Samuel Bentz (1792–1850) was an American fraktur artist.
A native of Cocalico, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Bentz was the son of Reverend Peter Bentz and Anna Maria Caffroth Bentz; [1] his father, an itinerant farmer, joiner, and unordained Lutheran preacher, committed suicide in 1818, [2] and his mother was forced to raise him on her own. He became a schoolmaster in the vicinity of Ephrata. Shortly before his death, Peter had established a school on the family land, and Samuel taught there for much of his life, living in the school building. Much of his fraktur was birth records, which he produced to augment his income. Some pieces refer to Mount Pleasant, and Bentz was designated the "Mount Pleasant Artist" until a bookplate with his signature was discovered. At his death, he left behind a box with eighteen frakturs. Much of Bentz's work is distinguished by its bold lines and the use of architectural elements as decoration, almost Greek Revival in style. Sometimes a human face is included; more often, a clock face, with its implications of memento mori , will appear. Sometimes he wrote the tetragrammaton into his paintings, an unusual inclusion for a fraktur artist, especially given his background as a member of the Reformed Church. [1] Also unusually, he rarely included Bible verses in his work. [2]
Six works by Bentz are in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, [3] including a cutout piece. [2] His work has also been forged. [4]
Ellen Emmet Rand was a painter and illustrator. She specialized in portraits, painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and her cousins Henry James and William James. Rand studied at the Cowles Art School in Boston and the Art Students League in New York City and produced illustrations for Vogue Magazine and Harper's Weekly before traveling to England and then France to study with sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut owns the largest collection of her painted works and the Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut and the Archives of American Art within the Smithsonian Institution both have collections of her papers, photographs, and drawings.
Jacob Strickler was an American fraktur artist.
Johannes Spitler was an American painter of furniture.
Daniel Schumacher was an American fraktur painter. He was the first artist to use fraktur as a method of general record-keeping, rather than a document of important events.
Francis Charles Portzline was an American fraktur artist of German birth.
Johann Jacob Friedrich Krebs, commonly known as Friedrich Krebs was an American fraktur artist. He was the most prolific of the Pennsylvania German fraktur artists.
Johann HenrichOtto was an American fraktur artist.
Daniel Otto was an American fraktur artist.
Christian Mertel was an American fraktur artist.
Johannes ErnstSpangenberg (1755-1814) was an American fraktur artist.
Johann Christian Strenge was an American fraktur artist.
Martin Brechall was an American fraktur artist.
George Peter Deisert was an American fraktur artist.
JohannesBard (1797–1861) was an American fraktur artist.
George Heinrich Engellhard was an American fraktur artist. His name is sometimes given as George Hennerich Engelhard.
JohannAdam Eyer (1755–1837) was an American fraktur artist.
Johann Conrad Gilbert (1734–1812) was an American fraktur artist.
Samuel Gottschall (1800–1898) was an American fraktur artist.
The Sussel-Washington Artist was an American fraktur artist active during the 1770s and 1780s.
The Ehre Vater Artist was an American fraktur artist active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.