Richard Caton Woodville

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Self-portrait, 1853
Richard Caton Woodville with his wife, son Henry and daughter Bessie in historical costumes on the sketch The Fencing Lesson , Düsseldorf, around 1849
War News from Mexico , 1848

Richard Caton Woodville (born April 30, 1825 in Baltimore , † August 13, 1855 in London ) was an American painter from the Düsseldorf School .

Life

Woodville, the second of five children of the merchant William Woodville V and his wife Elizabeth, lived in Baltimore until 1845, where he grew up in the sheltered circumstances of a wealthy family. His first names were a reference from his parents to Richard Caton (1763-1845), his great-uncle, the cotton merchant, geologist and namesake of the city of Catonsville and who in 1787 married a daughter of Charles Carrolls , one of the founding fathers of the United States .

From 1842 on, Woodville studied medicine at the University of Maryland , but at that time he was already drawing and painting. It is possible that he received a painting training at St. Mary's College with Samuel Smith, Joseph Hewitt or with Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–1874). In January 1844, his first marriage was to his childhood sweetheart, Mary Theresa Buckler, the daughter of a respected doctor.

In 1845 he went to Düsseldorf with his wife , where, after briefly attending the art academy, he was a private student of Karl Ferdinand Sohn until around 1851 . There Woodville was particularly inspired by the genre painting by Johann Peter Hasenclever and his preference for typing through caricature . With his compatriot Emanuel Leutze , he traveled from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam in 1846 to familiarize himself with Dutch painting. During his student years in Düsseldorf he sent several paintings to the United States . In Karl Ferdinand Sohn's studio, Woodville met the painter Antoinette Marie Schnitzler , called Tony, daughter of the Düsseldorf builder and city councilor Anton Schnitzler , who portrayed him in 1849. Around 1850 his wife left him with the children Heinrich (* 1845), called Henry, and Anne Elisabethe Charlotte (* 1848), called Bessie, and returned to their family in Baltimore. Richard Caton Woodville moved into the widow Schleger's inn "Zum Prinzen von Preußen", Königsallee 51.

In 1851 he went, accompanied by Antoinette Schnitzler († around 1879/1880), first to Paris and then to England . In early 1853, their daughter Alice Elizabeth Mary Woodville was born in London. Richard Caton Woodville died in the summer of 1855 of an overdose of morphine which he accidentally or deliberately ingested in his apartment at 45 Stanhope Street in London-Camden. The press reported that he accidentally ingested the overdose. Antoinette Schnitzler, whom he married on February 28, 1854 in St. George's Church in London-Bloomsbury, gave birth to Richard Caton Woodville junior (1856-1927) on January 7, 1856 , his son, who later also attended the Art Academy Düsseldorf studied, but became known as a war painter and mainly painted battle pictures.

The widow Antoinette, now Woodville, went first to St. Petersburg and in 1859 back to Düsseldorf, lived in the house at Alleestraße 20 until 1874 , from 1875 on Rosenstraße 20, then 42.

Works

Woodville's works are owned by the Maryland Historical Society and Walters Art Museums , the Detroit Institute of Arts , the Corcoran Gallery of Art , the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and numerous other public collections. Woodville often painted pictures with social and political references, genre pieces that were coveted by collectors even during his lifetime. His works were particularly familiar to the members of the American Art Union in New York City , because many of his pictures were exhibited there, circulated and reproduced as prints. The painter's trademark on many of his paintings was a red tin spittoon .

Due to the short lifespan, he left a comparatively small oeuvre in which the following pictures are considered to be major works:

literature

  • Justin Wolff: Richard Caton Woodville. American Painter, Artful Dodger. Princeton University Press, Princeton / NJ 2002, ISBN 0-691-07083-0 .
  • Gail E. Husch: "Freedom's Holy Cause". History, Religous, and Genre Painting in America, 1840-1860 . In: William S. Ayers (Ed.): Picturing History. American Painting, 1770-1930 . Rizzoli International Publications, Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York 1993.
  • Elizabeth Johns: American Genre Painting. The Politics of Everyday Life . Yale University Press, New Haven 1991, pp. 178-182.
  • Albert Boime : The Art of Exclusion. Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC 1990, pp. 102-103.
  • Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 502.
  • Francis S. Grubar: Richard Caton Woodville. An Early American Genre Painter . Concoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 1967.
  • Francis S. Grubar: Richard Caton Woodville. An American Artist, 1825 to 1855 . Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1966.

Web links

Commons : Richard Caton Woodville  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ray Broadus Browne, Larry N. Landrum, William K. Bottorff: Challenges in American Culture . Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1970, p. 3
  2. ^ Henry Clark: The Impact of the Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Genre Painting on American Genre Painting, 1800-1865 . Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark 1982, pp. 236 f., 431
  3. ^ Portrait of Richard Caton Woodville in 16th century costume, Antoinette Schnitzler-Woodville (mentioned around 1849 to 1851), 1849 , City Museum, State Capital Düsseldorf
  4. ^ Civil status, births: Heinrich, son of the painter Richard Caton Woodville, Bolkerstr. , in Düsseldorfer Kreisblatt and Daily Anzeiger, No. 272, from October 6, 1845
  5. ^ Civil status, born: August 29, 1848, Anne Elisabeths Charlotte, T. of the painter Richard Woodville, Steinweg , in Düsseldorfer Journal and Kreisblatt, no.240, of September 7, 1848
  6. ^ Foreign newspaper: Widow E. Schleger "Zum Prinzen von Preußen", Woodville Part a Amerika , in Düsseldorfer Journal and Kreisblatt, No. 274, from November 15, 1850
  7. ↑ Inns and inns, E. Schleger, Zum Prinzen von Preußen, Königsallee 51 , in the address book of the Lord Mayor of Düsseldorf, 1859
  8. ↑ Alice Elizabeth Mary Woodville, baptized April 16, 1853 at St Pancras. The mother was listed as Antoinette Woodville, although Richard Caton Woodville and Antoinette Marie Schnitzler did not marry until 1854.
  9. ↑ John Gooch (Ed.): The Boer Wars. Direction, Experience and Image . Routledge, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-7146-5101-9 , p. 214 ( Google Books )
  10. ↑ Woodville, Mrs. born Schnitzler, Rentn., Alleestraße 20 , in the address book of the Lord Mayor of Düsseldorf for 1874, p. 174
  11. ↑ Woodville, Mrs. born Schnitzler, Rente., Rosenstrasse 20 , in the address book of the mayor's office in Düsseldorf for 1875, p. 143
  12. ↑ Lisa Maria Strong: Sentimental Journey. The Art of Alfred Jacob Miller . Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Joslyn Art Museum, Fort Worth / Texas 2008, ISBN 978-0-8836-0105-1 , p. 204
personal data
SURNAME Woodville, Richard Caton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1855
Place of death London