Somerville Manning Gallery

About the gallery

Located in historic Breck’s Mill adjacent to the Hagley Museum, Somerville Manning Gallery is unique among small city galleries.

Since 1981, owners Vickie Manning and Sadie Somerville have used their expertise and vision to create exhibitions from the art traditions of the Brandywine Valley and to bring to Wilmington the best of regional, national, and international art.

For over thirty years, Somerville Manning Gallery has introduced current art trends into an area already steeped in a rich art tradition, mounting exhibitions

that relate to our cultural heritage both past and present. With respect to the Illustration School begun by Howard Pyle in 1894, the gallery has arranged shows such as Howard Pyle and His Students. Recognized as experts on N.C. Wyeth and his family, Somerville Manning Gallery created the exhibitions N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth Six Decades, as well as Wyeth Women: Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Carolyn Wyeth, and Ann Wyeth McCoy, paintings by the three daughters of N.C. Wyeth.

The annual American Masters show places the three generations of Wyeths, N.C., Andrew, and Jamie

in context with their times, showing artists from the late 19th to the 21st century such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Burchfield, Milton Avery, Hans Hofmann and many others.

Somerville Manning Gallery represents and exhibits 21st century paintings and sculptures by American artists Peter Sculthorpe, Greg Mort, Robert Jackson and many others.

Artists from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are a strong component of the gallery including Bo Bartlett, Alex Kanevsky, Jon Redmond, Christine Lafuente and more.

Testimonials

by Sharon Hernes Silverman, Brandywine Valley, 2004, Stackpole books.

“An art gallery’s success is based on relationships-between owners and artists, owners and clients, and gallery staff. The Somerville Manning Gallery is a stellar example of what can be achieved when good relationships are created and developed. Since 1981, Sadie Somerville and Victoria Manning have used their knowledge and integrity to cultivate long-term associations with artists and collectors, and to create a harmonious, welcoming environment. As a result, their gallery is the place for high-end art of the Brandywine tradition and twentieth-century American realism.”

Contemporary

Caroline Adams

Education: 1998-2001 Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. 2000 Aegean Center for the Fine Arts, Paros, Greece.

Michael Allen

Fellowships/Grants: 2003/2004 Competitive Fellowship, University of Delaware, Newark, DE. 2002/2003 Graduate Assistantship, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.

Timothy Barr

Barr’s ouevre celebrates the structural and elemental components of Luminism and the Barbizon School much like the great Frederic E. Church and Albert Bierstadt before him. His paintings resonate a marriage of color and light that work spatially to create the sublime characteristics of Luminism. Special attention is given to his use of paint on the picture surface. His technique renders the application of thin layers, or glazes, of oil paint which creates a luminous glow. His love and understanding of nature is strikingly represented in each of his paintings. His subjects include the colorful Pennsylvania countryside, the serene environment of Martha’s Vineyard, the Chesapeake Bay, the vast Adirondack Mountains and the beautiful British Virgin Islands. Barr’s technique celebrates realism and an art movement called Luminism. Education: Pennsylvania Governors School for the Arts. Tyler School of Fine Art at Temple University.

Bo Bartlett

“Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary. – Tom Butler, excerpt from the book Bo Bartlett, Heartland. Education (Partial List): 1976 – 81 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Certificate of Fine Art. 1986 New York University, Certificate in Filmmaking.

Stanley Bielen

Stanley Bielen studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 1980. During his years at the Academy, he developed a strong tie to the realist tradition of the Philadelphia School. Originally from Poland, Bielen honors the European heritage of still life painting.

Woodrow Blagg

J. Clayton Bright

Deborah Butterfield

Jeff Carpenter

Jeff Carpenter studied with the painter Tom Bostelle and went to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned a BFA Film. His thesis project, a short animated film called Rapid Eye Movements played the Cannes, Berlin, Telluride and New York film festivals. His work has been shown at P.S.1, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, and the Centre Pompidou.

Giovanni Casadei

1978-80 Scuola Libera del Nudo (free School for Drawing) - Rome, Italy. 1980-81 Academy of Fine Arts - Rome, Italy. 1981-83 Scuola Libera del Nudo - Rome, Italy. 1986-87 Fleisher Art Memorial (painting) - Philadelphia, PA. 1988-92 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts - Philadelphia, PA. Certificate in Painting.

Murray Dessner

Education: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Philadelphia, PA. Four-Year Certificate. Samuel Fleisher Art Memorial. Philadelphia, PA.

Francis Di Fronzo

In 2004, Philadelphia painter Francis Di Fronzo was awarded one of twelve Pew Fellowship in the Arts. During this pivotal moment in his artistic career, landscape painting became “a stage for everything in life. Anyone who looks at a landscape painting can identify immediately.” In his paintings, Di Fronzo depicts highly realistic scenes of the natural world, which are both beautiful and poetic, but also deeply mysterious, and at times ominous and foreboding. Di Fronzo’s painting technique has helped to underscore his outlook. He works with a “comb brush”, of his own design, comprised of 60-80 individual hairs attached to a wooden stick. Using this comb, he creates images of open fields and rolling hills by tapping the hairs onto a toned panel. After many layers, the result is an infinite expanse of individual blades of grass, rich in tone, detail and hue. Di Fronzo has also experimented with a new technique to paint seascapes, creating sweeping scenes of open water that are rich and complex in color and depth. Born in California in 1969, Francis received his B.F.A at the University of California, Fullerton. He then came east to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he earned his M.F.A. in 1998. Francis was also awarded the Liquitex, Art in America University Award in 1993, and the Stobbart Foundation Fellowship in the Arts Award in 1998. In 2007, Di Fronzo was featured in the June issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine’s article “Making Their Mark: Three to Watch”. Education: 1998 MFA, Painting. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 1994 BFA, Painting. California State University, Fullerton.

Dogal

Dogal immigrated to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia in 1981. Her formal art training included attending classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Upon her arrival in the United States she studied at the studio of American Artist Edward Loper, where she earned high praises from the maestro himself. His style, however, contributed little to her sense of harmony and balance, so after several months she left the studio to express her own vision of the world. Ever since then, she has been spending all of her waking hours in front of an easel, focusing her work mainly on still-lifes and flower arrangements. Her oil paintings deftly express her elegantly optimistic insouciance. Dogal’s work has attracted critical acclaim both nationally and internationally. She has had numerous shows on the East Coast, and was chosen for a month-long one-woman exhibition in the Carvel State Building. Two of her still-lifes were selected for the Wilmington Trust Bank Calendar, and her floral works were featured in the International Encyclopedia of Flower Painting Technique. In 2002, the prestigious Delaware Art Museum honored her with a month-long solo exhibition. She continues to be spotlighted as a part of their permanent collection. Her timeless paintings are treasured keystones in numerous private collections in the United States, Japan, England, Israel and Russia.

Michael Doyle

In Michael Doyle’s paintings one will find intimate portrayals of interiors and landscapes. Life’s richness is examined in each one of his paintings. The viewer can trace the touch of Doyle’s brush as it presses through wet paint with a light graze here and a heavy dash there. Michael Doyle uses tones and hues that are present in nature and his palette is as expressive as each one of his brushstrokes. Doyle’s love of painting leads him to explore the relationships of objects to their surrounding environment through the study of light and color contrasts. By doing so, he recognizes the beauty in each landscape, still life, and interior he paints. Education: 1988-92 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Certificate in Painting, Philadelphia. 1985-87 Camden County College Assoc. Degree, Blackwood, NJ.

Paul DuSold

Artist’s Statement My artwork is best described as atmospheric representationalism. Still life, figures in landscape and portraits are my preferred subject matter. My influences are mostly sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian and Spanish painters; I am perhaps most informed by the use of oil paint as an expressive medium by the Venetian artists of the sixteenth century. The primary aspiration of my efforts is to paint pictures whose effect of meaning is achieved through a very acute balance of color, light and shadow and scale of forms.

