Ralph Wormeley Curtis

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Ralph Curtis, photograph around 1902
Frank Duveneck: Portrait of Ralph Curtis

Ralph Wormeley Curtis (* 1854 in Boston , † 1922 in Beaulieu-sur-Mer ) was an American painter and draftsman. The artist, who mainly lives in Europe, was influenced by his painter friends John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler . Among his best-known motifs are city views of Venice in the style of impressionism .

family

Ralph Wormeley Curtis was born in Boston in 1854 as the eldest son of the lawyer Daniel Sargent Curtis and his wife Ariana Randolph Wormeley. Both parents came from wealthy, upper-middle-class Boston families. In 1858 the younger brother Osborne Sargent Curtis was born. The family also included two well-known artists: the sculptor Richard Saltonstall Greenough (1819–1904), an uncle of Daniel Sargent Curtis, and the painter John Singer Sargent , the son of one of his father's cousins. The family initially lived in the Boston neighborhood of Beacon Hill before moving to the posh suburb of Chestnut Hill in 1863 , only to settle in Boston again in 1869.

Life

John Singer Sargent: Ralph Curtis on the Beach in Scheveningen , 1880

After finishing school, Ralph Curtis studied law at Harvard University . He completed his studies in 1876 and then went to Europe to train as a painter. In Paris he attended the Académie Julian , where his teachers included the salon painters Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre , as well as the history painter Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury . He then moved to Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran's studio . A group of American painters was already here, including his distant cousin John Singer Sargent, whom he first met in Paris. A close personal and artistic friendship developed between Sargent and Curtis, with Sargent clearly influencing Curtis.

In the fall of 1877, Ralph Curtis' parents moved to Europe and settled first in Rome for a while and later in Florence. In the spring of 1878 he visited his parents in Rome for a few months, also took painting lessons there and spent the summer with his parents in Venice. In the fall of 1878 he returned to Paris and took up his own studio. Together with Sargent he made several sketch trips in the following years. These took the two painters to the Netherlands in 1880 to study the work of Frans Hals . Sargent's portrait of Ralph Curtis on the beach in Scheveningen is a testament to the friendship between the two artists . The two painters made further trips together to London in 1882 and to Lucerne in 1886 .

In 1879 Curtis met James Abbott McNeill Whistler in Venice , who had a studio in the Palazzo Rezzonico on the Grand Canal. Curtis made several portrait drawings of Whistler at the time. Also on the Grand Canal is the Palazzo Barbaro, where Ralph Curtis's parents rented in 1881 before they finally bought the apartment in 1885. The parental apartment in Venice subsequently developed into a meeting place for art lovers, artists and writers, including Ralph Curtis and his son Singer Sargent, such as famous contemporaries such as Isabella Stewart Gardner , Henry James , Edith Wharton , Vernon Lee and Claude Monet . During his frequent stays in Venice in the summer of the 1880s, numerous works by Ralph Curtis were created.

As a recognized and successful artist, Curtis regularly exhibited his work at the Salon de Paris from 1881 to 1893 . At the Paris World's Fair in 1889 , he received an honorable mention for his painting Vue à Venise . In addition, he has repeatedly shown his work in London at the Royal Academy of Arts and the renowned Grosvenor Gallery and also at the Manchester Art Gallery . Together with his friends Sargent and Whistler, Curtis took part in an exhibition at the Dublin Sketching Club in 1884.

Curtis married Lisa de Wolfe Colt in 1897. From this marriage the daughter Sylvia was born. The family settled in Beaulieu-sur-Mer near Monte Carlo, where Curtis died in 1922.

plant

Ralph Curtis's work includes portraits, genre scenes, interiors, still lifes and, above all, landscape paintings. Dieaw show coastal views, river landscapes or city motifs, with a large part of his work focusing on Venice. His Venetian genre scenes reveal the influence of Édouard Manet and are closely related to the works of Italian painters such as Giuseppe de Nittis and Giovanni Boldini . In addition, it was the work of friends Sargent and Whistler that inspired Curtis. Especially in his Views of Venice Curtis showed a masterful rendering of light effects on the water in the style of Impressionism . In addition to paintings, he created numerous drawings and watercolors.

  • The Garden

  • White lotus

  • James McNeill Whistler at a party

  • Return from the Lido
    1884

Works in public collections

literature

Web links

Commons : Ralph Curtis  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Curtis, Ralph Wormeley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Curtis, Ralph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH 1922
Place of death Beaulieu-sur-Mer