1850-1935 Levi Wells Prentice Gallery Prentice was associated with the Hudson River School, a group of artists known throughout art circles. According to the book Nature Staged by Barbara Jones, Prentice followed a self-prescribed educational path, begun by the Hudson River School and reinforced by John Ruskin's (1819-1900) truth-to-nature principles laid out in his book Modern Painters. Although he can be allied to both schools of thought, Prentice can not be considered a member of either. This book has a photo of the artist in his early Brooklyn studio surrounded by his paintings and a complete essay on his life and work. Levi grew up on a farm in Lewis County, New York. By 1872, Prentice had traveled through the Adirondack Mountains, painting the views as well as the surrounding region. He opened his first studio as a landscape painter in Syracuse, New York in 1875. Self-taught artist Levi Wells Prentice is best known for his realistic still life compositions of fruit arranged within a landscape, or abundantly spilling from bushel baskets. Early in his career, he painted portraits and landscapes of the Adirondack Mountain region of Lewis County, New York, his birthplace. Levi married an English woman Emma Roseloe Sparks in Buffalo, New York in 1882 and had two children, Leigh (born 22 March 1887) and Imogene (born 17 September 1889). Prentice then turned to painting still life subjects when he moved briefly to Brooklyn, New York in 1883, focusing on fruit, in order of frequency apples, strawberries, peaches, plums, raspberries, cherries, muskmelons, pears, currants, pineapples, gooseberries, grapes and bananas usually piled high in pots or in natural settings. Prentice subsequently moved around from 1903-07 before settling in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. However, his work did not gain much recognition with historians until the 1970s. He was a member of the Brooklyn Art Association and frequently exhibited his paintings there. In addition to his artistic talents, he was a craftsman who enjoyed making his own brushes, palettes and frames. In his painting, Prentice placed an emphasis on dark outlining with a concern for textual precision, creating dramatic contrasts. The shift between dark background areas and the vibrant hues of the fruit are done to give the compositions an exciting, visual energy. The fruit is presented with clarity and precision. An emphasis appears to be placed on the idea of man versus nature. The wooden baskets with hand-wrought nails represent a structured, man-made object, while the overly ripe fruit represents the fleeting qualities of nature. These paintings also demonstrate Prentice's remarkable skills at rendering color, form, and texture. Noted art historian William H. Gerdts observed: there are several works by Prentice in which he achieves a quality of illusionism which is unsurpassed. In 1993, the skillful 'illusionism' of Levi Wells Prentice was celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the Adirondack Museum in New York. His works continue to receive a high degree of appreciation by collectors today. He is represented in many museums including the New York State Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Montclair Art Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art and Yale University Art Gallery. Levi died 28 November 1935 in Germantown, Pennsylvania.  Related Paintings of Levi Wells Prentice :. | Venus and Mars (mk36) | Elbrus-Moonlight | Old man on a Swing | The Piazzetta towards the Torre dell'Orologio (mk25) | Pressing to the West:A Sene in Castle Garden,New York |
Related Artists:
Anelli, Francesco
painted Julia Gardiner Tyler in 1846 - 1848
Eugene Grasset
Swiss-born French Art Nouveau Designer, 1845-1917 Born Eugene Samuel Grasset in Lausanne, Switzerland, his birth year is sometimes stated as 1841. He was raised in an artistic environment as the son of a cabinet designer maker and sculptor. He studied drawing under Francois-Louis David Bocion (1828-1890) and in 1861 went to Zurich to study architecture. After completing his education, he visited Egypt, an experience that would later be reflected in a number of his poster designs. He became an admirer of Japanese art which too influenced some of his creative designs. Between 1869 and 1870, Grasset worked as a painter and sculptor in Lausanne but moved to Paris in 1871 where he designed furniture fabrics and tapestries as well as ceramics and jewelry. His fine art decorative pieces were crafted from ivory, gold and other precious materials in unique combinations and his creations are considered a cornerstone of Art Nouveau motifs and patterns. Grasset poster for Mark Twain Joan of ArcIn 1877 Eugene Grasset turned to graphic design, producing income-generating products such as postcards and eventually postage stamps for both France and Switzerland. However, it was poster art that quickly became his forte. Some of his works became part of the Maitres de l Affiche including his lithograph, Jeanne d Arc Sarah Bernhardt. In 1890, he designed the Semeuse logo used by the dictionary publishers, Editions Larousse. With the growing popularity of French posters in the United States, Grasset was soon contacted by several American companies. In the 1880s, he did his first American commission and more success led to his cover design for the 1892 Christmas issue of Harper Magazine. In 1894 Grasset created The Wooly Horse and The Sun of Austerlitz for The Century Magazine to help advertise their serialized story on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Wooly Horse image proved so popular that Louis Comfort Tiffany recreated it in stained glass. Grasset work for U.S. institutions helped pave the way for Art Nouveau to dominate American art. At the end of the 19th century, Grasset was hired to teach design at Ecole Guerin and Ecole Estienne in Paris. Among his students were Maurice Pillard Verneuil, Augusto Giacometti, Paul Berthon and Otto Ernst Schmidt. At the Universal Exhibition of 1900 in Paris, the G. Peignot et Fils typefoundry, introduced the Grasset typeface, an Italic design Eugene Grasset created in 1898 for use on some of his posters.
MASSYS, Jan
Netherlandish Painter, ca.1509-1575 Painter, son of Quinten Metsys. More so than his brother Cornelis Massys, who was a less talented artist, Jan worked in the style of his father, whose studio he may have taken over following his death in 1530. Two years later, though still under the age of majority, Jan was admitted as a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp. Like Cornelis, he seems to have left Antwerp immediately after attaining the status of master, for he is not mentioned again in the archives. It has been suggested on stylistic grounds that he worked for a period at Fontainebleau, but this is disputed. He was, in any case, back in Antwerp by 1536, when he took on an apprentice, Frans van Tuylt. In 1538 he married Anna van Tuylt, by whom he had three children.