Betsy Eby

Drew Ernst

“Every emotion goes into my paintings – love, hate, joy, sadness – it’s all in there. An amazing thing happens when you love hard and paint hard. You become one with the work. The mind can make paint do things, anything – make it behave in ways it shouldn’t. The act of painting becomes spiritual. Once this happens, anything is possible.” -Drew Ernst. Drew Ernst is a modern, contemporary, figurative painter. Drew attended the highly respected Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, America’s oldest fine arts school. During his four years there, he polished his painting skills through studying with accomplished artists including Sidney Goodman, Peter Paone, and Bo Bartlett. As part of his training at PAFA, he drew from cadavers at the Hannaman Medical School in Philadelphia to learn the intricacies of the human form. Beginning at the age of fifteen, Drew began drawing live models in figurative drawing classes at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. His attendance in these classes was arranged by Drew’s mentor, Martin J. Garhart, Kenyon Art Professor, painter, and poet. At the same time, Drew was a watercolorist learning from high school teacher and superb watercolorist Chris Bunn. Watercolor was a great transition into oil painting for Drew.

Mary Page Evans

In 1984, artist Gene Davis described Mary Page Evans paintings as, “hymns of unadulterated joy.” While Evans paints still lifes and images of the human form, it is her landscape and garden paintings created directly from nature, en plein air that capture this sentiment. Evans exhibits in Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. She has artwork in numerous public and private collections such as: the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Delaware Art Museum, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

W.O. Ewing

Noted for his intense study and mastery of the art of portraiture in the classic tradition of the 17th Century Dutch and Flemish masters, W.O. Ewing brings the same techniques and effects to whatever he paints, regardless of the chosen subject for a painting; all are really portraits. Education: BFA, University of Tennessee, 1969, MFA, University of Idaho, 1971. studied under Arthur DeCosta at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Chas Fagan

A graduate of Yale University, Chas Fagan has gained national prominence and recognition as an accomplished and gifted portraitist, sculptor and painter. In his landscape and still life paintings Fagan creates classic, yet energetic compositions, often juxtaposing delicate details with bold brushwork. Since 2001, Fagan has received several commissions for statues designed specifically for the National Cathedral, in Washington D.C. In 2003, his bas-relief sculpted portrait bust of President Reagan, commissioned for the U.S.S. Reagan, received international media coverage. Fagan designed and created the Bush Monument for the city of Houston, TX. This included an eight-foot statue of President George H.W. Bush and a pair of life-size American bald eagles statues. Recently, his statue of a “young Neil Armstrong” was unveiled at Purdue University. In 2009, Fagan completed a 7ft bronze sculpture of President Ronald Reagan, which stands in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. This ability to seamlessly combine his artistic gifts with his knowledge of history has led to other high-profile commissions, including the official White House Portrait of First Lady, Barbara Bush, unveiled in January 2005, and the portrait of Speaker Thomas Foley, which hangs in the Capitol. Recent portraits include Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Norman Borlaug, Secretary Don Evans, and former U.S. Attorney General and Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh. In the weeks prior to Inauguration Day 2009, Fagan created a new painting for his complete set of oil portraits of all the Presidents which now tours the country for the White House Historical Association and C-SPAN.

Donna Feiner

Donna Feiner is a classically trained painter and modern-day Renaissance woman. Although her recent works are in the chiaroscuro style, she began her career (in the 80s) as an abstract expressionist. In the early 1990s, she began painting landscapes (en plein air) and studying with Louis B. Sloan from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was particularly drawn to the light and truth of the 17th-century Dutch landscape masters, the 19th-century Hudson River School, and such French Barbizon painters as Daubigny and Inness. In 1994, Donna and her husband bought and restored a farmhouse (circa 1810) in Wycombe, Bucks County, a magical area that she finds reminiscent of the works of George Sotter and other Pennsylvania impressionists. In her studio there, Donna paints still lifes, landscapes, and portraits in oils. In 2009, she won first prize and the prestigious R. Tait McKenzie Medal from the Philadelphia Sketch Club.

Dean Fisher

Education: 1978 – 1982 American Academy of Art, Chicago, Illinois. 1984 – 1988 Independent Study; Copied Old Master paintings in the Prado Museum; Madrid, Spain, The Louvre Museum; Paris, France, The National Gallery of Art; London, England.

Scott Fraser

Michael Godfrey

Michael Godfrey is a representational landscape artist whose work hangs in many private and corporate collections. Born in Germany in l958 and raised in North Carolina, he earned a BFA in Fine Arts and began his painting career in oils and watercolors. He spends hours field sketching and photographing, preparing for a well thought out painting.

Nick Hiltner

Tina Ingraham

Tina Ingraham, a Maine-based figurative painter, travels internationally painting portrait commissions, researching master paintings and exhibiting her work. Having taught in various academic settings, she presently instructs painting seminars in Bath, Maine. Fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation were awarded to Ms. Ingraham for her painting and research in Italy.

Kay Jackson

Commission from the White House: Nocturne painting of the White House for President and Mrs. Clinton’s official 1997 Holiday Card.

Robert C. Jackson

Alex Kanevsky

Alex Kanevsky, born in Russia, came to the United States in 1983 with his family and settled in Philadelphia. Education: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

Tara Keefe

Education: Private Instruction, Sarah Lamb, Downingtown, Pennsylvania, 2007. Private Instruction, Randall Sexton, San Francisco, California, 2002-03. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2001-02. Private Instruction, Anna Brelsford McCoy, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 1996-98. 23rd Street Drawing Studio, San Francisco, California, Instructor: Michael Markowitz, 1993-97. Private Instruction, T.R. Colletta, San Francisco, California, 1994-96. B.A. Speech Communications, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, 1983.

Wolf Kahn

Phillip Koch

Education: 1972 MFA in Painting, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. 1970 BA Oberlin College, OH. 1968-69 Art Students League of New York, New York, NY. 1967 School of Art, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.

Judith Pond Kudlow

Judith Kudlow’s working method is based on the nineteenth century academic tradition which emphasizes working from life to produce paintings based on precise drawing, careful modeling to produce the three-dimensional illusion, harmonious and accurate colors and values, and compositions based on time-honored rules. Her subjects include figures, portraits, still life, and landscape. Her interest in classical drapery studies has led her most recently to produce a series of paintings using contemporary draped subjects, primarily shirts. Education: Harlem Studio of Art, New York City. Art Students League, New York City. National Academy of Fine Arts, New York City. School of Visual Arts, New York City. New York Academy, New York City. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA.

Christine Lafuente

Education: Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY. Coursework toward M.F.A. Spring 2002 – present. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Certificate in Painting with a Minor in Printmaking, May 1995. M.F.A. Coursework at The Barnes Foundation, Merion. PA. Fall 1999 – Spring 2000. Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA. B.A. in English with departmental honors, May 1991. State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY. Coursework towards B.A. 1988- 1990.

Carol Maguire

Education: 2002-2003 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Certificate Program. 2001-2002 Fleisher Memorial, Philadelphia, PA. 1982-1984 Barnes Foundation, Certificate of the Arts. 1976 BFA Fairfield University, Fairfield CT. 1975-1976 Sorbonne, Paris, France. 1973-1974 Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA.

Anna B. McCoy

As the daughter of Ann Wyeth and John McCoy, and the granddaughter of N.C. Wyeth, Anna B. has spent her life surrounded by artists and their work. Like many members of the Wyeth family, Anna B. pursued her own career in art and has created a reputation for herself as a painter and portrait artist. She has studied with Carolyn Wyeth, Charles Vinson and Rea Redifer. Under the watchful eye of her father, Anna B. developed a unique style, working primarily in watercolors or oil.

