Richard Maury

Contrasting Views

2004

A child of the American South, Elliott Daingerfield was born in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where his father, C...

William John Hennessy was born in Ireland. He came to America in 1849 with his mother and brother a year after his father had fled their homeland after taking part in the unsuccessful Young Ireland Party uprising. The Hennessys settled in New York, and when young William came of age, he decided upon a career as an artist. At the age of fifteen, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where he learned to draw from the antique, and the following year he was granted admission to the Academy’s life-drawing class. Hennessy first exhibited at the National Academy in 1857, starting a continuous run of appearances in their annuals that lasted until 1870, when he expatriated himself to Europe. During his time in America, Hennessy was principally known as a genre painter and prolific illustrator for such publications as Harper’s Weekly and a number of books, including illustrated works of William Cullen Bryant...

Joshua Shaw was a farmer’s son, born in Billingborough, Lincolnshire, and orphaned at the age of seven. After a boyhood of privation, he tried a number of occupations, until he finally apprenticed to a sign painter and found his métier. Shaw went to Manchester to study art, and by 1802 was in Bath, painting landscapes. In that year he began to exhibit his work at the Royal Academy in London. Essentially self-taught, Shaw achieved an impressive level of competence and versatility, producing portraits, floral compositions, still lifes, landscapes, and, cattle pieces. Shaw continued to send works for exhibition at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and the Suffolk Street Gallery, all in London, until 1841. (Although Shaw is regularly mentioned and frequently illustrated in a host of general books on American art history, as well as included in numerous historical survey exhibitions, the only monographic study of this artist is Miriam Carroll Woods, “Joshua Shaw [1776–1860]: A Study of the Artist and his Paintings” [M.A. thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1971]. Apart from short biographical sketches in various dictionaries and museum collection catalogues, the two most interesting references, both contemporary, are John Sartain’s personal recollections in The Reminiscences of a Very Old Man, 1808–1897 [1899; reprint 1969] and an article in Scientific American from August 7, 1869, “Joshua Shaw, Artist and Inventor.” The article quotes extensively from an autobiographical document in the possession of Shaw’s grandson that Shaw prepared for William Dunlap...

Signed (lower right): Quincy

This oil painting is a portrait of artist Page Ogden capturing a moment in time when she was sitting at a table reading a book by American artist John Hardy.

A large (48 x 48 inch) painting of a scene in the art studio by American artist John Winslow (1938 - ).

Oil on canvas STATEMENT by AUDREY ANASTASI: Considering myself primarily a feminist artist, painting other women, most of my work focuses on the human face, figures, animals and natu...

"High School Dance" WPA Mid-20th Century Modern American Scene Social Realism Heusing (20th Century) "High School Dance" 27 x 32 inches Oil on canvas Signed and dated '47 Lower Righ...