hgtv – RequestAPrint

John James Audubon: Birds of America

“Barn Owl” by John James Audubon. Peabody Institute Library

John James Audubon was born in Les Cayes, in what is now Haiti, on April 26, 1785. The illegitimate son of French plantation owner Captain Jean Audubon and his Creole servant Jeanne Rabin, he was given the name Jean Rabin at birth. However, when his mother died shortly after his birth, he and his sister were sent to Nantes, France, where they were raised by the captain’s wife, Anne. The couple legally adopted the children in 1794 and gave Jean a new name: Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon.

The above image is available for custom reproduction from RequestAPrint. All sales benefit the Peabody Institute Library.

By 1824, Audubon had grown intent on finding a publisher for his work, but was unable to generate any serious interest in the United States. Two years later, he set sail for the United Kingdom, where he hoped to at least be able to find engravers skilled enough to properly reproduce his work. The decision immediately proved a good one. He exhibited his work in both Scotland and England to great acclaim, fascinating the public with his impressive drawing skills as well as some tall tales he relayed about life on the American frontier.

The success of his exhibitions would finally lead to the first publication of the book for which he is now best known: Birds of America. Featuring more than 400 plates of his drawings, the four-volume work was printed in London by Havell & Son in 1827 and serialized until 1838. Accompanying it was Ornithological Biography, which featured text about the lives and behaviors of his subjects as well as highlights about Audubon’s adventures. He followed these seminal works with 1839’s A Synopsis of the Birds of North America.

Throughout this period, Audubon traveled back and forth between the United States and Europe, overseeing the publication of his works and also selling them in popular serialized subscriptions to admirers who included King George IV and United States President Andrew Jackson. His fame and fortune firmly established, in 1841 Audubon moved his family to a large rural estate on the Hudson in upper Manhattan, where he began work on a more compact edition of Birds of America.

See the whole John James Audubon gallery from the Peabody Library Institute here.

(Information from: biography.com)

About the Artist: Fr. Gregory Gerrer

“Lake Shore Castle” by Fr. Gregory Gerrer, OSB

Father Gregory Gerrer, a monk of St. Gregory’s Abbey in Shawnee, Oklahoma, achieved an international reputation as an artist, curator, and collector of art. Born Robert Francis Xavier Gerrer on July 23, 1867, in France in the Alsatian village of Lautenbach, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 he immigrated with his family to the United States. They settled in Bedford, Iowa. As a youth he displayed a talent for art and music, taking various jobs as a musician. Upon learning of a land opening in Oklahoma Territory in 1891, he traveled to Guthrie. In December he visited the community of Benedictine monks at Sacred Heart Mission, located in the southern part of present Pottawatomie County. He remained there and entered the novitiate in January 1892, taking the name Gregory.

Get the above piece and many more by Fr. Gregory Gerrer as a custom reproduction through RequestAPrint.

After being ordained to the priesthood in 1900, Gerrer traveled to Rome to study art. During this time he developed a reputation for portraiture. In 1904 he painted a portrait of the recently elected Pope Pius X (canonized 1954). Gerrer entered the painting in the 1904 World’s Fair at St. Louis, and it won a bronze medal. The original of this signature work is exhibited in the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art on the campus of St. Gregory’s University in Shawnee.

Gerrer returned to the United States in 1904 and taught at Sacred Heart and at St. Gregory’s, after the Benedictine community moved to Shawnee. Beginning in 1917 he spent fifteen years as a faculty member and curator at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. He then returned to St. Gregory’s Abbey and resumed his teaching duties. He also continued to paint, both for income and to barter for artistic works and anthropological objects. Throughout his career he collected the art and artifacts that became the nucleus for the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art. He was cofounder and first president of the Association of Oklahoma Artists. In 1931 Gerrer was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. He died on August 24, 1946.

See the whole gallery of pieces by Fr. Gregory Gerrer on RequestAPrint.

(Information Credit: okhistory.org)

About the Artist: Frederick Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam was a leading American impressionist painter and printmaker. The son of a prosperous hardware merchant and antique collector, Hassam (christened Frederick Childe Hassam) was born in 1859 near Boston. In 1872 a great fire in Boston destroyed his father’s business, forcing Hassam to leave school. He found a job with a publishing firm, but having little talent for business, he began work as an apprentice to a wood engraver and later created illustrations for such magazines as Harper’s and The Century. Between 1877 and 1879, Hassam attended evening classes at the Boston Art Club, studied briefly with William Rimmer at the Lowell Institute, and also took private painting lessons.

The piece above is available for custom reproduction through the Florence Griswold Museum’s RequestAPrint site.