Greg Mort

Jon Mort

Jon Mort distinguised himself with a recent masters degree in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Always painting with his father, artist Greg Mort, he began large-scale graphite portraiture while an undergraduate at Franklin and Marshall College. Recently graduating from RISD in 2009, he is committing himself to full time painting and completing the multitude of portrait commissions accumulated during his graduate studies. He Brings a 21st century approach to portraiture with his use of negative space surrounding detailed and life sized renderings of his subjects’ faces and hands.

Jeff Moulton

Jeff Moulton received his B.F.A. at Miami University in Ohio and continued with graduate studies at the University of New Mexico. Having spent most of his life in Chester County, Moulton has acquired much of the Brandywine Valley’s sensibilities but with a fresh twentieth century painterly approach. His realist works on canvas and paper or board show a highly developed drawing ability, which is apparent in his fluid brushstrokes and fine application of color. Moulton’s landscapes still lifes, and portraits are expressed in mixed media. His use of oil pigments various painting mediums, charcoal, pastels and graphite highlight the innovative and lyrical qualities, which are so outstanding in his works.

Jane Morris Pack

Center for twenty years, Jane Morris Pack is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Her BFA from is from Colorado State University and her MFA from the University of Illinois. She has had solo and group shows in Europe and in the United States. She worked for several years in a fine arts foundry casting bronze and at a display company where she acquired experience in a multitude of materials. She is especially interested in traditional methods of oil painting and her abiding love is the art of the Renaissance and Greek vase painting.

Heidi Palmer

Education: Ecole Des Beaux Arts de Montreal, Canada. Pratt Institute, B.F.

Scott Prior

Education: 1971 B.F.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. 1974-76 Residencies, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH. 1977 Residency, Ossabaw Island Program, GA. 1979 Fellowship, Massachusetts Artists Foundation. 1979-80 Residencies, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH. 1985 Grant, National Endowment for the Arts. 1986 Award in Painting, St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA.

Joseph Raffael

Education: 1953-54 Attended Cooper Union, New York. 1954 Summer Fellowship Yale-Norfolk School. 1954-56 Attended Yale School of Fine Arts, BFA, studied with Josef Albers. 1958-59 Fulbright Fellowship to Florence and Rome.

Jon Redmond

Dan Rizzie

Education: 1975 M.F.A., Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. 1973 B.F.A., Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas.

Jim Rodgers

Jim Rodgers’ training and long affiliation with the Arts Students League in New York enabled him to study with such masters as Frank Mason, Gregg Kreutz, and Richard Pionk. Later, he was introduced to Art Maynard of the Ridgewood Art Institute of New Jersey, where he studied landscape painting along with portraiture. Primarily, his focus has been on traditional and classical attitudes in rendering landscape, still life, florals and genre scenes. Classical training has been augmented by wanderlust, as Jim traveled throughout the United States, working as an artist. At times he has lived and worked across the US, as well as in England and France. Today, he frequents Lancaster, Pennsylvania to capture the quiet, sylvan landscapes of farm country on canvas. His intention is to capture the mood of a scene, particularly a landscape, and help the viewer feel the subject as he experienced it, ‘en plein air.’ He is especially fond of capturing scenes in the late afternoon and early evenings. Whether the work evokes joy, rapture, or quiet contemplation, Jim’s pieces all stand out for their rich tones and exquisite classical rendering. Jim Rodgers ’ work is in numerous private and corporate collections. He has received many awards and prizes for his paintings. He is affiliated with the Morris County Art Association in New Jersey, the Duchess County Art Association in New York, and the Salmagundi Club in New York City.

Peter Sculthorpe

Peter Sculthorpe is known for his masterfully detailed watercolors and richly painted oils on canvas as well as hand-tinted etchings and monotypes. In over 30 years, he has become recognized for his extraordinary talent as a realist painter. Admired for his skillful drawing and watercolor technique in depicting the rural landscape, his reputation has been spreading across America. His landscapes have a curious warmth to them, a pervasive quality of light, a range of gentle colors, and a timeless peaceful mood. Living most of his life in Chester County, Pennsylvania and Delaware along the Brandywine Valley, Sculthorpe has returned to his favorite subject matter. Drawing from his personal images of rural Pennsylvania with its stone architecture and surrounding farm life, Sculthorpe once again constructs his vision of the life he remembers and loves. He paints the landscape in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maine and Canada. Sculthorpe carefully creates his paintings in both oil and watercolor. Sometimes his subject is devoid of life and simply depicts the beauty and stillness of a winter or summer day. Other times, he shows us the humor and character of the Belted Galloways, burros, and other domestic animals that inhabit his environments. Education: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Hussain School of Fine Art under William Palmer Lear.

Dennis Sheehan

Dennis Sheehan’s work is often described as reminiscent of the great masters of the Barbizon school, in France in the 19th century, and the American Tonalist. Born in Boston in 1950, he has works in major public and private collections, including the White House. His work has been featured in many publications including the featured cover of American Artist Dennis Sheehan received his training in the best traditions of the “Boston School,” studying at the Vesper George School of Art and the Montserrat School of Visual Art. He also studied with two of R.H. Gammell’s former students, Robert Cormier and Richard Whitney. Like his great nineteenth century predecessor George Inness, whose influence is consciously acknowledged, Sheehan employs the dark palette and thickly pigmented surfaces of the French Barbizon School. Sheehan, like Inness before him, eschews picturesque scenery in the interest of evoking atmospherics. Also like Inness, Sheehan’s paintings are produced in the studio from his imagination. For all of the references to history—and there are multiple—there is no mistaking the artist’s debt to the more recent past. Without the legacy of action painting, Sheehan’s art would be less forceful and evocative than it is.”

David Shevlino

Stuart Shils

Stuart Shils, native of Philadelphia, has painted outside for 31 years and over the past 21 years has had numerous solo shows in New York, Philadelphia, Tel Aviv, Boston, Scottsdale, Richmond, San Francisco and Cork (Ireland). Critical review and commentary has appeared in newspapers, journals and magazines, including: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Sun, Ha’ aretz, The Jerusalem Post, Art Critical.com, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Irish Times, Art in America, The New Republic, The New Criterion, Art New England, American Artist, The Hudson Review and The Philadelphia Daily News. Shils has been an annual visiting critic at the Vermont Studio Center for many years, teaches master classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, is also a visiting critic at PAFA, and has lectured widely on painting and drawing. He also conducted the Landscape Marathon at the Jerusalem Studio School in 2004 and 2005, taught painting at the International School in Montecastello, Italy in 2007 and in 2008, taught and painted with the Jerusalem Studio School Summer School in Italy. Beginning in the mid 1990’s Shils spent 13 summers painting on the coast of County Mayo, Ireland, some of which is described in the film documentary shown nationally on PBS, Ballycastle.

Donald Sultan

Stephen Tanis

Robert Van Meter

Vicki Vinton

Education: 1989 - 2011 The Finishing School, New York, NY. 1985 - 1987 Longwood Gardens, Continuing Education classes. 1984 Vermont Studio School. 1983 - 1985 Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA. 1977 - 1981 BA in Fine Art and Philosophy, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

George Weymouth

Weymouth’s early work, done in egg tempera, was often highly personal. George Weymouth has painted portraits of Luciano Pavarotti (1982) and later, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1995), Queen Elizabeth’s husband, which hangs in Windsor Castle. Weymouth was selected by NASA to paint at Cape Kennedy during the moon shots. Besides being an accomplished painter, Weymouth founding of the Brandywine Conservancy, a unique environmental, arts and cultural preservation organization. Frolic has been the Chairman of the Board since then. In 1971, a mill along the Brandywine went up for sale. Weymouth and the Conservancy acquired the mill as future museum space. George Weymouth has been chairman of the Conservency’s Brandywine River Museum since it opened in 1971, as a showcase for the Howard Pyle School of Illustration, the Wyeth family, and American art.

