About the Artists

Aivazovsky (born Hovhannes Aivazian, an Armenian from the Crimea) rose from poverty to be one of the wealthiest and most prolific artists of the Romantic Movement worldwide. He spent most of his life based in his home town, the Black Sea Port of Feodosia, but traveled constantly, and after training at the St Petersburg Academy of the Arts, built his reputation and wealth on commissions from the Russian Navy and the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire.

American Realist, born in Columbus, Georgia, studied mural painting in Italy with Ben Long, attended PAFA, traveled the world, briefly had a studio in Philadelphia, now lives and works in Seattle.

Beerstraaten was a Dutch painter of marine art and landscapes, particularly of events of the First Anglo-Dutch War and Dutch-Swedish War.

A member of the Hudson River School, Bradford was a painter and an explorer, publishing an account of his own trips to the Arctic regions via Labrador in 1873, illustrated by his own photographs. He was known for the accuracy and beauty of his river and seascapes.

Last of the Hudson River/Luminist painters, Bricher, who was destined to be a Boston businessman, instead opened a studio in his home town of Newburyport in 1858, aged 21, and painted with Bierstadt and Champney in North Conway, NH. He moved to New York ten years later, concentrating on coastal scenes and working mostly in watercolor. He summered in Maine, loved painting the ruggedness of Grand Manan.

Known as the 'Boot-Black Raphael", Brown made a career of supplying city children genre scenes that satisfied Victorian tastes for sentimentality. Born in Durham, England, he trained as a glass blower, moving to Edinburgh to attend the Royal Scottish Academy, then to London at age 22, where he established a successful studio. He crossed over to Brooklyn, NY in 1854, and by 1860 had established himself with his portraits of tattered juveniles, becoming a member of and instructor at the National Academy. Toward the end of his life, his yearly income averaged $40,000. Originals sold for $500 to $700.

Brown was born in Portland, Maine. He is known for his marine paintings and his views of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, most famously the Crawford Notch area. After showing at the National Academy from 1858-1875, he moved to London to live with his daughter, where he died.

Buttersworth was born in London, became one of the most renowned of American ship portraitists. He moved to the US, West Hoboken, NJ in 1845, set up his larger and longest used studio in Brooklyn, NY in 1854. His paintings always showed the accuracy of a sailor's knowledge, and were imbued with a natural feeling of the water.

Chase was a dedicated plein air painter who combined elements of Impressionism, Tonalism and Realism. Born outside Indianapolis, he trained at the National Academy and traveled in Europe. He was probably the greatest educator of his generation, teaching at the Art Students League. His studio at 51 West 10th Street in New York and summer studio in Shinnecock on Long Island became social centers for younger artists, further spreading his influence

Although Brian Coole is entirely self-taught, his ship paintings have been compared to those of Fitz Henry Lane (MA, 1804-1865). His subjects include America’s Cup , historical harbor scenes, naval battles and formal ship's portraits.

Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (1858-1923) American Impressionist from Boston, one of the avant-garde group “The Ten”, which like parallel events on the Continent would show, provided a transition from the more staid academic studio schools, emphasizing plein air painting and a focus on light and atmosphere created by the use of loosely applied brilliant color. His portraits were more traditional, having studied under Frank Duveneck in Munich when young (both were raised in Cincinnati), and always remaining a member of the ‘Boston School’ of portraiture. But it was his landscapes and seascapes, transformed by time spent at Annisquam, Massachusetts and Prouts Neck, Maine, that would inspire generations of American painters.

Few of his landscapes exist today, as many were destroyed in a tragic studio fire in Boston at the Harcourt Building in 1904; his Maine studio also burned. It is thought that fewer than 100 canvases survived between the two.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, self-taught, first gaining a reputation in New Haven, known for his genre scenes, many of which became famous worldwide when reproduced in lithographic form by Currier & Ives (sadly mostly after his death at a young age).

From the Cosla collection, stamped twice verso "La Collection Cosla", formed in Italy in 1760, when it was part of a larger collection given to Anne de Clerici as a dowry for her marriage to William K. Cosla of Romania. Enriched by subsequent generations of the family, the collection was moved to San Francisco, birthplace of the fourth generation Mrs. Cosla, during WWII.

One of the most important British painters of the 18th c., known for his sensitive portraits and landscapes rendered in pleasant palette with a light touch. Vying with Reynolds to become the society favorite, Gainsborough ended up traveling in elite circles, composed of the wealthy who commemorated their families and estates with equal fervor.

Gignoux was a French artist who studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the French historical painter Hippolyte Delaroche and was active in the United States from 1840 to 1870, known for seasonal landscapes.

