J. Alden Weir

Julian Alden Weir ( born August 30, 1852 in West Point, New York, † December 8, 1919 ), often only as J. Alden Weir, was an American Impressionist painter.

Life and work

John Alden Weir was the son of painter Robert Walter Weir, who also was a professor at the Military Academy. His brother, John Ferguson Weir was a painter and led from 1869 to 1913, the Yale University School of Fine Arts. His first artistic training received both brothers with their father, Julien Alden Weir subsequently went to the National Academy of Design in New York City and studied painting there.

From 1873 to 1877 he traveled to Europe to study in Paris on. Here he was trained mainly by Jean -Léon Gérôme. 1875 could Weir A Britanny Interior his first painting exhibit at the Paris Salon, in whose choice of subject he was inspired by his friend Jules Bastien- Lepage. Weir refused at that time from both the art of the French Impressionists and the painting by James McNeill Whistler, where he criticized too little form and drawing. Whistler himself, he met in 1877 in London in person.

In the fall of 1877 Weir returned to the U.S. and settled in New York City, even though he regularly traveled in the later years to Europe. In the same year he was one of the founders of the Society of American Artists, which he became president in 1882. In 1878 he began training other artists, first at the Cooper Union and later at the Art Students League. His own painting focused at this time on the portrait and genre painting. Particularly well received, found his floral still lifes as well as the so-called Bric -a- bracs, which were compared with those of John Le Farge. Beginning in 1883, Weir commuted between his city apartment in New York and his farm in Branchville, Connecticut. Inspired by Édouard Manet's pictures and an exhibition of French impressionists in New York in 1886, he now also turned to this style of art by producing first Impressionist landscapes with short brush strokes. Especially in Branchville incurred in accordance with many of these landscapes and 1887 settled there also Weir's friend John Henry Twachtman down. In 1887 Weir began also to focus more on the graphic print and drypoint.

1888 the painting Idle Hours from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was purchased and at the Paris World's Fair Exposition Universelle de Paris 1889 Weir received a silver medal. In the following years he developed his personal style and integrated new elements such as the motives of Japanese prints in his painting. 1895 was with The Red Bridge one of his most famous landscapes on which a freshly painted iron bridge is shown in a peaceful countryside. This and other images Weir combines the beauty of nature and landscape with the element of modern industry. In 1893, he completed the work on the given to him in order mural of the World Exhibition World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1892 his first wife died and Weir married again in 1893. He was known at that time as an art connoisseur and discussed different collectors in compiling their collections. He put prime importance to the modern French artists and made in particular Manet and Gustave Courbet known in the United States. In 1898 he co-founded the artist group Ten American Painters as he showed jointly with Childe Hassam and Twachtman disappointment at the very conservative development of the Society of American Artists. Weir also intensified his contacts with the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and was briefly sided used there as president. 1904 Weir received two awards for his paintings at the World Exposition Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1911 and his work has been shown in a large-scale retrospective that was to be seen in several cities of the American East Coast and the Midwest. In 1913 with his support, the Armory Show in New York, where he exhibited 25 paintings themselves. He himself was still progressive, but could not actively support the radical changes in the art to modern and romantic impressionistic remained until his death.

In 1915 Weir was appointed President of the National Academy of Design in New York, but died four years later 1919. 1924, he was posthumously honored with a memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gallery

Girl Standing by a Gate, 1896

The Grey Trellis, 1891

The Veranda, 1900

The Birches, 1903

The Blue Gown, 1907

On the shore, about 1909

Nocturne Queensboro Bridge, 1910

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