Harry VAN DER WEYDENAmerican, 1868-1952 |
One of the group of American artists in Paris at the end of the 19thC, now best appreciated for his naturalistic views and landscapes
Harry van der Weyden was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, in 1868. He gained a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1887 and went on to study at the Académie Julien in Paris. He was awarded the Gold Medal at the Paris Salon in both 1891 and 1892 and the Gold Medal at the Munich Akademie in 1901.
Van der Weyden was one of a number of American artists living and working in Paris which included John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), John White Alexander (1856-1915), Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895), Jefferson D Chalfant (1856-1931), Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Frank W Benson (1862-1951), Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890), Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and Mary Cassatt (1844-1926).
He exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1900, which the New York Times described as, “unquestionably the finest collection of works by American artists that ever before has been brought together” and he continued to exhibit at the Paris Salons until after 1910.
At the same time, he was working in America and exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and the World's Fair, St Louis, Missouri in 1904. A February 1900 article in the New York Times described his exhibit in the Annual Watercolour Display held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, “Van der Weyden’s coast scene is exceedingly strong, with a beautiful and luminous sky, and is well composed and full of light”.
Van der Weyden presented a portrait of Lady Randolph Churchill to Winston Churchill in 1935. Churchill wrote to van der Weyden on 26 June 1935 expressing his pleasure in accepting the "splendid" portrait.
He died in 1952.
© Albany Fine Art
USEFUL LINKS (listed alphabetically)
Americans in Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
Smithsonian American Art Museum (4 works/0 to view)
LITERATURE
Who Was Who In American Art by Falk, page 3385
American Art at the Nineteenth Century Paris Salons by Fink
 |