Patton Wilson

Patton Wilson paints in the realist tradition and works from life in a variety of mediums including oil, watercolor, egg tempera, and casein. His approach to subject matter combines traditional skill and techniques with a contemporary interpretation to the subject, giving his paintings a subtle yet immediate impact.

Jamie Wyeth

Son of Andrew Wyeth, Jamie grew up in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He decided that like his forebears, he too would pursue a career in art. Wyeth subsequently left school at the age of twelve, receiving private home tutoring while studying painting with his aunt Carolyn Wyeth, who taught him the rudiments of classical draftsmanship. During these formative years, Wyeth would hone his skills by making charcoal still life drawings in N.C. Wyeth’s old studio. He later spent three years working as an apprentice to his father, after which time he moved to New York, refining his skills in depicting human anatomy by studying and drawings corpses in a hospital morgue. After experimenting with various media, Wyeth found that in contrast to his father, who favors tempera, he was drawn to the bright hues and the moist, lush effects of oil paint, which he began to use regularly in 1963. Through this means Wyeth developed a traditional realist style, initially working in the meticulous manner of his father but imbuing his work with his own personal touch. During the 1960s and 70s, he applied this approach to portraits (among them his well-received posthumous image of John F. Kennedy, done in 1967), in which he captured the humanity of his sitters and revealed himself as a master of the human form. His portrait oeuvre includes images of artists such as Andy Warhol to politicians, among them President-elect Jimmy Carter, all portrayed with an eye for detail and a desire to evoke the individual spirit of his subject. Public Collections.

19th & 20th Centuries

Edwin Austin Abbey

Thomas Anshutz

Thomas Anshutz was known primarily for his paintings of female figures, usually isolated in a contemplative or coquettish pose. However, his most famous canvas is atypical of his work and was an industrial genre piece titled “Steelworkers-Noontime,” completed in 1882. He became a long-time teacher at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts and had the dark palette and realistic approach to figure painting of his teacher, Thomas Eakins. He arrived in New York in 1873 to study at the National Academy of Design under Lemuel Wilmarth. Two years later, he continued his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy under Thomas Eakins and Christian Schussele, and in 1881, joined the Academy faculty as a replacement for Eakins who was fired for using nude models in female student classes. However, he kept in the curriculum the emphasis on anatomy in the tradition of Eakins. In 1909, he became Head of the Pennsylvania Academy. In 1885, Anshutz went to Paris to the Academie Julian and then returned to the Pennsylvania Academy faculty for the remainder of his active career. He was regarded as a solid painter who did major studies for each canvas. Noted students were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens and Daniel Garber.

Milton Avery

Known as a colorist focused on serene mood, harmony, and rounded shapes, Milton Avery was primarily a self-taught painter whose work combining abstraction and realism suggests dialogue between line, shape, muted color, and subdued emotions. Most of his subjects were either marine scenes or figure studies. Although never associated with a particular movement, Avery was a key modernist who influenced succeeding generations of artists including Color Field painters Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Born in Altmar, New York, Avery studied art in Hartford at the Connecticut League of Art Students before settling in New York City in 1925. 1944 was a watershed year for Avery, largely because of a new gallery association with Paul Rosenberg in New York. Rosenberg had fled to New York from Europe with both a strong interest and inventory of avant-garde paintings, which he wanted to enhance. In addition to this collection, he agreed to buy twenty-five of Avery’s paintings twice a year, which meant that Avery did not have to worry about money and could focus on being creative. With this new freedom, he became much more prolific, and his style changed from a brushy, painterly application and graphic detailing to denser, more even areas of flattened color within delineated forms. As his career continued, he became more and more focused on concentrated color within simple, broadly contoured shapes. He perfected the technique of applying thin washes of paint to create veiled fields of color. In January, 1949, he had an heart attack that left him physically weak for the remainder of his life, and he died in 1965, having suffered a second heart attack three years earlier.

W.J. Aylward

William James Aylward studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students’ League in New York City, and with the famous illustrator and teacher, Howard Pyle. Aylward began his professional career by writing and illustrating 18th century marine history for magazines such as Harper’s and Scribner’s. His artwork also appeared in illustrated editions of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Jack London’s Sea Wolf. He combined his interest in the sea and his abilities as an illustrator to produce advertisements featuring nautical themes. In addition to his proficiency as an illustrator, W.J. Aylward was an award-winning artist and received a number of prestigious prizes such as the Salmagundi Club’s Shaw Purchase Prize and the Philadelphia Color Club’s Beck Prize for his work before the war.

Gifford Beal

Thomas Hart Benton

Albert Bierstadt

Oscar Bluemner

John Leslie Breck

Alfred Thompson Bricher

Dennis Miller Bunker

Charles Burchfield

Born in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, Charles Burchfield became known as a town-landscape painter of middle-western America, and his paintings have had much influence on succeeding generations of artists. He has also been described as a social critic, naturalist, and transcendental visionary whose sensitivities infuse his artwork. Of his impact on American art, Matthew Baigell wrote: “Few American artists have ever responded with such passion to the landscape or have made it such a compelling repository as well as mirror of their intimate feelings.” (55) In addition to his painting, Burchfield was a teacher at the Art Institute of Buffalo from 1949 to 1952 and at the University of Buffalo from 1950 to 1952. Burchfield’s career can be divided into three phases. The first is landscapes based on childhood memories and fantasies and ended about 1918; the second from 1918 to 1943, is Social Realism including “grimy streets and rundown buildings of the eastern Ohio area”, and the third phase is a return to subject matter of his childhood and the “investing them with a kind of ecstatic poetry.” (Biagell 54) Throughout his career, watercolor was his preferred medium. Knowledge of Oriental art influenced him to use simple forms. He spent his youth in Salem, Ohio where he developed a keen interest in art and nature and was intensely aware of woodland sounds and noises. In 1912, he decided to become a painter and enrolled in the Cleveland School of Art where his most influential teacher was Henry Keller. Another major Ohio influence on his painting was William Sommer, leader of the modernist movement in the Cleveland area. He introduced Burchfield to experimental watercolor techniques and color theory, and Burchfield began attending sessions of the Kokoon Club, organized by Sommer and William Zorach to promote avant-garde art. In 1917, he developed a shorthand of abstractions of various shapes and moods, and he also began painting small houses that appeared to be haunted. He served in World War I from 1918 to 1919, and served as sergeant in the Camouflage Corps, camouflaging artillery pieces. In 1921, he moved to Buffalo, New York where until 1929, he worked as a wallpaper designer for the M.H. Birge and Sons Wallpaper Company. From that time, living the remainder of his life in Buffalo, he devoted himself full time to fine-art painting that ranged from rather sentimental depictions to abstraction in the 1960s. In the 1920s, he moved away from what he perceived as an overactive imagination and did studies of architecture of Midwestern streets. This subject matter of the realities of the man-made world was influenced by his reading of Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, and playing off those themes he reflected a debunking of the heartland sentimentality by so-called sophisticated, more worldly critics. Then in 1943, he returned to his earlier style which he explained was a “necessary diversion” from the aftermath of World War II. Once more he began to explore the landscape of his youth, and using a less-realistic style, became almost mystical in his expressions of nature including seasonal changes, and forest sounds, which he depicted with quivering brushstrokes. “His last paintings are filled with chimerical creatures–butterflies and dragonflies from another world.” (Baigell 55) The largest single collection of his work is at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York and includes his watercolors, prints, oil paintings, and preliminary sketches for both paintings and wallpaper designs. In 1997, a major retrospective of his work was held at the National Museum of American Art in Washington DC and was organized by the Columbus Ohio Museum of Art.

Clarence Holbrook Carter

Mary Cassatt

Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt is best known for her mother and child compositions and also for her color prints, based on Japanese woodblock techniques and that combined drypoint, etching, and aquatint. From 1890, she had her own printing press at her home. Born in 1844 in Allegheny City (now part of Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, she was recognized by the turn of the century as one of the preeminent painters both of her native country and of France, which she made her permanent home in 1875. She spent her childhood in Pennsylvania, and then lived with her mother in Europe from 1851 until 1858, studying in a number of cities including Paris, Parma, and Seville. She returned to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1861 to 1865 and in 1866 went back to France, which she decided was best suited for her professional goals. There she spent much time studying works by artists living and deceased, and painted with Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas. Her first public success came at the Paris Salon of 1868 with a painting praised by a New York Times critic for its “vigor of treatment and fine qualities of color”. Cassatt continued to exhibit at the Salon through the mid-1870s, and attracted the attention of Edgar Degas, who invited her to join the artists dedicated to the “new painting”, the Impressionists. At this time she abandoned the somber palette and traditional subject matter of the Academic style in favor of the light-filled modern life compositions favored by her colleagues, among them Monet, Renoir, and Morisot. She quickly adopted Impressionist techniques of applying paint rapidly from a bright palette. Cassatt developed her own subject matter, using her family members as models because her lifestyle, with aging parents, was much more confined than that of the male Impressionists who were able to spend time in cafes and paint subjects of society life. From 1879 to 1886 she was one of only three women to exhibit with the Impressionists, and the only American woman. In 1878, at the request of Julian Weir, she sent two of her paintings to him in America for exhibition with the Society of American Artists. These paintings were among the first Impressionist works to be shown in America. However, she received much more attention in France than she ever did in the United States. While some critics were perplexed by the sketchy quality of her paint handling and the bold colors of the works, Cassatt showed at the Impressionist exhibition of 1879, by 1881 she was almost uniformly praised, with two critics citing her work as the highlight of that year’s exhibition. It was in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition that Cassatt first displayed pictures of the mother and child theme for which she is best known. Though a sensitive painter of women and even the occasional male subject, Cassatt achieved her greatest success in the depiction of maternity. She elevated the genre from the realm of the sentimental or anecdotal through a careful attention to naturalistic pose and gesture, to the exchange of gazes between mother and child, and with the use of animated brush strokes and bright tones. After the final Impressionist exhibition of 1886, Cassatt began to experiment more widely, transforming her imagery with references to Old Master Madonna and Child paintings as well as Japanese prints. Her experiments with printmaking at this time resulted in one of the great graphic monuments of the nineteenth century: the set of ten color prints first shown at Galeries Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1891. Gradually she abandoned Impressionist work for paintings that emphasized shapes and forms. As the years progressed, Cassatt became increasingly involved with women’s rights causes. She painted a mural for the Women’s Building in the 1893 Chicago World’s Exposition on the theme of “Modern Woman”, and also helped organize an exhibition of pictures by Old Masters and Degas, in addition to her own works, to benefit woman suffrage in 1915. Cassatt resided in Europe, mostly at her country chateau near Paris, the remainder of her life except during the Franco-Prussian War when her family insisted she return to Philadelphia. She brought much of her work back with her, and unfortunately it was destroyed in a fire, so that the early European part of her career largely undocumented. She lived into the 20th century, but it is generally thought that the quality of her work declined. By 1914 she had to give up painting because of poor eyesight. Upon her death in 1926, Cassatt was honored by a number of memorial exhibitions, and remains one of the most acclaimed American-born artists. She is still the subject of major exhibitions, such as “Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman,” which opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. A traveling exhibition, it included 100 of the most beautiful of her paintings, the first traveling retrospective of her work in 30 years.

Howard Chandler Christy

Howard Chandler Christy was one of America’s most distinguished illustrators, whose work, like that of Norman Rockwell, successfully captured the pulse of the nation. His career was established when he worked for Scribner’s and Leslie’s Weekly doing illustrations of American troops in Cuba during the Spanish American War. After that, he was most sought after for his sumptuous, lush portraits of women, although he also painted other notables that included President Calvin Coolidge, General Douglas McArthur, Eddie Rickenbacker, Douglas MacArthur, Amelia Earhart, Herbert Hoover, and Benito Mussolini. He was also a muralist and much sought-after teacher, giving classes in New York City at Cooper Union, the Chase School, the New York School of Art, and the Art Students League. He worked for Scribner’s Magazine as an illustrator for a number of years beginning in 1898. In addition to illustrating articles and stories, he traveled to Cuba and Puerto Rico and sent back illustrations of Spanish-American War activity. It was through this work as a commercial artist that he became a nationally known illustrator. After his return to the United States, he taught for a brief time in New York; however, he soon returned to his hometown of Duncan Falls. There he built a studio and summer home and divided his time between painting and entertaining visiting authors and publishers. While living in Ohio, he became famous for his stylized depictions of women, popularly known as “Christy Girls.” These illustrations appeared in many publications and print art, and were eventually used on recruitment posters for World War I. By 1915, he had returned once again to New York City and soon took up portrait painting. Later in life, Christy began painting large historical murals. His most famous of these large compositions, The Signing of the Constitution of the United States is located above the grand staircase in The Capitol in Washington DC.

Benton Clark

Benton Clark became an eastern illustrator of the West in the dramatic tradition of Frederic Remington and especially loved painting horses. He also did murals that are in Chicago and Columbus, Ohio. Growing up in Coshocton, Ohio, he had a picturesque rural setting of woods and valleys near the old Ohio Canal. A group of artists were working there, and one of them, Arthur Woelfle, gave Clark his first lessons and encouraged him to seek further training. Later Woelfle said that of all his students Clark was the most talented. In 1913, he went to New York City to study at the National Academy of Design and in 1915 to Chicago at the Art Institute. He sold magazine cover and calendar illustrations and in 1925, began illustration work for Liberty and Outer’s Recreation magazines. He also illustrated for Saturday Evening Post and had a period of working for Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s art department in Culver City, California. Major influences on him were Harvey Dunn, Frank Hoffman, and Frederic Remington, and in 1932, he became a member of the Society of Illustrators. In 1932, he returned to New York City and did western illustrations for leading magazines such as SaturdayEvening Post, Mc Call’s and Good Housekeeping, a job that took him West for subject matter. He shared a studio with his brother, Matt Clark, also a noted illustrator. He died in his hometown of Coshocton, preparing to do an historic mural for his high school. Source: Walt Reed, “The Illustrator in America” Peggy and Harold Samuels, “Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West”.

