(August 18, 1863 - March 18, 1930) was an American painter best known for his series of 78 scenes from American history, entitled The Pageant of a Nation, the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Stephen James Ferris, a portrait painter and a devotee of Jean-L??on G??rôme (after whom he was named) and Mariano Fortuny.He grew up around art, having been trained by his father and having two acclaimed painters, Edward Moran and Thomas Moran, as uncles. Ferris enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1879 and trained further at the Acad??mie Julian beginning in 1883 under William-Adolphe Bouguereau.He also met his namesake G??rôme, who greatly influenced Ferris's decision to paint scenes from American history. As Ferris wrote in his unpublished autobiography, "[G??rôme's] axiom was that one would paint best that with which he is most familiar". However, initially his subjects were Orientalist in nature, that movement having been in vogue when he was young. Some of his material was original, some of it took after Fortuny, but he was skilled enough, despite never having had any experience with Asia. In 1882, he exhibited a painting entitled Feeding the Ibis, which was valued at $600. By 1895, Ferris had gained a reputation as a historical painter, and he embarked on his dream of creating a series of paintings that told a historical narrative. In 1898 he sold one of these, General Howe's Levee, 1777, but he later regretted it, realizing that such a series could not be complete if the separate paintings could not be kept together. As such, he never sold another one of those, but he did sell the reproduction rights to various publishing companies. This later would have the effect of greatly popularizing his work, as these companies made prints, postcards, calendars and blank-backed trade cards use in advertisements. Laminated cards of these works were still being sold as late as 1984. The Landing of William PennThe paintings showed idealized portrayals of famous moments from American history, but were often historically inaccurate. The Landing of William Penn, for example, shows Penn being greeted at New Castle by American Indians who are clothed in the tradition of tribes from the Great Plains. In The First Thanksgiving 1621, the black outfits the Pilgrims are shown wearing are wrong, and the Wampanoag did not wear feathered war bonnets, nor would they have been sitting on the ground. The complete series was shown at Independence Hall in Philadelphia from 1913 to 1930, then moved next door to Congress Hall. In later years it was shown in a number of locations, including the Smithsonian Institution, before being returned to the Ferris family.  Related Paintings of Jean Leon Gerome Ferris :. | The First Thanksgiving | The Birth of Pennsylvania 1680 | Baigneuses | Captain Kidd in New York Harbor | The Fall of New Amsterdam |
Related Artists:
Regis-Francois Gignoux
1816-1882 French/American Regis-Francois Gignoux Gallery French painter who was active in the United States from 1840 to 1870. He was born in Lyon, France and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under with the French painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). Gignoux arrived in the United States from France in 1840 and opened a studio in Brooklyn, New York. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, and was the first president of the Brooklyn Art Academy. George Inness (1825-1894) and John LaFarge (1835-1910) were both his students. Gignoux was the only member of the Hudson River School to specialize in snow scenes. He returned to France in 1870 and died in Paris in 1882. The Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Georgia Museum of Art (University Of Georgia, Athens), the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia), the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Hood Museum of Art (Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire), the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Missouri), the New York Historical Society (New York City), the Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, New York), Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, Massachusetts), the United States Capital Art Collection (Washington, D. C.), the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland) and the Watson Gallery (Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts) are among the public collections holding work by R??gis François Gignoux.
Haberle John
American Painter, 1856-1933 was a 19th century American painter in the trompe l'oeil (literally, "fool the eye") style. His still lifes of ordinary objects are painted in such a way that the painting can be mistaken for the objects themselves. He is considered one of the three major figures??together with William Harnett and John F. Peto??practicing this form of still life painting in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century. A Bachelor's Drawer by John Haberle, 1890?C94, oil on canvas, 50.8 x 91.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkHaberle was born in New Haven, Connecticut; his parents were Swiss immigrants. At the age of 14 he left school to apprentice with an engraver. He also worked for many years as an exhibit preparator for the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. His career as a painter began in 1887. His style is characterized by a meticulous rendering of two-dimensional objects. He is especially noted for his depictions of paper objects, including currency. Art historian Alfred Frankenstein has contrasted Haberle's work with that of his contemporaries: Peto is moved by the pathos of used-up things. Haberle is wry and wacky, full of bravado, self-congratulating virtuosity, and sly flamboyance. He works largely within an old tradition, that of the trompe l'oeil still life in painted line ... It is poles away from Harnett's sumptuosity, careful balances, and well-modeled volumes, and is equally far from Peto's sensitivity in matters of tone and hue.
Giovanni Antonio Canal
(28 October 1697 - 19 April 1768) better known as Canaletto, was a Venetian painter famous for his landscapes, or vedute, of Venice. He was also an important printmaker in etching. He was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto ("little Canal"), and Artemisia Barbieri. His nephew and pupil Bernardo Bellotto was also an accomplished landscape painter, with a similar painting style, and sometimes used the name "Canaletto" to advance his own career, particularly in countrieseGermany and Polandewhere his uncle was not active.