chamber of the State Capitol at Albany, New York, now lost due to disintegration of the stone panels on which they were painted. (Some scholars trace Hunt's deepening depression that led to his suicide to his despair over the loss of the Albany murals).

Hunts was also a noted lithographer and sculptor as well. From 1850 to 1877 the Vermont native was Boston's leading portrait and landscape painter; there was a backlog of Brahmins clamoring to be painted by him. Hunt is widely credited for having influenced the styles of Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam and John Joseph Enneking.

hor William James studied with Hunt for a time, before turning away from painting to concentrate on his writing.

Certainly Hunt's career owed a debt to Boston's intellectual ferment. A luncheon at his club on February 27, 1870, for instance, found these members of Hunt's circle dining together: Ralph Waldo Emerson; James Russell Lowell; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Edward Clarke Cabot; Martin Brimmer; Thomas Gold Appleton; William James; Francis Blackwell Forbes; and James Thomas Fields.

William Morris Hunt died at the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire, in 1879, apparently a suicide. Hunt had gone to the New Hampshire shore to recover from a crippling depression. But he continued to work, executing his last sketch three days before his death.