Francis Coates Jones

Francis Coates Jones was the younger brother of the plein-air landscape painter Hugh Bolton Jones. Francis Jones decided to become a painter in 1876 after visiting the studio of the American painter Edwin Austin Abbey in London, and he spent the following year studying with his brother at the artists’ colony in Pont-Aven, Brittany. In 1878 he began to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Henri Lehmann; Jones continued his studies at the Académie Julian under Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. He settled in New York in 1884 and achieved immediate success with his finely executed figure paintings. In 1885 he became an associate of the National Academy of Design and won the academy’s Thomas B. Clarke prize, and in 1894 he was elected a full academician. Around 1895 he took up mural painting and illustration in addition to oil painting. Jones was actively involved in the National Academy’s administration, and he was a trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jones exhibited at the National Academy of Design, Brooklyn Art Association, Boston Art Club, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His paintings can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, and Brooklyn Museum, New York; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts; Peabody Institute, Baltimore; National Museum of American History, Washington, D. C.; Richmond Art Museum, Indiana; Chicago Historical Society, and the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Samuel Colman

Fern Isabel Coppedge

Joseph Cornell

Jasper Francis Cropsey

Charles Courtney Curran

Hunt Diederich

Arthur Dove

Raoul Dufy

Claude Lorraine Ferneley

Anton Otto Fischer

Best known for his Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing scenes, war convoys, and marine battle scenes, Anton Otto Fischer worked as a model and general handyman for artist Arthur Burdette Frost and worked as a member of the crew on racing yachts in Long Island Sound, in New York and Connecticut. Influenced by the fame of Howard Pyle, Fischer soon left for Wilmington, Delaware where he established a studio. He freelanced in “subject pictures,” – illustrations telling a human interest story that were popular in magazines. Fischer sold his first illustration to “Harper’s Weekly”, then illustrated an “Everybody’s Magazine” story by Jack London, for whom he would illustrate many books and magazine stories. Fischer began illustrating for “The Saturday Evening Post”, a relationship that would last for forty-eight years. He illustrated such stories as Kyne’s “Cappy Ricks,” Gilpatrick’s “Glencannon,” as well as serials by Kenneth Roberts, and Nordoff and Hall. From 1909 to 1920 he created more than one thousand illustrations featuring women and babies, pretty girls, dogs and horses, sports, the Navy and the sea. He painted works based on his experiences with the United States Coast Guard, during World War II which were exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and are now in the Coast Guard Academy collection in New London, Connecticut. Other paintings are in the collections of the Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut, and Kendall Whaling Museum, Sharon, Massachusetts.

Sam Francis

Helen Frankenthaler

Frederick Carl Frieseke

A.B. Frost

Arthur Burdett Frost became a lithographer, and in 1874 he was asked by a friend to illustrate a book of humorous short stories, “Out of the Hurly Burly”, by Charles Heber Clark, which was a commercial success, selling more than a million copies. In 1876, A.B. Frost joined the art department at the publisher Harper & Brothers, where he worked with such well-known illustrators as Howard Pyle, E. W. Kemble, Frederic Remington and C. S. Reinhart. While there, he learned a wide variety of techniques, from cartooning to what later came to be called photorealistic painting. Frost’s color blindness may have helped his excellent use of grayscale. In 1877 and 1878, Frost went to London to study with some of the great cartoonists of the time. Later, he returned to Philadelphia and studied under painters Thomas Eakins and William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Daniel Garber

William John Glackens

Marsden Hartley

Childe Hassam

Robert Henri

Edward Lamson Henry

John Frederick Herring

For four years John F. Herring drove the coach, “York and London Highflyer”, and painting in his leisure, gained a reputation as the “coachman-painter”. He eventually devoted himself entirely to painting, receiving the only art instruction of his career from Abraham Cooper. For thirty-three successive years he painted the winners of the races at St. Leger. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1826; at the British Institution and the Society of British Artists from 1841-1852. He died in 1865 at Tunbridge Wells, England.

Hans Hofmann

The only artist of the New York school to participate directly in European modernism, Hans Hofmann became known as the major exponent of Abstract Expressionism. His paintings are known for their manic, exuberant energy. Among 20th-century masters, he was the first to consolidate and codify the lessons of modernism into a teaching system. Hofmann was also a widely-influential art instructor with schools in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Approximately six-thousand students studied modernist art with him, among the well-known names are Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Freilicher, Wolf Kahn, Larry Rivers and Nell Blaine. Hofmann said he always based his paintings on the subject of nature, and he used vivid colors such as bright blues, greens oranges and yellows and applied them with palette knives in long slashing strokes. He viewed the surface of the canvas as alive, responsive, and active, often with opposing forces which he created with his theory of “push and pull,” and which is closely tied to theories of Paul Cezanne. He also experimented with dripping paint onto the canvas, a method Jackson Pollock learned and later made famous.

Winslow Homer

Edward Hopper

Gayle Hoskins

Peter Hurd

Peter Hurd worked as N.C. Wyeth’s assistant and studied under him for a number of years, and in 1929 he married Wyeth’s daughter, Henriette Wyeth. Peter Hurd is best known for his watercolors, luminous egg temperas and lithographs depicting the New Mexican landscape he loved. Hurd was an early pioneer of the Italian renaissance medium of egg tempera. He even introduced his young brother-in-law, Andrew Wyeth, to egg tempera. Eventually, N. C. Wyeth adopted the medium, as did son-in-law John W. McCoy. In 1967, he painted what would have been Lyndon B. Johnson’s official portrait. President Johnson only allowed Hurd one sitting, during which time Johnson fell asleep. Hurd hence had to use photographs of Johnson to finish the painting. Johnson did not like his portrait, declaring it “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” The painting is now part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, in the Smithsonian Institution. Hurd’s Time Magazine cover portrait of Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. was featured in a National Portrait Gallery exhibit of the magazine’s cover art that opened in 1969.

Wilson Henry Irvine

Martin Johnson Heade

W.H.D. Koerner

William Koerner was a noted magazine and book illustrator whose work was characterized by strong draftsmanship and an eye for detail. He immigrated with his family to the United States in 1880, from Germany. At age 20, he became a rapid-hand illustrator for the Chicago Tribune. By 1901, he was attending classes at the Art Institute in Chicago, and four years later enrolled in the Art Students League in New York. When illustrator Howard Pyle accepted him for formal instruction, it was a major career boost. In 1924, W.H.D. Koerner first went West, traveling in a seven passenger Buick. He camped extensively and continued to travel to California via the Santa Fe Railroad. Zane Grey, popular novelist, used his illustrations in his novels. Koerner worked primarily from New York but kept a summer studio near the Crow reservation in Montana. He settled in Interlachen, New Jersey and built a studio there, which is replicated at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.

Walter Launt Palmer

John Marin

Reginald Marsh

Henri Matisse

Alfred Maurer

Ann Wyeth McCoy

Surrounded by a long heritage of artistic tradition, Ann Wyeth McCoy is the youngest daughter of illustrator N.C. Wyeth. With the great emphasis on the arts during Ann McCoy’s childhood, she not only chose to paint but also to study music. Like many members of the Wyeth family, Ann McCoy pursued her own career in art and has created a reputation for herself as a painter. Her paintings are personal portraits of the world around her and are included in many public collections including the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, ME. In 1998 McCoy’s paintings were exhibited at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY in the show “Wyeth: Three Generations.”

John W. McCoy

John McCoy was a brilliantly trained painter and a highly respected member of the Wyeth family and the Brandywine School. He was formerly trained at Cornell University, studied at the Beaux Arts School, Fontainbleau, France, after which noted artist-illustrator N.C. Wyeth privately tutored him. A painter who embraces abstraction, realism, modernism, and tradition, John McCoy married N.C. Wyeth’s daughter, Ann Wyeth, and, until his death in 1989, they lived near the Wyeth family home at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. In realist style, he painted the surrounding landscape and the coast of Maine where the family vacationed. From 1946 to 1961, he taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. McCoy captured the tranquil and brooding aspects of nature in his watercolor and mixed media paintings of the rocky coast and coves of Maine, along with the lush fields of moving grasses and wildflowers. He also captured the beauty of the Brandywine River and the Pennsylvania countryside in his tempera and watercolor paintings. By the 1950s, McCoy had also developed an interest in the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock, and began experimenting with mixed media and pouring, dripping, and floating paint on canvas. The book, “John McCoy, an American Painter,” by Anna B. McCoy with commentary by Andrew Wyeth, tells of McCoy’s struggle for an independent creative voice and his determination to reduce painting to its essence. Due to a tragic illness, John McCoy stopped painting in 1983. John McCoy has exhibited nationally in major museums including the Carnegie Institute, The Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney, the Chicago Art Institute, the Delaware Art Museum and the Brandywine River Museum. In 2001, a major retrospective exhibition of his work was shown at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine and the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware.

