Enoch Wood Perry, Jr. Art

Enoch Wood Perry Jr. was a 19th-century American painter known for his thematic and stylistic works, including many portraits and landscapes. He was born on July 31, 1831, in Boston. Perry was trained at the Düsseldorf Academy in Germany by the artist Emile Luetze, author of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware in 1851. Perry also studied in Paris with Thomas Couture, where he was classmates with Édouard Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa and Puvis de Chavannes. Perry returned to the United States and in 1865 moved to Utah, where he was commissioned by the Church to create portraits of early LDS leaders, such as Brigham Young, John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff. During his year-long stay in Utah, Perry co-founded the short-lived Deseret Art Union, based on the American Art Union, a subscription-based organization whose goal was to enlighten and educate the public about art. He left Utah in 1866 for New York, where he took over the studio of his life-long friend and fellow painter, Albert Bierstadt and taught at the American Academy of Art. Enoch Wood Perry’s paintings can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian and Boston Museum of Arts. Perry died on December 14, 1915, in New York.