At the age of twenty-four, Hassam visited Great Britain and the European Continent for two months. In 1886 he moved to Paris, where he studied at the conservative art school, Académie Julian. Hassam was attracted to French Impressionism, however, and readily absorbed elements of the avant-garde style. Hassam returned to the United States in 1889, moving from Boston to New York. Integrating his understanding of impressionism with his own tendency toward clear compositional structure and forms, he painted many views of the city. Noted for their light impressionist colors, quick brushstrokes, and also their solidity, his city views were well received, and he became known as one of the leading American impressionists. Hassam was able to return to Europe twice between 1897 and 1910, visiting Pont-Aven, where many Post-Impressionists had painted, and, on his last trip, southern Spain. In late 1897, he withdrew from the Society of American Artists and co-founded the Ten American Painters with fellow American Impressionists J. Alden Weirand John Twachtman.

In 1915, influenced in part by the work of his friend Weir, Hassam began experimenting with etching and, two years later, lithography. In 1920, having summered at various seaside resorts since 1882, he established a permanent summer studio in East Hampton, Long Island. During the remaining fifteen years of his life, Hassam continued to exhibit regularly, enjoying national recognition and receiving numerous awards and honors.

Visit the RequestAPrint gallery page for the featured piece to see learn more on purchasing your own reproduction of this piece and many more!

(Information Credit: phillipscollection.org)

Clyde Singer: “March at the Whitney”

“March at the Whitney” by Clyde Singer. Canton Museum of Art

Clyde Singer was born in the small town of Malvern in 1908 and grew up in the rural hills of Ohio. Educated in the local public schools, he had an early interest in art and, after high school, attended the school at the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts. In 1933 he received a scholarship to the Arts Students’ League in New York City where his mentors were “American Scene” painters John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton. During his seven years in New York City, Singer developed a friendship with artist John Sloan, one of “The Eight” of the Ashcan School, a group of artists who painted gritty urban scenes and preceded the American Scene.

The piece above is available for purchase as a reproduction through RequestAPrint. Each sale directly benefits the Canton Museum of Art.

Primarily oils and watercolors, Singer’s early work focused on rural and small-town life in Ohio. Later in his career his art shifted to scenes of contemporary urban life. In 1940 Singer became the assistant director at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, and, except for military service during World War II, remained there until his death in 1999. Singer completed more than 3,000 paintings during his career and is best known for his American Scene paintings.

Singer’s paintings are part of the permanent collections of many museums throughout the United States, and his work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, the Chicago Art Institute, the National Academy of Design, the Massillon Museum, the Canton Museum of Art, and the Butler Institute of American Art.

With 120 full-color reproductions of his paintings, as well as photographs of the artist at work and with his friends and family,Clyde Singer’s America places the artist in the context of his time and makes his work available to a new and appreciative audience.

Get your very own reproduction of this piece through the Canton Museum of Art gallery on RequestAPrint.

(Information credit: kentstateuniversitypress.com)

About the Artist: Norman Rockwell

“The Street was Never the Same Again” by Norman Rockwell. Detroit Historical Society.

Born Norman Percevel Rockwell in New York City on February 3, 1894, Norman Rockwell knew at the age of 14 that he wanted to be an artist, and began taking classes at The New School of Art. By the age of 16, Rockwell was so intent on pursuing his passion that he dropped out of high school and enrolled at the National Academy of Design. He later transferred to the Art Students League of New York. Upon graduating, Rockwell found immediate work as an illustrator forBoys’ Life magazine.

His piece “The Street was Never the Same Again” is available for custom reproduction to fit your home decor. See this image on RequestAPrint.

By 1916, a 22-year-old Rockwell, newly married to his first wife, Irene O’Connor, had painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post—the beginning of a 47-year relationship with the iconic American magazine. In all, Rockwell painted 321 covers for the Post. Some of his most iconic covers included the 1927 celebration of Charles Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic. He also worked for other magazines, including Look, which in 1969 featured a Rockwell cover depicting the imprint of Neil Armstrong’s left foot on the surface of the moon after the successful moon landing. In 1920, the Boy Scouts of America featured a Rockwell painting in its calendar. Rockwell continued to paint for the Boy Scouts for the rest of his life.

The 1930s and ’40s proved to be the most fruitful period for Rockwell. In 1930, he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, and they had three sons: Jarvis, Thomas and Peter. The Rockwells relocated to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939, and the new world that greeted Norman offered the perfect material for the artist to draw from. Rockwell’s success stemmed to a large degree from his careful appreciation for everyday American scenes, the warmth of small-town life in particular. Often what he depicted was treated with a certain simple charm and sense of humor. Some critics dismissed him for not having real artistic merit, but Rockwell’s reasons for painting what he did were grounded in the world that was around him. “Maybe as I grew up and found the world wasn’t the perfect place I had thought it to be, I unconsciously decided that if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be, and so painted only the ideal aspects of it,” he once said.

To own your own reproduction of one of Norman Rockwell’s famous pieces visit RequestAPrint for size and pricing on custom features we offer. Click Here.

(Information credit: biography.com)