Erastus salisbury field biography of albert
In my weekly email of Sunday Recommendations, I promise “art-related suggestions meant to inspire, to provoke wonder or thought, or simply to amaze by sheer beauty.” The Historical Monument of the American Republic by Erastus Salisbury Field falls into the “provoking wonder” class. Here’s why I couldn’t resist making trip to Springfield, Massachusetts, to see it:
- It’s enormous: 9 feet wide, 13 feet high.
- It shows a 500-foot-high cluster of towers with steam-powered trains running between their tops.
- The artist aimed to represent the whole history of the United States, from the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, to his own time.
Here is the Historical Monument in its current home, the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, part of the Springfield Museums complex.
I have argued quite often that art shouldn’t be didactic – that its purpose is not to teach a historical narrative, but to present the artist’s view of what’s important. (See the chapters on medieval art in Innovators in Painting and Innovators in Sculpture.) Field’s Historical Monument is miles across the line into being didactic … but as history presented by a painter with a very distinctive viewpoint, it’s fascinating.
Erastus Salisbury Field
Field (1805-1900), a native of Leverett, Massachusetts, traveled to New York City in 1824 to study with Samuel Morse. Before Morse invented the telegraph he painted portraits of such celebrities as General Lafayette, John Adams, and James Monroe. Field was in Morse’s studio only a few months before Morse’s wife died and Morse closed his studio. Field returned to Massachusetts, becoming an itinerant artist who painted hundreds of portraits for middle-class families who couldn’t afford the likes of Morse. He never did learn to show anatomy properly: the proportions of his figures are odd, and they move awkwardly. He also had Artist Erastus Salisbury Field (American, 1805-1900) CultureAmerican Dateca. 1875-1880 MediumOil on canvas DimensionsOverall: 35 x 46 in. (88.9 x 116.8 cm) Credit LineGift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch Object number80.181.16 On View Edgar Melville Ward (1839–1915) was an American genre painter. Ward was born in Urbana, Ohio. His elder brother was the sculptor, John Quincy Adams Ward. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and in Paris under Cabanel. In 1883 he became a member of the Institut de France and was made a professor there. His paintings which are... Erastus Salisbury Field and his twin sister, Salome, were born in Leverett, Massachusetts, on 19 May 1805. Erastus Field showed an early talent for sketching portraits, and in 1824 the aspiring artist traveled to New York City to study with Samuel F. B. Morse. Field's instruction was cut short by the death of Morse's wife in 1825, and it is not... Edgar Samuel Paxson (April 25, 1852 – November 9, 1919) was an American frontier painter, scout, soldier and writer, based mainly in Montana. He is best known for his portraits of Native Americans in the Old West and for his depiction of the Battle of Little Bighorn in his painting "Custer's Last Stand".[1] Biography Paxson was born in 1852 to... Edwin White (born, South Hadley, Massachusetts 1817; died Saratoga Springs, New York 1877) was an American painter who studied in Paris, Rome, and Florence and later taught at the National Academy of Design, in New York. Works by White, mostly in storage, are in the collections of Yale; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;... Frank F. English (1854 - 1922) Frank F. English was born in Indiana in 1854. In the early 1880s, he studied for five years in the evening classes of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His instructors included Thomas Eakins, James P. Kelly and Thomas Anshutz. However, English's reputation primarily re .The Last Supper
Overall, Frame: 40 1/2 in. (102.9 cm)
Label TextErastus Salisbury Field American, 1805—1900 The Last Supper, ca. 1875-1880 Oil on canvas Erastus Salisbury Field enjoyed a long and varied career, working as a portraitist, photographer, and in the latter decades of his life as a painter of religious and historical subjects. Field based this depiction of the biblical tale of the Last Supper on a chromolithograph, a relatively inexpensive type of color print, of Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco in Milan, Italy. Though Field adhered to the overall composition of the Renaissance master, he included many details drawn from his own world in Connecticut such as the simple glass and pottery table settings and the rolling landscape viewed out the window, which bears a striking resemblance to the Connecticut River Valley. Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch 80.181.16 ProvenancePurchased from Robert Schuyler Tompkins, March 7, 1949; Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1949; Gift of Edgar Wi Artists
Ward, Edgar Melville 1839 - 1915 Anonymous 05/19/2012 Field, Erastus Salisbury 1805 - 1900 Anonymous 04/21/2012 Paxson, Edgar Samuel 1852 - 1919 Anonymous 05/19/2012 White, Edwin 1817 - 1877 Anonymous 05/15/2012 English, Frank F.