Enoch Wood Perry

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Enoch Wood Perry (born July 31, 1831 in Boston , Massachusetts , † December 14, 1915 in New York City ) was an American portrait , genre and landscape painter from the Düsseldorf School . In his time he was considered the leading genre painter in his country.

Life

Perry, one of five children of the merchant Enoch Wood Perry and his wife Hannah Knapp Dole, moved his family to New Orleans around 1844 after his father had to go out of business due to the economic crisis of 1837 in Boston. In New Orleans, his father opened a new store, a homeware and furniture store. After Perry had finished school, he became an employee of the Commission house Pickett, Perkins & Company . Besides this work he painted.

In the years 1851/1852 he received from Andrew Warner, secretary of the American Art Union in New York City, whom he had written to about his artistic training, the advice to study painting at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and in this regard from Emanuel Leutze and Worthington to seek further advice from Whittredge . In the late spring or early summer of 1852 he went there via London and Paris . He stayed in Düsseldorf until autumn 1854 and became a private student of Leutze. In 1854 he was also a student of Heinrich Mücke at the Düsseldorf Academy. He also became a member of the Malkasten artists' association . This time shaped his artisan style and created a preference for stage-like compositions. He then went to Paris, where he entered Thomas Couture's studio and practiced the use of impasto and dark contours. In 1855 he returned to Düsseldorf, in 1856 he stayed in Rome . Through the mediation of his politically active father, chairman of the Louisiana State Central Democratic Committee , Perry began working as a US consul in Venice in August 1857 , which he gave up in October of the same year. The previous summer he had undertaken a study trip to the Nahe with William Henry Furness , William Stanley Haseltine , John Beaufain Irving , Henry Lewis , William Dickinson Washington and Whittredge . Before Perry returned to the United States in 1858, he made a second trip to Rome, where he associated with Whittredge, Albert Bierstadt , William Page (1811-1885) and Thomas Crawford .

The True American , undated, no later than 1860, Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City

After returning to his homeland, he settled in Philadelphia in 1858 . That year he exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in New York City, the Boston Athenæum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , mostly works that he had painted in Europe, particularly in Venice. In 1860 he moved back to New Orleans, where he opened a portrait painting studio . Well-known people who had himself painted by him were the politicians John Slidell , Jefferson Davis and Washington Bartlett . He portrayed Jefferson Davis, the first and only President of the Confederate States of America , whom he portrayed in 1861, in front of a map of the Confederation. The proceeds from the sale of the picture were used to finance the Civil War . The picture The True American attributed to him , which was in a collection of his estate in 1944, is also likely to come from this phase . It is probably related to the contemporary nativism movement of know-nothingism , from which the Know-Nothing-Party emerged . The artistic statement of the painting, on which people and even the horse are depicted on the poster without a head, is considered unexplained. As a work of history painting, Perry began in 1861 with the studies of the never completed painting The Signing of the Secession Ordinance , a picture that was to document the secession of the State of Louisiana on January 26, 1861 in Baton Rouge .

In 1862 Perry wandered west and at the end of the year came to San Francisco , where he worked again as a portrait painter. In August 1863 he took Albert Bierstadt, Virgil Williams (1830-1886), Fitz Hugh Ludlow and John Hewston, a metallurgist, on a study trip to the Yosemite Valley . As a result of this trip, Perry created some landscape paintings under the influence of Bierstadt's painting. He undertook another long trip in 1864 - again with Bierstadt and Williams - to Hawaii , then the Kingdom of Hawaii . There he painted landscapes and portraits of the Hawaiian royal family, including portraits of the kings Kamehameha IV (posthumously) and Kamehameha V as well as of Prince Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Leiopapa. Perry had returned to California in July 1865. The following year he was commissioned by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , a church of Mormonism , to Salt Lake City , where he Brigham Young and twelve other leading members portrayed this organization. Together with the photographer George Martin Ottinger (1833-1917) and his partner Charles Roscoe Savage (1832-1909), he founded the short-lived Deseret Art Union based on the American Art Union . In 1866 he left Salt Lake City.

In January 1867, Perry Bierstadt moved into his former studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. There he was accepted as an associate member (associate) in the National Academy of Design, in the following year he became a full member (academian) . In the academy, Perry was involved as the leader of the liberal wing, whose endeavor was to promote school work. From 1871 to 1873 he served the academy as the recording secretary . Perry also became a member of the Century Association , the Artists' Aid Society, and the American Watercolor Society . In 1877 or 1878 Perry went on his second trip to San Francisco, where he lived with his younger brother, who ran a doctor's office there, until 1881. Railroad magnates Collis P. Huntington and Leland Stanford were among Perry's supporters in San Francisco . It was probably during this time that Perry met the photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge , and he was interested in his “animal locomotion” photography. From 1882 Perry was back in New York City. With other artists he initiated the re-establishment of the American Art Union in 1883 in order to promote the distribution of American art , which only existed until 1885. In 1891 he again moved into a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building . In 1899, at the age of 68, he married the writer Fanny Field Hering, whom he had met on an excursion to Sandwich, New Hampshire. From then on, the couple spent the summer months there. In winter they traveled to Europe or stayed in New York City, where Perry had a studio in the university building on Washington Square.

Works (selection)

Rose Ranch, Ulupalakua, on the Slopes of Haleakala, Maui , 1865, Honolulu Museum of Art , Hawaii
Inside a Barn , 1891, Birmingham Museum of Art
  • The True American , genre painting, no later than 1860, Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York City
  • John Slidell , portrait, 1860, Louisiana State Museum
  • Jefferson Davis , Portrait, 1861, Alabama State Department of Archives and History, Montgomery
  • The Signing of the Secession Ordinance , history picture, study, 1861
  • How the Battle Was Won , genre image, 1862, Newark Museum
  • Cathedral Rock , Landscape, 1863, private property
  • Rose Ranch, Ulupalakua, on the Slopes of Haleakala, Maui , Landscape, 1865, Honolulu Museum of Art , Hawaii
  • Prince Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Leiopapa , Portrait, 1865, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii
  • Cathedral Rock, Yosemite Valley , Landscape, 1866, Oakland Museum of Art
  • Taking It Over , genre image, 1872, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
  • Inside a Barn , 1891, Birmingham Museum of Art , Birmingham, Alabama

literature

  • George W. Sheldon: American Painters . New York 1879, pp. 70-72
  • Bartlett Cowdrey: The Discovery of Enoch Wood Perry . In: Old Printshop Portfolio , Issue 4 (April 1945), pp. 171–181
  • Hermann Warner Williams Jr .: Mirror to the American Past. A Survey of American Genre Painting: 1750-1900 . New York Graphic Society, Greenwich / Connecticut 1973
  • Linda Mary Jones Gibbs: Enoch Wood Perry, Jr .: A Biography and Analysis of His Thematic and Stilistic Development . Master of Arts thesis, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 1981
  • Lee M. Edwards: Enoch Wood Perry . In domestic bliss. Family Life in American Painting, 1840-1910 . The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers / New York 1986, p. 90
  • Peter Hastings Falk (ed.): Who Was Who in American Art 1564–1975. 400 Years of Artists in America . Sound View Press, Madison / Connecticut, 1999
  • Jennifer Saville: Hawaii and its People . In: American Art Review 8, Issue 3 (May / June 2001), pp. 108-119

Web links

Commons : Enoch Wood Perry, Jr.  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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. 437
  2. ^ Natalie Spassky: A Catalog of Works by Artists Born between 1816 and 1845 . Volume II in: Kathleen Luhrs (Ed.): American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Princeton University Press, New York City 1985, p. 342 ff. ( Google Books )
  3. ↑ Lilian Landes: "... a new subject in the genre". The socially critical genre image of the Düsseldorf School of Painting in an international comparison . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Ed.), Volume 1, p. 207
  4. ↑ Natalie Spassky, p. 344
personal data
SURNAME Perry, Enoch Wood
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American portrait, genre and landscape painter from the Düsseldorf School
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1915
Place of death New York City