Frank Henry Shapleigh

Mt. Washington & Saco River at Hiram, Maine 1888

1888

A spectacular White Mountain landscape of Mount Washington emerging from the clouds by contemporary American artist Erik Koeppel (b. 1980). Koeppel was born in Oregon and later moved...

A fine New Hampshire landscape by American artist Hermann Dudley Murphy (1867-1945). Murphy was born in Marlboro, Massachusetts, in 1867. After studying at the Boston Museum of Fine ...

A fine impressionist landscape in the Souhegan Valley of New Hampshire, probably Wilton, by American artist Chauncey Foster Ryder (1868-1949). Ryder grew up in New Haven, Connecticut...

A fine monochromatic watercolor landscape painting of Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire by American artist Gifford Beal (1879-1956). Beal was b...

Painted by Historic Woman Artist Anna Freeland, "Gray's Inn, Iron Mountain and Wildcat River, Jackson, NH" depicts an autumn scene in the White Mountains. Painted in oil on canvas, the work measures 12 x 18 inches and is signed and dated 1891 at the lower left. The work is framed in a period appropriate frame and ready to hang. Anna C. Freeland (1837-1911) was born in New Hampshire to Mary Ann (Baker) and William Chamberlain. She received her education at the New Hampshire Conference Seminary and Female College in Tilton, New Hampshire. She studied art in Chicago under Walter Shirlaw, at the Académie Julian in Paris under Constant, and in Boston under William A. Rimmer and William M. Hunt.[1] An artist as well as a respected teacher, Freeland was a founder of the Worcester Art Students Club whose members included Joseph H. Greenwood and Frank J. Darrah. Incorporated in 1887, the club held meetings in the homes of its members. The club began holding meetings and exhibitions at the Worcester Art Museum following its opening in 1898.[2] Freeland offered instruction from her Worcester studio during the Winter months, and for over a decade, spent her summer working in her Jackson, New Hampshire studio.3 Her studio adjoined Gray’s Inn, a lodging establishment popular among artists. While busy executing figurative and floral works, as well as landscape and animal subjects, Freeland continued to teach. In 1886, she instructed a class of lady artists in Jackson.[4] In 1890, Freeland contributed several floral works as well as Portrait of Baby McClure, the infant daughter of an Art Students’ Club member, to the 10th annual exhibition of the club.[5] In 1902, Freeland was the instructor at an outdoor sketch class organized by the Newton Center Woman’s club.[6] In 1910, she exhibited with local artists including Joseph H. Greenwood at the Worcester Art Museum.[7] During her lifetime, Freeland exhibited locally and provided art instruction to notable artists including Walter Appleton Clark...

Painted by Hudson River School artist Ida H. Stebbins (b. 1851), "View of South Pond, New York," 1879 is oil on canvas, measures 23 x 33 1/2 inches, and is signed and dated 1879 at the lower left. The work is framed in an elegant Barbizon style frame and ready to hang. Ida H. Stebbins was born in January 1851 in Chelsea, Massachusetts to Mary and Isaac Stebbins, a teacher. Though scant records remain of Stebbins’ artistic training or career, various personal details of her life have been gleaned from contemporary newspapers and federal documents. By the time View of South Pond, New York was painted in 1879, she was living in Boston. Like many artists of her generation, Stebbins likely traveled throughout the Northeast region, gaining inspiration for her paintings from the landscape of New England and New York. Stebbins was likely visiting upstate New York when she painted this sweeping view of South Pond and the surrounding mountains near Long Lake in the Adirondacks just south of Deerland. Here, Stebbins captures the stunning vermillion, burnt orange and brown tones of the autumn landscape with the style and precise rendering often seen in paintings produced by the Hudson River School. Shortly after the completion of View of South Pond, New York, Stebbins married Frank H. Slack, a clerk, in her hometown of Chelsea on December 14, 1881 at the age of thirty. The couple moved to Hotel Comfort in Boston, where their son, Roland Stewart Slack was born on May 22, 1883. It seems likely that her husband died in the mid-1880s since on December 3, 1889, records indicate that Ida and Roland changed their last name back to her maiden name of Stebbins. Roland Stewart Stebbins (1883-1974) inherited his mother’s interest in art, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Columbia University in New York, and the Art Students League of New York. He also studied at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Today, he is remembered for his marine and genre paintings and for his legacy as a respected professor of art education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On January 1, 1890, Ida married her second husband, Timothy Jarvis, in Somerville, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Ida Hazel Jarvis, was born soon after in 1893. However, the child suffered paralysis from a brain tumor...

Painted by Hudson River School artist Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908) , "Scene in the White Mountains" is oil on panel, measures 5.5 x 9.75 inches, and is signed and dated 1864 a...

"Hudson Highlands," by Hudson River School painter Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932) is oil on artists card-stock and measures 9.5 x 14 inches. The work is framed in an elegant, period appropriate frame, and ready to hang. Lockwood de Forest was born in New York in 1850 to a prominent family. He grew up in Greenwich Village and on Long Island at the family summer estate in Cold Spring Harbor. As was customary for a cultivated family in the Gilded Age, the de Forests made frequent trips abroad. Excursions to the great museums, which were prominent on the de Forests agenda, deepened the young Lockwood's familiarity with European painting and sculpture. Though he had begun drawing and painting somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1868 that nineteen-year-old de Forest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905). More importantly, on the same trip, Lockwood met one of America’s most celebrated painters, (and his maternal great- uncle by marriage) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who quickly became his mentor. DeForest accompanied Church on sketching trips around Italy and continued this practice when they both returned to America in 1869. Early on in his career, de Forest made a habit of recording the date and often the place of his oil sketches, as to create a visual diary of his travels. Lockwood’s profession as a landscape painter can be primarily attributed to Frederic E. Church and his belief in the young artist’s talent. De Forest often visited Church in the Hudson River community of Catskill where, in addition to sketching trips and afternoons of painting, he assisted with the architectural drawings and planning of Olana. In 1872, de Forest took a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. During these formative years de Forest counted among his friend’s artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), George Henry Yewell (1830–1923), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932). Over the next decade de Forest experienced success as a painter. He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872, and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. His trip to the Middle East and the library at Church’s home, Olana, established his interest in design during his mid-twenties. From about 1878 to 1902, landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities and preoccupation with East Indian architecture and décor, a style that became quite fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-1883, de Forest founded Associated Artists along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler...