William Dickinson Washington

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William Dickinson Washington , around 1869

William Dickinson Washington , in some sources incorrectly also William De Hartburn Washington (born October 7, 1833 in Snickersville , Virginia , † December 1, 1870 in Lexington , Virginia), was an American history , genre , landscape and portrait painter of the Düsseldorf school .

Life

Washington was born to Hannah Fairfax Whiting and John Perrin Washington (1790-1857) with paralysis in the left foot, which resulted in a lifelong walking disability. He had two sisters and a brother and a half-sister from his father's first marriage. Through his father he was a descendant of John Washington and Lawrence Washington (1659–1698) and Mildred Warner Washington Gale (1671–1701), the grandparents of the first US President George Washington . When his father took up a position at the United States Postal Service's main post office in 1834 , the family moved to Washington, DC. There, the young Washington began his professional career as a draftsman for the patent office. In Washington in 1851/1852 Washington met the German-American history painter Emanuel Leutze , whom he followed to Düsseldorf in 1853 to take private lessons with him. In 1854 he was also a member of the Malkasten artists' association . In order to financially support his European trip, US Senators James Murray Mason and Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter had successfully urged US Secretary of State Edward Everett to give Washington a paid job as a US news messenger. When Washington arrived in Düsseldorf, a colony of American painters was already living there, among them Eastman Johnson , who at that time shared the studio with Leutze, and Worthington Whittredge . With Whittredge at the helm, William Henry Furness , Enoch Wood Perry , John Beaufain Irving II and Henry Lewis , he went on a sociable study trip to the Nahe . During his studies in Düsseldorf, Washington developed into a history painter in particular and created his first significant pictures: Entrance to a Castle , The Student and the outbreak of the Huguenot Wars . He sent the latter across the Atlantic to his home country, where it was shown at several exhibitions and was mentioned in the press.

Washington returned to the United States in 1855 at the latest. He lived in Washington until 1861 and, in addition to his work in the patent office, mainly painted portraits and historical pictures, which he presented at exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the National Academy of Design in New York City . In 1855 he drew an unauthorized copy of Leutzes painting Washington Crossing the Delaware on the wall of a room on the first floor of the Patent Office . It was there to be looked at for a while. US President Franklin Pierce and his wife and US Secretary of the Interior Robert McClelland also came to see it. Washington was soon a well-known member of the art scene in the US capital. He participated in exhibitions of the Washington Art Association , later he became its director and vice president. Through the patron William Wilson Corcoran (1798–1888) he became a member of the board of the National Gallery and School of Art . During this time he began to occupy himself with the US war hero Francis Marion in a series of paintings .

The Burial of Lantané (The Burial of Latané) , 1864

When the Civil War broke out in 1861 , he went to General Robert Edward Lee in Richmond, Virginia , the Commander in Chief of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Army of the Confederate States Army , to enter his service. This dismissed him because of his walking disability as unfit, but Washington managed to get a position as a staff officer of John Buchanan Floyd in the Virginia State Engineers Office , on which he drew war scenes and fortresses, which he later processed in pictures. During this time he also created two of his most important paintings: The Burial of Latané (The Burial of Latané) and Jackson Entering Winchester ( Jackson reaches Winchester ) . In the painting about the funeral of Captain William Latané († 1862) he attempted a political allegory with the help of Christian iconography and in the style of European history painting of the 19th century, with the participation of members of the higher society in Virginia who were models for the picture in the sense of a patriotic symbol of the "Confederate Nation". Widespread as a lithograph and to illustrate the poem of the same name by John Reuben Thompson (1823–1873), the image made a significant contribution to propagating the Lost Cause legend of the southern states.

At the end of the war, which he always spent in Richmond because of his poor health, he fled to England , where he lived and worked until 1866. Then he returned to the United States. Between 1866 and 1869 he had his own studio in New York City, which the National Academy of Design there supplied with a series of paintings, such as The Reverend Dr. Morgan Administering the Sacrament of Baptism in Grace Church. Reverend Dr. Morgan performs the sacrament of Baptism in Grace Church . In July 1869 he was offered a position as a drawing teacher at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. There, on behalf of Superintendent Francis H. Smith, he began painting portraits of deceased students and academics who died during the Civil War, including George Patton, Tazewell Patton, Robert E. Rodes, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson , and James Ewell Brown Stuart , Joseph W. Latimer, and Samuel Garland . He also portrayed ex-General Robert Edward Lee, who was still living at the time, for a picture in the gallery of honor at the Virginia Military Academy. When his health deteriorated, he traveled to Hot Springs, Virginia, in August 1870, hoping to recover from the springs there. In October 1870 he returned to Lexington, where he died on December 1 and was buried in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery .

Works (selection)

Study of Francis Marion and his people in the swamp , around 1865
  • Entrance to a Castle
  • The Student
  • Commencement of the Huguenot War (outbreak of the Huguenot Wars)
  • Washington Crossing the Delaware , 1855, copy in chalk after the history picture by Emanuel Leutze
  • The Burial of Latané , 1864, Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
  • Jackson Entering Winchester
  • Floyd's Command, Gauley Bridge, Virginia (Floyd's Command at Gauley Bridge, Virginia) , 1864
  • Study of Marion and His Men in the Swamp , circa 1865, Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
  • The Last Touch , 1866
  • The Reverend Dr. Morgan Administering the Sacrament of Baptism in Grace Church (Reverend Dr. Morgan performs the sacrament of Baptism in Grace Church)
  • Miss Mary Maury as "Elaine" , portrait of the daughter of Matthew Fontaine Maury in the form of Elaine
  • Portraits of fallen students and members of the Virginia Military Institute, 1869/1870

literature

  • Judith H. Bronner, Estill Curtis Pennigton (Eds.): The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture . Volume 21: Art and Architecture . The University of North Carolina Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8078-3717-7 , p. 460 ( Google Books )
  • Ethelbert Nelson Ott: William D. Washington (1833-1870): Artist of the South . Master's thesis from the University of Delaware, 1968

Web links

Commons : William D. Washington  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. No. 166 and 583 ( Google Books ) in: Justin Glenn: The Washingtons: A Family History . Volume 1: Seven Generations of the Presidential Branch . Savas Publishing, El Dorado Hills / CA 2014, ISBN 978-1-940669-26-7
  2. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel , Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: Directory of foreign artists. Nationality, studies and stay 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. 442
  3. ↑ John IH Baur (Ed.): The autobiography of Worthington Whittredge, 1820-1910 . Brooklyn Museum Press, Brooklyn 1942, p. 22, footnote 1 ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ John IH Baur (Ed.), P. 30 ( digitized version )
  5. ↑ The Burial of Latané , website on encyclopediavirginia.org , accessed on May 16, 2016
  6. ↑ Captain William Latane , website on civilwarpoetry.org , accessed on May 16, 2016
  7. ^ The Burial of Latene (poem by John Reuben Thompson) , website at civilwarpoetry.org , accessed on May 16, 2016
  8. ^ Drew Gilpin Faust: Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War . University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London 1992, ISBN 0-8262-0865-7 , p. 151 ( Google Books )
  9. ↑ Margaret E. Wagner, Gary W. Gallagher, Paul Finkelman (Eds.): The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference . The Stonsong Press, 2002, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York / NY 2009, ISBN 978-1-4391-4884-6 , p. 830 ( Google Books )
  10. ↑ Floyd's Command, Gauley Bridge, Virginia , image description in the portal themorris.org (Morris Museum of Art), accessed on May 16, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Washington, William Dickinson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Washington, William De Hartburn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American history, genre, landscape, and portrait painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Snickersville , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1870
Place of death Lexington , Virginia