Hart was a Scottish born painter of the Hudson River School, who emigrated as a child, served an apprenticeship painting decorative panels for Albany coach makers Eaton and Gilbert, and ultimately studied under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre at the National Academy, of which he became a member. He had studios in Albany, New York City, Brooklyn, and finally Mount Vernon, NY. He was the founder of the American Water Color Society in 1865 and was the first president of the Brooklyn Academy of Design.

Herbin was a French Modernist, co-founder of the groups Abstraction-Creation and Salon des Realites Nouvelles, promoting non-figurative abstract art. He shared a studio with Picasso, Braque and Gris, the founding fathers of Cubism, but Herbin's work evolved into arrangements of simple geometric forms in even bright colors.

Inness was born in New York City and grew up on a farm in Newark, New Jersey. His minimal art training consisted of time spent with an itinerant artist, but he was to go on to meld the eye of the Hudson River School with the spiritual qualities of the Barbizon School of France and Swedenborgian philosophy of correspondences or insights by association. His wide ranging travels, broad field of work and spiritualism inspired a large circle of artists.

Jacobsen was born in Copenhagen, moving to West Hoboken, New Jersey when he was 23, where he cultivated clientele among ship captains by painting their ships on safes. He was the most prolific of maritime artists, creating more than 6,000 works, many priced at only $5, earning him the nickname of the "Audubon of Steam Vessels".

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Wolf Kahn immigrated to the United States by way of England in 1940. In 1945, he graduated from the High School of Music & Art in New York, studied with Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann, later becoming Hofmann’s studio assistant. Traveling extensively, he has painted landscapes in Egypt, Greece, Hawaii, Italy, Kenya, Maine, Mexico, and New Mexico. He spends his summers and autumns in Vermont on a hillside farm, which he and his wife, the painter Emily Mason, have owned since 1968, but his primary residence is in New York City.

Born in 1702 in Venice, the son of Alessandro Falca, a silversmith. He studied drawing and modelling with his father and with Antonio Balestre. Known as a painter of contemporary genre scenes of life, his 'speaking caricatures' may have introduced the cartoon caricature to the world.

Landscape painter of the Hudson River School, John McEntee studied at the National Academy by 1850, apprenticed to Frederic Edwin Church, and was one of the charter residents of Richard Morris Hunt's Tenth Street Studio. His work was darker and more melancholy than that of most of his compatriots, which may account for his lesser degree of success.

Born in Greenwich, NY, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78, lived to 101. Marrying a farmer in 1887, she eventually gave birth to 10 children (5 of whom survived past infancy). She drew on her memories of farm life to create her naive, bucolic paintings.

Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg, along with Jasper Johns, was a breakout artist from Abstract Expressionism, developing a more cerebral and esoteric aesthetic based in assemblage, performance art, printmaking and what became known as Conceptual and Minimal Art. He studied at Black Mountain College with Josef and Anni Albers, attended the Arts Students League; designed for John Cage and Merce Cunningham ballets, and the Paul Taylor Dance Co. He was one of the first to incorporate lighting into his pieces, melding theatrical and gallery presentation.

One of the leading lights of French Impressionism, drawn to the more colorful, bright and feminine aspects of Parisian culture, Renoir stands at the end of a line celebrating beauty that descends from the eye of Rubens.

Richards was born in Philadelphia, and began working as a teen designing brass fixtures at a manufactory. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and made his first trip to Europe in 1855. He became a follower of the Hudson River School, with studios in Philadelphia and Cape May, NJ. By 1890, he resided in Newport, Rhode Island, was working mostly in seascapes by then, and is considered an early American proponent of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Francis Silva was the son of a barber who had emigrated from Madeira to New York in 1830. Having no formal training, Silver worked as a sign painter before fighting in the Civil War as a Captain of the Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry. Immediately after the war he was admitted to the National Academy of Design, quickly gaining fame for his serene atmospheric views of harbors and boats.

Born in Montmartre, the son of Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), a model and painter; School of Paris, proponent of naive cityscapes rendered in thick impasto, Utrillo unknowingly recorded a disappearing more provincial suburb of Paris, the habitual home of artists.

Creator and leading proponent of Pop Art, avant-garde film maker, founder of 'The Factory', the iconoclastic Warhol shook the Art world and general culture with his efforts and writings from the mid 1960s to the 1980s, until his tragically early death at age 58.

Andrew Newell Wyeth was an American visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.

N.C. Wyeth, whose first ancestor to live in New England arrived in 1645, had an immensely successful career as an illustrator, raising the work to the level of fine art, drawing on American colloquial experiences at his home studios in Port Clyde, Maine and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.