Robert W. Stark, Jr.

Mother's Day

2006

Frank Corso was born in Syracuse, New York. Taking a keen interest in art at a very early age, he was inspired to draw and paint the landscape of the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. He had the opportunity to have very fine art teachers in high school who also happened to be fine painters, artists George Benedict and Nick Todisco, and through their influence he began to polish his painting style from an early age. After attending Onondaga Community College for architecture, and then realizing that the rigid structure of Architecture was not for him, he began elective courses in Fine Arts at Syracuse University, and here, for the first time he began to study abstract painting and design with professors Frank Goodnow...

Painting of Madaket on Nantucket at sunset

Frank Corso was born in Syracuse, New York. Taking a keen interest in art at a very early age, he was inspired to draw and paint the landscape of the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. He had the opportunity to have very fine art teachers in high school who also happened to be fine painters, artists George Benedict and Nick Todisco, and through their influence he began to polish his painting style from an early age. After attending Onondaga Community College for architecture, and then realizing that the rigid structure of Architecture was not for him, he began elective courses in Fine Arts at Syracuse University, and here, for the first time he began to study abstract painting and design with professors Frank Goodnow...

American, b. 1939 Prominent 21th Century American landscape artist Peter Poskas has been painting New England for more than three decades. While his earliest pieces were reminiscent of Edward Hopper...

American, b. 1952 Frank Corso was born in Syracuse, New York. Taking a keen interest in art at a very early age, he was inspired to draw and paint the landscape of the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. He had the opportunity to have very fine art teachers in high school who also happened to be fine painters, artists George Benedict...

American, b. 1962 Contemporary artist Lori Zummo paints in a style evocative of the American Barbizon School. She received her BFA from Syracuse University in 1984. After receiving ...

Signed Lower Left Poskas was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, a small industrial city set on the banks of the Naugatuck River. He was interested in art as a child, but on entering ...

William Mason Brown was born in Troy, New York, where he studied for several years with local artists, including the leading portraitist there, Abel Buel Moore. In 1850, he moved to ...

Thomas Fransioli’s cityscapes are crisp and tidy. Buildings stand in bold outline, trees are sharp, and saturated color permeates the scene. But Fransioli’s cities often lack one critical feature: people. His streets are largely deserted, save for the rare appearance of figure and the occasional black cat scurrying across pavement. Instead, humanity is implied. Magic Realism neatly characterizes Fransioli’s viewpoint. First applied to American art in the 1943 MoMA exhibition “American Realists and Magic Realists...

Signed (at lower left): W.R. Miller/ 1851

The career of William Stanley Haseltine spans the entire second half of the nineteenth century. During these years he witnessed the growth and decline of American landscape painting, the new concept of plein-air painting practiced by the Barbizon artists, and the revolutionary techniques of the French Impressionists, all of which had profound effects on the development of painting in the western world. Haseltine remained open to these new developments, selecting aspects of each and assimilating them into his work. What remained constant was his love of nature and his skill at rendering exactly what he saw. His views, at once precise and poetic, are, in effect, portraits of the many places he visited and the landscapes he loved. Haseltine was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prosperous businessman. In 1850, at the age of fifteen, he began his art studies with Paul Weber, a German artist who had settled in Philadelphia two years earlier. From Weber, Haseltine learned about Romanticism and the meticulous draftsmanship that characterized the German School. At the same time, Haseltine enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, and took sketching trips around the Pennsylvania countryside, exploring areas along the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers. Following his sophomore year, Haseltine transferred to Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard in 1854, Haseltine returned to Philadelphia and resumed his studies with Weber. Although Weber encouraged Haseltine to continue his training in Europe, the elder Haseltine was reluctant to encourage his son to pursue a career as an artist. During the next year, Haseltine took various sketching trips along the Hudson River and produced a number of pictures, some of which were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the spring of 1855. Ultimately, having convinced his father that he should be allowed to study in Europe, Haseltine accompanied Weber to Düsseldorf. The Düsseldorf Academy was, during the 1850s, at the peak of its popularity among American artists. The Academy’s strict course of study emphasized the importance of accurate draftsmanship and a strong sense of professionalism. Landscape painting was the dominant department at the Düsseldorf Academy during this period, and the most famous landscape painter there was Andreas Achenbach, under whom Haseltine studied. Achenbach’s realistic style stressed close observation of form and detail, and reinforced much of what Haseltine had already learned. His Düsseldorf training remained an important influence on him for the rest of his life. At Düsseldorf, Haseltine became friendly with other American artists studying there, especially Emanuel Leutze, Worthington Whittredge, and Albert Bierstadt. They were constant companions, and in the spring and summer months took sketching trips together. In the summer of 1856 the group took a tour of the Rhine, Ahr, and Nahe valleys, continuing through the Swiss alps and over the Saint Gotthard Pass into northern Italy. The following summer Haseltine, Whittredge, and the painter John Irving returned to Switzerland and Italy, and this time continued on to Rome. Rome was a fertile ground for artists at mid-century. When Haseltine arrived in the fall of 1857, the American sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Chauncey B. Ives, Joseph Mozier, William Henry Rinehart...

Charles Temple Dix was born in Albany, New York, the youngest son of the distinguished statesman and soldier, General John Adams Dix. Having already visited Europe as a child, Dix re...