John Frederick Kensett

Kensett in his studio, ca.1866

John Frederick Kensett (born March 22, 1816 in Cheshire , Connecticut , † December 14, 1872 in New York City ) was an American painter of the 19th century. He was best known for his landscape painting in the style of the Hudson River School and was a co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1870 .

life and work

John Frederick Kensett was born in 1816 to Thomas Kensett, a steel engraver who emigrated to America from England , and his New England wife, Elizabeth, née Dagget. He began his training in steel engraving and drawing in 1828 with his father, who had settled in New Haven , and his uncle Alfred Dagget. In 1829 he went to New York and worked for a year with the graphic artist Peter Maverick , then he worked as a freelance steel engraver and began painting on the advice of his friend John Casilear .

Kensett had his first exhibition in 1838 at the National Academy of Design in New York with a picture simply titled Landscape . In 1840 he traveled to Europe with the painters John Casilear, Asher B. Durand and Thomas P. Rossiter and visited London , Paris , Germany, Switzerland and Italy over the next seven years . In 1847 he returned to New York and in 1848 he was accepted as an associate member of the National Academy. A year later he was a full member and also became a member of the Century Club , which included leading artists and writers of the time. In 1859 he also became a member of the National Art Commission , which oversaw the artistic furnishings of the Capitol in Washington, DC . In 1870 he was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and was a member of its board of directors.

Kensett died of pneumonia on December 14, 1872, after trying to save a friend's wife from drowning in the sea.

style

Lake George , between 1860 and 1869

John Frederick Kensett's landscapes are shaped by the work of the Hudson River School . His early works are generally very strong and strongly influenced by Thomas Cole and English landscape painters such as John Constable . They are powerfully executed and equipped with details such as rocks and plants. After the mid-1850s, Durand had a greater influence on the paintings, making them more precise and more precise in detail, while the compositions became simpler at the same time. In the 1860s and 1870s he worked with very reduced and strict compositions.

In addition to occasional large format pictures, Kensett mainly painted on small to medium formats. He repeatedly visited the same places easily accessible from New York, which he painted several times, especially the Bash-Bish Falls , Lake George and the coastal regions of Newport and Beverly in Massachusetts . The pictures are very similar at first glance and differ mainly in their composition, light and atmosphere.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Artists & Architects "K" / John Frederick Kensett, 1816 - 1872 ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed June 29, 2015)  

Image selection

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  An Ilex Tree on Lake Albano, Italy , 1846

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  Trout Fisherman , 1852

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  Niagara Falls , 1853

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  Upper Mississippi , 1855

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  View of the Beach at Beverly, Massachusetts , 1860

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  Mount Washington , 1869

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  Lake George , 1870

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  Near Newport, Rhode Island , 1872

literature

• Thomas W. Gaethgens: Pictures from the New World. American painting of the 18th and 19th centuries. Prestel, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7913-0879-3 , p. 311.
• Stephan Koja: America. The New World in 19th Century Pictures. Prestel, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7913-2051-3 , p. 264.

Web links

Commons : John Frederick Kensett  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Kensett in the Artcyclopedia
• Kevin J. Avery, John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872) . In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.