Thomas Allen (painter)

Thomas Allen (born October 19, 1849 in St. Louis , Missouri , † August 25, 1924 in Worcester , Massachusetts ) was an American landscape and genre painter from the Düsseldorf School .

Life

Allen was born in St. Louis to Ann Russell, daughter of the wealthy surveyor William Russell, and Thomas Allen , a Democratic Party politician, wealthy lawyer and entrepreneur. Allen first visited the business school of Washington University in St. Louis . In 1869, in his sophomore year at this school where he had started to study art, he took part in an outdoor painting study tour, on which the art teacher James William Pattison and his students explored the landscapes of the Rocky Mountains . The resulting drawings aroused his artistic interest. In 1871 he set out to study art in Europe. After a short stay in Paris , he traveled to Düsseldorf that same year . He enrolled at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1872. The late Nazarists Andreas and Karl Müller as well as the naturalist landscape painter Eugen Dücker were his teachers there. Allen stayed in Dücker's landscape class from 1874 to 1877. After graduating from the Düsseldorf Academy, he lived in Écouen , a community near Paris with an artist colony in which Edouard Frère and August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck (1828-1901) also stayed. He returned to the United States in 1878. He made a trip to the Wild West and stayed in San Antonio, Texas in the winter of 1878/1879 . Then he went back to Europe. In 1880 he was a member of the Düsseldorf artists' association Malkasten . In 1882 he exhibited the painting Evening at the Market Place, San Antonio in the Salon de Paris . It is not clear whether this is the picture from 1878/1879 with the title Morning in the Market Place, San Antonio , which is now in the Witte Museum San Antonio, or a variation of this picture. Back in the United States, Allen set up his own studio in Boston . He became a member of the American Society of Artists , the Copley Society of Boston and the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters , which was reorganized under his chairmanship and renamed the New England Watercolor Society in 1892 . In 1884 the National Academy of Design in New York City accepted him as an associate member . In 1893 he was on the International Board of Judges , a jury that reviewed the art exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago . He was also chairman of the painting jury for the 1904 Saint Louis World's Fair , vice- chairman of the Boston Art Club , chairman of the Art Commission of Boston , chairman of the Boston Museum School of Drawing and Painting and, on his death in 1924, chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston . His grave is in Woodlawn Cemetery in Princeton, Worcester County , Massachusetts.

Allen married Eleanor Goddard Whitney (1856-1882) on June 30, 1880, but she died on May 14, 1882 in France. In the same year, Allen's father died and bequeathed him a great fortune. In his second marriage, Allen married Alice Ranney (1862-1949), a politically active member of the Woman's Municipal League and an organized opponent of the suffragettes , in 1884 . With her he had a son, Robert Fletcher Allen (1892-1903), and a daughter, Dorothy Fletcher Allen Preston (1898-1903).

Works (selection)

• Bridge at Lissengen , exhibited in the National Academy of Design, New York City, in 1876 or 1877
• On the Range , 1877
• Morning in the Market Place, San Antonio , 1878/1879
• Prairie Scene with Mexican Herdsmen and Cattle , 1878/1879
• Freighters from the Rio Grande , 1878/1879
• Toilers of the Plains (on the Old San Antonio Trail) , 1879
• Evening in the Market Place, San Antonio , exhibited in the Salon de Paris 1882
• Old San Pedro Ford (Mexican Woman Washing at San Pedro Spring) , watercolor, 1879
• The Portal of San José Mission , watercolor, created between 1878 and 1882, Museum of Fine Arts Boston

literature

• Edmund von Mach : Allen, Thomas . In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 1 : Aa – Antonio de Miraguel . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1907, p. 313 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Pauline A. Pinckney: Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century University of Texas Press, Austin 1967, p. 184 f.
• Robert Taft: Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, 1850-1900 . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City 1953, p. 346
• Martha Utterback: Early Texas Art in the Witte Museum . Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio 1968, p. 49

Web links

• Allen, Thomas , biography on tshaonline.org (Texas State Historical Association)
• Thomas Allen , biography on the texaspainting.com portal
• Anna Lee Ames Frohlich: Western Footprints - Thomas Allen, Jr. finds his passion , biography in the portal coloradogambler.com
• Thomas Allen Jr. , Auction Results on artnet.com

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. 425
2. ^ Rudolf Theilmann: The student lists of the landscape classes from Schirmer to Dücker . In: Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 147
3. ↑ Thomas Allen , biography on vosegalleries.com , accessed on January 16, 2016
4. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel, Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb, p. 425
5. ↑ Anna Lee Ames Fohlich: Western Footprints - Thomas Allen's masterpiece of the Market Place ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2016 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. . Article dated February 7, 2012 in the coloradogambler.com portal , accessed on January 16, 2016 
6. ↑ History , website in the portal newenglandwatercolorsociety.org , accessed on January 16, 2016
7. ↑ Thomas Allen, Jr , website in the image of the tomb and biographical information on the findagrave.org portal , accessed on January 16, 2016
8. ↑ Alice Allen Ranney , website in the findagrave.com portal , accessed on January 16, 2016
9. ↑ Sam Ratcliffe DeShong: Painting Texas History to 1900 . University of Texas Press, Austin 1992, ISBN 978-1-4773-0472-3 , footnote 53 ( Google Books )
10. ↑ Thomas Allen (1849–1924): On the Range , website in the portal christies.com , accessed on January 16, 2016
11. ↑ picture on the website Graham Williford's America in the portal mypawprintcom , accessed on January 17, 2016
12. ↑ Mexican Woman Washing at San Pedro Spring , photo in the flickr.com portal , accessed on January 16, 2016
13. ↑ San Pedro Ford ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2016 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. , Webpage on antiquesandthearts.smugmug.com , accessed January 17, 2016 
14. ↑ Portal of the Mission of San José, Texas , website in the mfa.org portal , accessed on January 16, 2016