John Frederick Kensett

John Frederick Kensett ( born March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, † December 14, 1872 in New York City ) was an American painter of the 19th century. He was known especially for his landscape painting in the style of the Hudson River School and was co-founder in 1870 of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Life and work

John Frederick Kensett, was born in 1816 as son of Thomas Kensett, a steel engraver, who had emigrated from England to America, and the New England wife Elizabeth, nee Dagget. He began his training in 1828 in the steel piercing and drawing from his father, who had settled in New Haven, as well as his uncle, Alfred Dagget. In 1829 he went to New York and worked for a year at the graphic artist Peter Maverick, then he worked as an independent steel engraver and started on the advice of his friend John Casilear with the landscape painting.

His first exhibition was in 1838 Kensett at the National Academy of Design in New York with a titled simply as Landscape picture. In 1840 he traveled together with the painters John Casilear, Asher B. Durand and Thomas P. Rossiter to Europe and visited here in the next seven years in London, Paris, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. In 1847 he returned to New York and in 1848 he was admitted as an associate member of the National Academy. A year later he was a full member and also was a member of the Century Club, were included in the leading artists and writers of his time. In 1859, he was also a member of the National Art Commission, the artistic decoration of the Capitol in Washington DC supervised. In 1870 he was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and was a member of its Executive Board.

Kensett died on December 14, 1872 as a result of pneumonia, after he had tried to save a friend from drowning in the sea the woman.

Style

The landscape paintings by John Frederick Kensett are influenced by the work of the Hudson River School. However, his early works are generally very heavy and strong by Thomas Cole and English landscape painters such as John Constable are marked. You are running powerfully, with details such as rocks and plants. After the mid-1850s a stronger influence Durand arrives in the images, making them more precise and accurate in the details were, the compositions were also easier. In the 1860s and 1870s he worked with very reduced and rigorous compositions.

In addition to occasional large-format images Kensett painted mainly on small to medium formats. He visited again and again the same, from New York easy -to-reach places that he painted several times, especially the Bash Bish Falls, Lake George and the coastal regions of Newport and Beverly, Massachusetts. The thus at first glance very similar images differ from each other mainly by the composition, the light and the atmosphere.

Image selection

Trout Fisherman, 1852

Niagara Falls, 1853

Upper Mississippi, 1855

Mount Washington, 1869

Lake George, 1870

Near Newport, Rhode Iceland, 1872