William Page (painter)

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William Page , Self-Portrait, 1830, National Portrait Gallery (Washington)

William Page (born January 23, 1811 in Albany , New York , † October 1, 1885 in Tottenville , Staten Island , New York) was an American portrait , genre and history painter and author of art historical writings. From 1871 to 1873 he served as President of the National Academy of Design .

Life

Page moved to New York City with his parents when he was nine . After training he had begun de age of 14 at the New York attorney Frederic Peyster (1796-1882), he soon moved to the studio of the painter James Herring , but he left again within a year to get away from Samuel FB Morse train allow. This inspired him in the late 1820s to enroll at the National Academy of Design, founded in 1826 .

Although Page had won in the antique class this academy a silver medal, he decided after a member of the Presbyterian Church had become, at the Phillips Academy in Andover and in Amherst theology study. But after two years he turned back to painting. From a theological and ideological point of view, he later followed - inspired by the sculptor Hiram Powers - the mysticism of Emanuel Swedenborg and was interested in spiritualism .

Reading William Shakespeare , c. 1874, Smithsonian American Art Museum

He had worked as a portrait painter in Albany for two years when he moved back to New York City, where he painted portraits of William L. Marcy , John Quincy Adams and Charles Leupp . In 1833 he married Lavinia Twibill, who gave birth to daughters Emma, ​​Ann and Mary between 1834 and 1839 and left him around 1840. In 1836 Page was accepted as an academician in the National Academy of Design, decades later - from 1871 to 1873 - he served as its president. In 1843 he married Sarah Dougherty. Around 1844 he went with her to Boston . In 1847 the couple returned to New York City for two years. There he made the acquaintance of the writers James Russell Lowell and Charles Frederick Briggs , who helped him to publish his art and art history writings.

In 1850 the couple embarked for Italy . In Florence Page studied and copied the Old Masters , in particular the painter Titian , whom he enthusiastically admired . They stayed in the city on the Arno until 1852, where Page befriended Powers, then they went to Rome . In 1854 his second wife left him. He soon ran into financial difficulties, which led to the creditors' bank seizing the pictures in his Roman studio in 1856. In Rome, where he married Sophia Candace Stevens (1827-1892), the sister of the London bibliographer Henry Stevens (1819-1886), who supported him financially, in October 1857, he stayed until 1860. During the time he was in Spent Italy, Robert and Elizabeth Browning and other prominent figures from England and the United States had him portray them.

In 1865, Page had an octagonal house built in Tottenville, Staten Island . There he died two decades later at the age of 74. His third wife Sophia and their four sons and two daughters, who were born between 1859 and 1870, survived. Page was buried in Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp , Staten Island.

Page found recognition as an artist especially in the decades from 1830 to 1870. However, his reputation as "American Titian" declined as he frequently changed painting style as he got older. Because the demand for his pictures waned, he was forced to supplement his income through fees he received for art-historical lectures and writings. His talent for mechanics made him the inventor and holder of several patents for techniques for boats and rifles. His interest in William Shakespeare moved him to travel to Europe again in 1874 to examine the alleged death mask of the poet in Darmstadt , which is still there today as the estate of the painter Ludwig Becker .

Fonts (selection)

  • The Art of the Use of Color in Imitation in Painting . Series of articles in: Broadway Journal , New York 1845.
  • New Geometrical Method of Measuring the Human Figure . New York, 1860.

literature

  • Page, William . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 4 : Lodge - Pickens . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1888, p. 626 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Page William . In: 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. 483.
  • Joshua C. Taylor: William Page. The American Titian . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1957.
  • Page, William . In: Matthew Baigell: Dictionary of American Art . Harper & Row, New York 1979, ISBN 0-06-433254-3 , p. 261.
  • Garnett McCoy: William Page and Henry Stevens. An Incident of Reluctant Art Patronage . In: Archives of American Art Journal . Volume 30, No. 1/4 (1990), pp. 13-18.

Web links

Commons : William Page  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen L. Dyson: The Last Amateur. The Life of William J. Stillman . State University of New York Press, Albany 2014, ISBN 978-1-4384-5261-6 , p. 33 ( Google Books )
  2. ↑ Andrew Oliver: Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife . The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge / Massachusetts 1970, p. 197 ( Google Books )
  3. ↑ Kenneth M. Gold, Lori R. Weintrob (Eds.): Discovering Staten Island. A 350th Anniversary Commemorative History . The History Press, Charleston / SC 2010 ( Google Books )
  4. ↑ William Page's Funeral . In: The Sun . New York City, October 4, 1885 Issue, Volume LIII, No. 34, p. 2 (far right column)
personal data
SURNAME Page, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American portrait painter, genre painter, and history painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Albany , New York
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 1885
Place of death Tottenville , Staten Island , New York