Robert Motherwell

Francis Luis Mora

Edward Moran

Sir Alfred James Munnings

Sir Alfred James Munnings, at fourteen, was apprenticed to a Norwich printer, designing and drawing advertising posters for the next six years, attending the Norwich School of Art in his spare time. When his apprenticeship ended, he became a full time painter. The loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint. He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsiesand horses. He was associated with the Newlyn School of painters. Munnings career would be associated with equine painting. He used his art to depict horses involving in hunting and racing. Munnings was elected president of the Royal Academy of Art in 1944, a post he held until 1949. His presidency is most famous for the departing speech he gave in 1949, attacking modernism.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Maxfield Parish

Guy Pene du Bois

Pablo Picasso

George Picknell

Jackson Pollack

Edward Potthast

Attilio Pratella

Howard Pyle

Maurice Prendergast

Maurice Prendergast grew up in Boston and worked as a letterer of pictorial show cards. Prendergast did not seek academic training until he was in his early thirties when he went to Paris and enrolled in the académies Julian and Colarossi. During his three years in the French capital, Prendergast?s emerging style was most significantly shaped by Japanese prints, Art Nouveau, and the art of James McNeill Whistler and the Nabis artists. The pointillist style of Georges Seurat was an inspiration to Prendergast?s figure paintings. As a recorder of public activity his signature theme was the crowd, and his figures are anonymous. Prendergast?s remote, disengaged viewpoint, which is in contrast to the viewpoints of his American contemporaries, John Sloan and William Glackens, is again reminiscent of French Impressionism. Prendergast?s colorful paintings have a mosaic or tapestry-like quality related to pointillism. They present flat, bold areas of color combined with a compression of perspective and scale. His oeuvre is unique in American art. Paintings and works on paper by Prendergast are well represented in most major public art collections throughout the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C.; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; and The Saint Louis Art Museum.

Man Ray

Edward Willis Redfield

Robert Lewis Reid

John Singer Sargent

Mead Schaeffer

After completing high school, Mead Schaeffer enrolled in the Pratt Institute in 1916. At Pratt his teachers included Harvey Dunn and Charles Chapman. While a student at Pratt, Schaeffer illustrated the first of seven ‘Golden Boy’ books written by L. P. Wyman. In 1922, at age 24, he was hired to illustrate a series of classic novels for publisher Dodd Mead. His work for Dodd Mead continued until 1930. The books that he illustrated during this period included Moby Dick,Typee, and Omoo by Herman Melville; The Count of Monte Cristo; and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. During the 1930s and 1940s he received commissions from magazines including Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, the Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies Home Journal, Country Gentleman, and Cosmopolitan. He produced 46 covers for the weekly Saturday Evening Post.

Frank Schoonover

Everett Shinn

Theodoros Stamos

Joseph Stella

Alfred Stieglitz

Alice Barber Stephens

Alice Barber Stephens (1858-1932) is known for numerous engravings, especially of social events, that were published in magazines such as “Scribner’s Monthly”, “Harper’s Weekly” and “Collier’s”. She was also the illustrator for the works of Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Lillie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Kate Douglas Wiggins, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. She attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art). In 1876, Stephens enrolled at the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts in the first class that admitted women, which was taught by Thomas Eakins. She later studied at the Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle. Stephens also attended the Paris Academie Julian in 1887, where she studied with Filippo Colarrossi. After returning to the United States, she began to support herself with pen and ink illustrations. In 1890, she married another fellow Academy student, Charles Hallowell Stephens.

Wayne Thiebaud

John Henry Twachtman

Esteban Vicente

Martha Walter

Max Weber

John Whorf

Andrew Wyeth

A painter of landscape and figure subjects in Pennsylvania and Maine, Andrew Wyeth became one of the best-known American painters of the 20th century. His style is both realistic and abstract, and he works primarily in tempera and watercolor, often using the drybrush technique. He is the son of Newell Convers and Carolyn Bockius Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and was home-schooled because of delicate health. His art instruction came from his famous-illustrator father, who preached the tying of painting to life – to mood and to essences and to capturing the subtleties of changing light and shadows. The Wyeth household was a lively place with much intellectual and social stimulation. Because of the prominence of N.C. Wyeth, persons including many dignitaries came from all over the country to visit the family. Andrew’s sisters Carolyn and Henriette became noted artists as did his brother-in-law, Peter Hurd. The non-art oriented brother, Nathaniel Wyeth, achieved much success as a chemist for DuPont where, among many inventions, he created a durable plastic so plastic bottles could hold carbonated beverages. Andrew Wyeth maintained a style strongly oriented towards Realism when Abstract Expressionism was all-prevalent. Adhering to his own path, he was snubbed by many prominent art critics. However, his paintings have elements of abstraction in that the work derives from his strong feelings about his subjects, which often appear in unusual positions, juxtapositions, and with features highlighted for emotional effect. His work usually suggests rural quiet, isolation, and somber mood and is devoid of modern-day objects such as automobiles. In 1937, Wyeth’s first one-man show of watercolors depicting scenes around Port Clyde, Maine, sold out at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. In Maine, Andrew first spent his summers in Port Clyde with his family, but after his marriage to Betsy James in 1940, he and his wife went regularly to Cushing. Christina Olson of Cushing, at the end of Hathorn Point, was his most famous model, but over the years, Wyeth formed close friendships with – and painted – several other Maine neighbors. His closest friend, Walt Anderson, gradually ages before the eyes of viewers in numerous Wyeth drawings and paintings that show life’s changes from the youthful Young Swede (1939) to the older man in Adrift (1982). The Olson House, where Christina and her brother lived, is now owned and maintained by the Farnsworth Museum, where Wyeth had his first major exhibition in 1951 and where the Andrew Wyeth Gallery is now a permanent exhibition place for his paintings. In 1964, the directors of the Farnsworth Museum paid $65,000 for Wyeth’s painting Her Room, the highest price ever paid by a museum for the work of a living artist. The Olson House is the first property ever named to the National Register of Historic Places for being recognized as the site of a painting, Christina’s World, one of the most recognized paintings in American art. After the death of Christina Olson, Wyeth used female models Siri Erickson of Cushing, and Helga Testorf of Chadds Ford. Depictions of the nude Helga, a total of 240 works, provided grist for an avalanche of sensational publicity. The Helga paintings were exhibited in 1987 at the National Gallery of Art, the gallery’s first exhibition of works by a living artist. Wyeth has received many official honors. In 1963, he was the subject of a cover story for Time magazine and, thanks to President John F. Kennedy, he became the first visual artist to be nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1990, Wyeth received the Congressional Gold Medal, the first artist to have that honor. Andrew and his wife Betsy have two sons, Nicholas and Jamie Browning, the latter who has become a prominent American artist, and the former who shares with his father and his uncle, Nathaniel, a great fascination with machines, especially aviation.

Carolyn Wyeth

The second daughter of N.C. Wyeth, Carolyn Wyeth showed early art talent and studied with her father for nineteen years, the longest of any of his students. She stayed in the family home at Chadds Ford until she died in 1994 and became known for her powerful, introspective work depicting the surrounding land where she lived. Wyeth painted the world she knew best-the eighteen acres of land that surrounded her home. Her brooding, introspective work displays a raw power, and in spite of her avoidance of publicity, many critics and collectors have discovered her talents. Although she was a very private, seemingly non self-promoting person as an artist, she was considered the rebel of the family and was highly eccentric and excessive. She felt overshadowed by her siblings Henriette and Andrew, whose talent became widely recognized.

