Alexander Helwig Wyant

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Alexander Helwig Wyant, 1882

Alexander Helwig Wyant (born January 11, 1836 in Port Washington , Ohio , † November 29, 1892 in New York ) was an American landscape painter from the Hudson River School , the Düsseldorf School of Painting and Tonalism .

Life

Wyant was born the son of a farmer and carpenter. He grew up in Defiance, Ohio . In his early years he worked as a sign painter. He began painting landscapes in Cincinnati , on the banks of the Ohio River . He leaned early on the style of the landscape painter George Inness , whose painting he had seen in 1857 at an exhibition in Cincinnati. He soon left Ohio to meet Inness in New York. With financial support from the winemaker and patron of the arts Nicholas Longworth (1773–1863), he began studying painting there in 1860. In the same year he set out on his first trip to Europe. In Paris he saw works by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Jules Dupré . He also traveled to Germany. After living in Cincinnati for two years, he returned to New York in 1863. In 1864 he exhibited in the National Academy of Design , of which he later became a member ( associate 1868, academician 1869), for the first time publicly. In 1865 he started his second trip to Europe. The goals were Düsseldorf as the “place of the best art education in the world” and the private studio of the Norwegian landscape painter Hans Fredrik Gude , which he visited in Karlsruhe when he was appointed professor of landscape painting at the Grand Ducal Baden Art School as the successor to Johann Wilhelm Schirmer . After brief stays in England, where he studied the works of John Constable and William Turner , as well as in Wales and Ireland, he returned to New York, where he settled permanently and moved into a studio on West 57th Street.

In 1867 he became a member of the American Society of Water Colors . He participated in exhibitions in New York, Brooklyn, Boston and Philadelphia. In 1873 he suffered paralysis of the right arm as a result of a stroke on a state expedition to Arizona and New Mexico, which forced him to use the left arm from then on. In 1878 he played a key role in founding the American Watercolor Society . In 1880, after his marriage to Arabella Locke, who was one of his few students, he began to reside mostly in Keene Valley, New York. In 1889 he moved to Arkville, New York, a small town in the picturesque Catskill Mountains , where he was a member of the Pakatakan Artists Colony . From there he went on study trips, including to the Adirondack Mountains . In 1892 he died in his studio on Fourth Avenue in New York shortly after completing his last painting, Arkville Autumn Landscape .

In addition to the National Academy of Design , Wyant was a member of the Century Association , an artists' association founded in 1829 with headquarters in Manhattan . A pupil of Wyant was Robert Ward Van Boskerck (1855-1932).

Work (selection)

Landscape (Valley of the Ohio River) , 1865
Derbyshire Landscape , 1871
Moonlight and Frost , between 1890 and 1892

Wyant is known for his atmospheric and poetic interpretations as a landscape painter in the tradition of the Hudson River School and the Düsseldorf School of Painting. In 1866, after his second trip to Europe, Wyant's palette emphasized white, gray and earthy tones. His later work is assigned to tonalism. Besides oil, he also used watercolors. He also drew with charcoal.

  • Split Rail Fence , between 1860 and 1862
  • Landscape (Valley of the Ohio River) , 1865, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • Tennessee , 1866
  • Near Conway, North Wales , 1868
  • Lot at Upper Susquehanna , 1869
  • Mountain Mist , 1869, Oxford Art Gallery, New York
  • The bird's nest
  • An unstable day
  • Shores of Lake Complain
  • Adirondack Lake , between 1868 and 1870
  • Wilderness in the Adirondacks
  • Derbyshire Landscape , 1871 Dayton Art Institute
  • Fall , 1875, Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Any Man's Land , before 1880, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • Pastoral Landscape , around 1885
  • Moonlight and Frost , between 1890 and 1892, Brooklyn Museum , New York
  • Arkville Autumn Landscape , 1892

literature

  • Hermann Alexander Müller : Biographical Artist Lexicon . Verlag des Biographisches Institut, Leipzig 1882, p. 568 ( digitized version ).
  • Eliot Clark: Alexander Wyant . Private print, New York 1916.
  • Robert S. Olpin: Alexander Helwig Wyant, 1836-1892 . Exhibition catalog, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 1968.
  • Robert S. Olpin: Alexander Helwig Wyant (1836-1892). American Landscape Painter. An Investigation of His Life and Fame and a Critical Analysis of His Work with a Catalog Raisonné of Wyant Paintings . Ann Arbor / Michigan 1971.

Web links

Commons : Alexander Helwig Wyant  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Place of birth according to other information: Evans Creek, Coshocton County , Ohio. See Bettina Baumgärtel, Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: Directory of foreign artists. Nationality, residence and studies in Düsseldorf . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 1, p. 443.
  2. ^ Lauretta Dimmick: Alexander H. Wyant . In: John P. O'Neill (Ed.): American Paradise. The World of the Hudson River School . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87099-496-4 , p. 319 ( Google Books )
  3. ↑ David B. Dearinger (Ed.): Painting and sculpture in the National Academy of Design . Hudson Hills Press, Manchester / Vermont, ISBN 1-55595-029-9 , p. 548 ( Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Wyant, Alexander Helwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American landscape painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Port Washington , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1892
Place of death New York City