Thomas Buchanan Read

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Thomas Buchanan Read , photo around 1850

Thomas Buchanan Read (born March 12, 1822 in Corner Ketch near Downingtown , Chester County , Pennsylvania , † May 11, 1872 in New York City ) was an American portrait and history painter , sculptor and poet .

Life

Due to the untimely death of his father, Read was withdrawn from school by his mother at the age of ten and apprenticed to a local tailor. Disappointed with the conditions there, Read soon ran away and made it to Philadelphia , where he earned his living as an employee of a retail and tobacco shop. With fifteen years he lived with his sister in Cincinnati ( Ohio ). There he painted signs. In 1839 he went to the sculptor Shobal Veil Clevenger (1812-1843) in the apprenticeship. As an autodidact he also began to occupy himself with painting. When he showed talent for portraiture, the art-loving banker and winemaker Nicholas Longworth (1783–1863) helped him set up his own studio in Cincinnati.

In 1840 he gained his first major recognition for a portrait he had painted of the Whig Party presidential candidate , William Henry Harrison , who later became the 9th President of the United States. He was also recognized for the publication of his first poems in the Cincinnati Chronicle and Times newspaper . In 1841 Read went to Boston . There he made friends with the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and with the painter Washington Allston . The national romantic style of her work made a lasting impression on him. In 1843 he married Mary J. Pratt of Ohio. The couple had two daughters. In 1850 he traveled to Europe, where he stayed mostly in Italy until his return to the United States in 1852, commuting between Rome and Florence . In 1853 he traveled again to Europe, this time accompanied by his family. In the summer he spent a few months in Düsseldorf , at that time the center of the Düsseldorf School of Painting and the center of a colony of American painters. Read's main literary work The New Pastoral was written in Florence in 1854, where he took up residence with his wife and two daughters. In 1855, a cholera epidemic killed Read's wife and daughter Lilian. He and his daughter Alice survived the family tragedy. He traveled back to the United States for a short time, but soon returned to Europe. In the second half of the 1850s he was in Rome and the surrounding area. There he moved among others in the company of the painters William Beard , Sanford Robinson Gifford , William Stanley Haseltine and Worthington Whittredge .

Sheridan's Ride , portrait of General Philip Sheridan on his warhorse Winchester alias Rienzi , 1871

The outbreak of the American Civil War prompted him to return to the United States in 1861, volunteer with the United States Army and go to war on behalf of the Northern States . He rose to the rank of major on the staff of Generals Lew Wallace and William Starke Rosecrans . Read processed the events of the war poetically. Under the title Sheridan's Ride , he created in 1864 a heroic ballad that a spirited twenty-mile ride of General Philip Sheridan on his horse Winchester aka Rienzi glorified, a power which, according to legend the victory of the northern states in the Battle of Cedar Creek had led . The poem made Read famous. In 1871 he processed the material on behalf of the Union League of Philadelphia into a double portrait of Ross and Reiter, after he had already made a bust of the general in 1870. He painted several versions of the painting Sheridan's Ride .

In 1867 Read traveled to Europe with his second wife, Harriet Denison Butler of Northampton , Massachusetts (1837-1935). He was drawn to Italy again. In the summer of 1868 he stayed again in Düsseldorf and visited his compatriot John Robinson Tait there . In Rome, Read and his wife took part in the social events of the local international art scene. The painting A Painter's Dream is considered a significant document of the religious and idealistically inspired atmosphere of the time. In 1871 Read suffered a traffic accident from which he never recovered. In 1872 he went to Liverpool to take the ship back to the United States. Even before he left, he caught a cold which turned into pneumonia during the passage . A few days after arriving in New York City, he died in the Astor House hotel there . His remains were interred in North Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.

Works (selection)

Thomas Buchanan Read , self-portrait around 1860
The Harp of Erin , 1867

Poems

  • Poems , 1847
  • Lays and Ballads , 1849
  • Thoraren the Skald , 1850
  • The New Pastoral 1855
  • The House by the Sea. A Poem , 1855
  • Sylvia, or, The Last Shepherd An Eclogue, and Other Poems , 1857
  • The Wagoner of the Alleghenies. A Poem of the Days of Seventy-Six , 1862
  • Sheridan's Ride , 1864
  • The Oath, or, Ye Freemen, How Long Will Ye Stifle , 1864
  • The Defenders , 1865

prose

  • Paul Redding. A Tale of the Brandywine , 1845
  • The Pilgrims of the Great St. Bernard , 1853

Biographies

  • The Female Poets of America With Portraits, Biographical Notices, and Specimens of Their Writings , 1849, published by EH Butler & Co., Philadelphia 1850 ( digitized )

painting

sculpture

  • General Philip Sheridan , bust, 1870

literature

  • Henry C. Townsend: Thomas Buchanan Read . In: J. Smith Futhey, Gilbert Cope: History of Chester County. With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches . Louis H. Everts, Philadelphia 1881, pp. 706–708 ( digitized version http: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dcu31924005813518~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn997~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D; reprint, Heritage Books, 2007 limited preview in Google book search)
  • John William Cousin: Read, Thomas Buchanan . In: A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature . JM Dent, London 1910
  • George C. Groce, David H. Wallace: The New-York Historical Society's dictionary of artists in America 1564-1860 . Yale University Press, New Haven 1957, p. 527
  • Gene D. Lewis (Ed.): Personal Recollections and Anecdotes of Thomas Buchanan Read . In: Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin , Volume 23 (1965), Issue 4, pp. 273-285
  • George Norman Highley: T. Buchanan Read: Artist, Poet, Sculptor . George Norman Highley, Malvern / Pennsylvania 1972
  • Matthew Baigell: Dictionary of American art . Harper & Row, New York City 1979, p. 297

Web links

Commons : Thomas Buchanan Read  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John IH Baur (Ed.): The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge, 1820-1910 . In: Theodore D. Starr Jr. (Ed.): Brooklyn Museum Journal , 1942, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn Museum Press, Brooklyn / NY 1942, p. 38 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ Thomas Buchanan Read, “Sheridan's Ride”, 1864 , text of the poem in the portal explorehistory.com
  3. ↑ 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. 438
personal data
SURNAME Read, Thomas Buchanan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American portrait painter, history painter, sculptor, and poet
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Corner Ketch at Downingtown , Chester County , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1872
Place of death New York City