Henriette Wyeth

Henriette Wyeth was the oldest daughter of the famous painter and illustrator, N.C. Wyeth. Wyeth had five children; four of them became well known American artists and they in turn produced another generation of artists. The Wyeth artistic heritage is an important chapter in American art history. Henriette was recognized as a child prodigy for her painting at an early age and trained by her father and several art schools. She was hired to do commissioned portraits while still in her teens. After marrying Peter Hurd, an art student of her father’s, they moved to his home in New Mexico where they painted and raised a family of artists together. Henriette Wyeth continued with portraiture throughout her life, creating commissions for noted people such as Helen Hayes, Mrs. John D Rockerfeller III, and First Lady Pat Nixon, as well as members of her own family.

N.C. Wyeth

Newell Convers Wyeth was born October 22, 1882, in Needham, Massachusetts. With his mother’s encouragement, N.C. Wyeth attended several art schools – Mechanics Arts School in Boston, Massachusetts Normal Arts School, and the Eric Pape School of Art in Boston before being accepted to Howard Pyle’s School of Illustration in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1902. After only one and a half years of Pyle’s instruction, Wyeth was appearing in national magazines such as Collier’s, Harper’s, Scribner’s, and others. His first published illustration of a bronco and rider appeared in February 1903 on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. With funding from publishers, in September 1904, Wyeth ventured west for the first time to explore and absorb the life of the American frontier. His disciplined observation, imagination, and vivid recall of his adventures provided him with years of material – enough to fulfill America’s thirst to experience the West through words and images. He quickly became a successful and busy illustrator. After his second trip west, Wyeth returned to Wilmington and married Carolyn Bockius on April 16, 1906. With marriage, his attention turned to the pastoral Chadds Ford countryside, a few miles from Wilmington in the heart of the Brandywine River Valley. There he purchased a house and raised his family. The rolling hills, planted fields, gentle brooks, and woodlands captivated his imagination. This softer landscape, in contrast to the rugged West, appears ad the background for many of his subsequent illustrations and the subject of many easel paintings. In 1911, Wyeth began work on his first Scribner’s Classic, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. This remarkable work launched a relationship between publisher and painter that continued until the completion of Majorie Kinnan Rawling’s The Yearling in 1939. This famous series includes well-loved books as The Black Arrow, Kidnapped, The Boy’s King Arthur, Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, and many others. Although Wyeth painted thousands of illustrations – for books, magazines, short stories, advertisements, and murals – and plein-air easel paintings, the often reprinted Scribner’s series embodies his most famous work. He interpreted the literary mood of each “classic” and created a different painting style to accompany it, bringing to the canvas an energy unique to illustration or painting. His sensitivity and appreciation of children must have aided his natural ability to paint children’s literature. He loved their imaginations and sought inspiration from them, retaining the spirit of childhood throughout his life. He took fatherhood seriously and raised five sons and daughters, actively participating in their development. He taught them drawing and painting, literature, music, appreciation of nature, the power of imagination. His conscious goal was to create a truly American art and a generation of artists to fulfill it. Each of his children – Henriette, Carolyn, Nathaniel, Ann, and Andrew – became prodigy in prodigy in painting, music, or science. Howard Pyle believed in the nobility of the calling to be an illustrator. But N.C. Wyeth continuously strove to create art beyond the confined of an assignment. He was enormously successful in his lifetime as a master illustrator but yearned for recognition in the world of “fine art,” where he perceived that art achieved its highest ideals of truth and beauty. He frequently tried to separate himself from the time and pressures of illustration in order to concentrate on his personal painting, but he continued accepting assignments, even up to his tragic accidental death in 1945. Victoria Manning, excerpt from Visions of Adventure, N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists

Sculptors

Charles Allmond

Charles Allmond is a sculptor who finds inspiration in the natural world. Primarily a direct carver in stone and wood, he also produces limited editions of many of his works in bronze. His distinctive style ranges from realism to abstract. Allmond is a past president of the Society of Animal Artists, an international organization of painters and sculptors who depict living creatures in their work. His sculptures have been exhibited widely in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, where the work has received critical acclaim. Venues have included more than 75 museums. He is represented in public, corporate and private collections and has received regional and national honors.

Eric Berg

Upon graduation from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Eric Berg realized that he had gotten more satisfaction from the stone carvings he had been making during his senior year than his studies in economics. Three years later he completed the MFA in Sculpture at the University of Pennsylvania and got his first commission – the African Warthog for the Philadelphia Zoo. Berg has completed over forty-four public commissions at zoos, parks, museums and universities around the United States. His smaller works, including bronze maquettes of the life-size public pieces, have been shown in galleries throughout the country.

J. Clayton Bright

J. Clayton Bright combines his keen power of observation with his highly skilled craftsmanship to create bronzes, which radiate with life. Each of his sculptures truly reflects his model’s individual nature and personality. His understanding of the subject’s physical and spiritual attributes allows Bright to achieve realistic sculpture with a sophisticated emotional clarity. The subject matter of these bronzes ranges from people, young and old, navy and white, male and female, to a wide variety of animals, both wild and domesticated. Bright works only from life, so he can gather his understanding of the model’s personality. Once he lay on the ground at the base of a three and a half foot fence while a friend jumped a horse over him, the purpose being to gain an understanding of the horse’s stomach muscles when it jumped. Even when doing a seemingly generic subject: a hound running or a child on her pony, Bright chooses a particular model who reflects his vision. The resulting bronzes radiate tremendous energy, and brings to the observer a sense of warm recognition of the subject matter. These sculptures vary in size ranging from some box turtle shells four and a half inches long to a life-size Jersey cow measuring seven feet in length. Bright sculpts unique commissions for clients, as well as offering limited editions of sculptures created from his own inspiration, often evoked by chance observation of a movement or gesture Bright’s unique talents have resulted in the placement of his bronzes in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe, South America, and Japan. His work is also represented in the collections of several museums.

Olivia Musgrave

Olivia Musgrave studied Sculpture at the City and Guilds of London Art School under Ally Sly and has since been based in London. She exhibits regularly in the UK and Ireland and is an Associate Member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. She works both from life and from her imagination, spends much time drawing from the figure and has completed a large number of portrait commissions in bronze. She won the Fedor Gleichen Award from the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1986.

Rikki Morley Saunders

Under the tutelage of her father, an exceptional woodcarver, Rikki Saunders’ budding artistic vision was nurtured alongside a deep love and respect for nature. Rikki later settled in Unionville, PA to pursue this interest and was long-listed for the 1984 Olympics. Driven to reconnect with her love for art, Rikki started sculpting. She found enormous inspiration in the natural world around her, which she enjoyed through foxhunting, fishing, stalking, trekking, and other outdoor activities. Her work began to reflect her concern for the protection of natural resources, sharpened by her immersion in the sportsmans’ life. Rikki currently spends most of her time sculpting. She lives with her husband, Jesse, on their farm in Pennsylvania. Together they have created a magical setting replete with horses, dogs, peacocks, foxes, herons, kingfishers, and a herd of fallow deer. “I am one of the luckiest people alive. Only working from real life, I spend my days with these wonderful creatures, observing their habits, learning their language, studying their form and capturing their grace and spirit in clay.” Rikki recently sculpted two life size peacocks, Alexander and Nureyev, that are a part of the muster of peacocks which live with her. The common theme which runs through everything Rikki has done is her love and respect for nature, and her desire to protect it from harm. This profound interest can be recognized in all of her work today.

Margery Torrey

Margery Torrey received her art training at the Paul Mellon Arts Center at Wellsley College and abroad in Italy and Spain. In addition to wildlife, she sculpts portraits of people and pets, friezes, fountains, monuments and other architectural enhancements. Her work is in many public places and private collections around the world.