Thomas Le Clear

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Thomas Le Clear
Thomas Le Clear (1818-1882).png
Born(1818-03-11)March 11, 1818
Owego, New York
DiedNovember 26, 1882(1882-11-26) (aged 64)
Rutherford, New Jersey
OccupationPainter
Signature
Signature of Thomas Le Clear (1818-1882).png

Thomas Le Clear (March 11, 1818 – November 26, 1882) was an American painter.

Contents

Biography

Interior with Portraits, 1865, Smithsonian Museum of American Art Thomas Le Clear - Interior with Portraits - Smithsonian.jpg
Interior with Portraits, 1865, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Thomas Le Clear was born in Owego, New York on March 11, 1818. [1] [2] He sold his first paintings, copies of a painting of Saint Matthew, at the age of 12. [3] He began to follow art professionally before he had had any instruction. He continued to teach himself by studying the painting by other artists. When he was fourteen, in 1832, he moved to London, Canada, with his father. He painted portraits there for a time. He painted portraits in Elmira, and in Rochester, before moving to New York City in 1839, when he was twenty-one. There he studied for several years under Henry Inman. [3] From 1844 to 1860, he resided in Buffalo, where he was a founding member of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. He returned to New York City in the early 1860s, and was elected a National Academician in 1863. [3]

Le Clear died of pleurisy on November 26, 1882, at his home in Rutherford, New Jersey, at the age of 64. [2]

Works

Among his compositions are The Reprimand, Marble Players, and Itinerants (1862). Of his numerous portraits, one of the best is that of George Bancroft, at the Century Club, New York; other excellent portraits are those of William Cullen Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Millard Fillmore, and Edwin Booth as Hamlet. He's also noted for his genre scenes, including Interior with Portraits .

Notes

  1. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol. VIII. James T. White & Company. 1924. pp. 429–430. Retrieved January 26, 2021 via Google Books.
  2. 1 2 "The Death-List of a Day: Thomas Le Clear: The Famous Portrait-Painter". The New York Times . November 28, 1882. p. 2. Retrieved January 26, 2021 via Newspapers.com. Thomas Le Clear, one of the most famous of the portrait-painters which this country has produced, died at his residence in Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday evening.
  3. 1 2 3 "Thomas Le Clear/American Art". National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM). MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art. 1996. Retrieved August 10, 2012.

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<i>Interior with Portraits</i> Painting by Thomas Le Clear

Interior with Portraits is an 1865 genre scene painted by American artist Thomas Le Clear (1818–1882), commissioned by Franklin Sidway (1834–1920). It features Sidway's siblings, James and Parnell, posing for a photograph in an artist's studio. The children were painted posthumously based on family daguerreotypes, and the painting has been read as representing the tension between its medium and the emergent medium of photography. Interior with Portraits is currently held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

References