The American Academy of the Fine Arts was an art institution founded in 1802 in New York City, to encourage appreciation and teaching of the classical style. [1] It exhibited copies of classical works and encouraged artists to emulate the classical in their work. [2] Richard Varick, the mayor of New York, and Gulian Verplanck, a New York politician, were some of the academy's original organizers. [3] Younger artists grew increasingly restive under its constraint, and in 1825 left to found the National Academy of Design.
The academy's original name was the New York Academy of the Fine Arts. [4] Its founders included Richard Varick, a mayor of New York City, and Gulian C. Verplanck, a future influential politician in the state and nationally.
A conservative organization, the academy was led by John Trumbull, a painter, who served as its president from 1817 to 1836. He had long practiced the classical ideal of art and became known as a tyrant in his attitude toward young painters. [5] The academy's conservatism and Trumbull's unyielding attitude eventually led to such a level of dissatisfaction among the younger painters that they formed a splinter group.
In 1825, they abandoned the American Academy to found the National Academy of Design, also in New York City. [6] The American Academy said it regretted the loss of the young artists, but affirmed its traditions. Ultimately it did not attract enough students and support, and closed in 1841. [4] [7] The National Academy has continued as a vital institution. [8]
In 1818, Trumbull, representing the American Academy, commissioned a portrait of his former teacher and mentor, the painter Benjamin West, from Thomas Lawrence, widely considered to be the most accomplished English portraitist of the age. [9] Lawrence set a price of 400 guineas for the project. According to Carrie Rebora's 20th-century account, to pay for the work, Trumbull opened a subscription fund before finally taking delivery of the painting in 1822 for the academy. [10] Two earlier 19th-century accounts had said that Lawrence was made a member of the academy and painted the portrait in exchange. [11] [12]
Sir Thomas Lawrence was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at the Bear Hotel in the Market Square. At age ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his pastel portraits. At 18, he went to London and soon established his reputation as a portrait painter in oils, receiving his first royal commission, a portrait of Queen Charlotte, in 1789. He stayed at the top of his profession until his death, aged 60, in 1830.
Gilbert Stuart was an American painter born in the Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. His best-known work is an unfinished portrait of George Washington, begun in 1796, which is usually referred to as the Athenaeum Portrait. Stuart retained the original and used it to paint scores of copies that were commissioned by patrons in America and abroad. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States one-dollar bill for more than a century and on various postage stamps of the 19th century and early 20th century.
John Trumbull was an American painter and military officer best known for his historical paintings of the American Revolutionary War, of which he was a veteran. He has been called the "Painter of the Revolution". Trumbull's Declaration of Independence (1817), one of his four paintings that hang in the United States Capitol rotunda, is used on the reverse of the current United States two-dollar bill.
Benjamin West was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as The Death of Nelson, The Death of General Wolfe, the Treaty of Paris, and Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky.
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility, he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up. His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion.
Thomas Sully was an American portrait painter in the United States. Born in Great Britain, he lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence. His subjects included national political leaders such as United States presidents: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, Revolutionary War hero General Marquis de Lafayette, and many leading musicians and composers. In addition to portraits of wealthy patrons, he painted landscapes and historical pieces such as the 1819 The Passage of the Delaware. His work was adapted for use on United States coinage.
Daniel Huntington was an American artist who belonged to the art movement known as the Hudson River School and later became a prominent portrait painter.
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition." Membership is limited to 450 American artists and architects, who are elected by their peers on the basis of recognized excellence.
James Elmes was an English architect, civil engineer, and writer on the arts.
Henry Inman was an American portrait, genre, and landscape painter.
Sir William Charles Ross was an English portrait and portrait miniature painter of Scottish descent; early in his career, he was known for historical paintings. He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1842.
Gulian Crommelin Verplanck was an American attorney, politician, and writer. He was elected to the New York State Assembly and Senate, and later to the United States House of Representatives from New York, where he served as chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee.
Gulian Verplanck was an American banker and politician.
John Neagle was a fashionable American painter, primarily of portraits, during the first half of the 19th century in Philadelphia.
Elkanah Tisdale was an American engraver, miniature painter and cartoonist. He was known for the famous cartoon "The Gerry-Mander", published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, which led to the coining of the term gerrymandering.
George Lethbridge Saunders (1807–1863) was an English painter.
Washington at Verplanck's Point is a full-length portrait in oil painted in 1790 by the American artist John Trumbull of General George Washington at Verplanck's Point on the North River in New York during the American Revolutionary War. The background depicts the September 14, 1782 review of Continental Army troops Washington staged there as an honor for the departing French commander Comte de Rochambeau and his army.
Nathaniel Rogers was an American painter from Long Island known as the preeminent miniature portrait painter in New York City.
The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775 is an oil painting completed in 1786 by the American artist John Trumbull. It depicts American general Richard Montgomery at the Battle of Quebec during the invasion of Quebec. The painting is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the second in Trumbull's series of national historical paintings on the American Revolutionary War, the first being The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17, 1775.
George Washington is a large full-length oil painted by American artist John Trumbull in 1790.
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS. New York, 20 day of Jan. 1818. Be It Known, that Sir Thomas Lawrence, R. A., London, has been duly chosen an Honorary Member of the American Society of Fine Arts, and, as such, is entitled to all the rights and privileges given to Honorary Members by the bye-laws of the said Academy. In testimony whereof, the seal of the said Academy is affixed to these presents, and the same are signed by the President of the said Academy, and countersigned by the Secretary, the day and year above written.Williams continues: "In appreciation of this honour, Sir Thomas Lawrence immediately painted for the academy a full-length likeness of Mr. West, the president of the English academy, and, as it is well known, a native of America."
John Turnbull, President. A. Robertson, Secretary.