Alexander Helwig Wyant (January 11, 1836November 29, 1892) was an American landscape painter. His early works belonged to the
Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...
, with its direct pastoral narrative, but evolved into the more moody and shadowy
Tonalism
Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often domina ...
. After a stroke which paralysed his right arm, he taught himself to paint with his left.
Biography
Alexander Wyant was born at
Port Washington, Ohio
Port Washington is a village in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, United States. The population was 569 at the 2010 census.
History
Port Washington was originally called Salisbury, and under the latter name was laid out in 1827. A post office called Por ...
.
He started painting beside the
Ohio River when he was in
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...
. A landscape painter in the style of
George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent American landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River School at the s ...
, whom he later met in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. His early paintings followed closely the
Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...
tradition, while the later—infused with low-key colors, atmospheric features and poetic interpretation—are representative of
tonalism
Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often domina ...
.
Raised in
Defiance, Ohio
Defiance is a city in and the county seat of Defiance County, Ohio, United States, about southwest of Toledo, Ohio, Toledo and northeast of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in Ohio's northwestern corner. The population was 16,494 at the 2010 United State ...
, Alexander H. Wyant worked during his teens as a sign painter in nearby Port Washington. In 1857 he was impressed with some paintings by George Inness at an exhibition in
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
and soon left for New York to meet Inness. After returning to Cincinnati, Wyant secured the support of Nicholas Longworth and went to study in New York in 1860. He went on a trip that started in Paris in 1860 where he saw
Corot
CoRoT (French: ; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly th ...
and
Dupré's works before moving on to
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
.
After an interlude of two years in Cincinnati, he moved back to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in 1863. He exhibited for the first time at the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
in 1864 and was elected an associate there in 1868 and an academician in 1869. Wyant went abroad in 1865, studying for a few months with the Norwegian painter
Hans Gude
Hans Fredrik Gude (March 13, 1825August 17, 1903) was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Roma ...
in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...
and
Karlsruhe, Germany
Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. I ...
,
and making brief stops in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
before settling again in New York. After 1866 Wyant gradually shifted toward a more fluid handling of paint, with increasing reliance on a palette emphasizing shades of white, gray, and the earth colors. From 1867 he exhibited his watercolors almost annually and was instrumental in the founding of the
American Watercolor Society
The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.
Qualifications
AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...
in 1878.
A partial stroke while on a government expedition to Arizona and New Mexico in 1873 led to paralysis of his right arm. Between 1874 and 1880 he worked in his studio in New York City, teaching himself to paint with his left hand. After his marriage in 1880, he began to spend most of his time in
Keene Valley, New York
Keene is a town in central Essex County, New York, United States. It includes the hamlets of Keene, Keene Valley, and St. Huberts, with a total population of 1,144 as of the 2020 census
The town is part of the Adirondack Park, and includes 15 ...
. He moved in 1889 to
Arkville, New York (in the Catskills). He frequently painted in the
Adirondacks
The Adirondack Mountains (; a-də-RÄN-dak) form a massif in northeastern New York with boundaries that correspond roughly to those of Adirondack Park. They cover about 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2). The mountains form a roughly circular d ...
as well as in the
Catskills
The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas c ...
. He died in 1892 in New York City shortly after completing ''Arkville Autumn Landscape,'' his last painting. He was only moderately appreciated during his lifetime, though after his death his works were eagerly sought for.
Career
![Tennessee MET DT279076](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Tennessee_MET_DT279076.jpg)
]
Wyant's signature style was developed slowly and not without several false starts along the way. Special contributions came from his initial contact with Inness shortly after that artist's sojourn in France; the startling revelations disclosed to Wyant by his study of
John Constable and
J. M. W. Turner and his stroke in 1873, which accelerated the artist's movement away from the sort of detailed examination of natural facts that one finds, for example, in his well-known, ''Mohawk Valley,'' in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
. In his later years Wyant's solitary, introspective mood came to blend more closely than ever with his landscapes, especially those from the Arkville area at the
Pakatakan Artists Colony, where a kindred spirit,
John Francis Murphy
John Francis Murphy (December 11, 1853 – January 30, 1921) was an American Irish landscape painter. His style moved from poetic Tonalism to the innovative application of multiple layers of pigment, in order to create a sparse, brooding lands ...
, also worked.
He was a member of the
Century Association and the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
, to which he was elected in 1869. Exhibitions included the following venues:
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
, 1865–1892; Brooklyn Art Association, 1867–1892;
Boston Art Club
The Boston Art Club, Boston, Massachusetts, serves to help its members, as well as non-members, to access the world of fine art. It currently has more than 250 members.
History
The Boston Art Club was first conceived in Boston in 1854 with the co ...
, 1877–1882;
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appa ...
, 1879–1881;
Art Institute of Chicago; and
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
. Public collections that own or display Wyant's work include the
National Museum of American Art
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...
,
Brooklyn Museum,
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
,
Toledo Museum of Art
The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...
,
Tennessee State Museum
The Tennessee State Museum is a large museum in Nashville depicting the history of the U.S. state of Tennessee. The current facility opened on October 4, 2018, at the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street at the foot of Capitol Hil ...
,
Dayton Art Institute
The Dayton Art Institute (DAI) is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, United States. The Dayton Art Institute has been rated one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States for children. The museum also ranks in the top 3% of all art mus ...
,
Kentucky Art Museum and
Snite Museum of Art
The Snite Museum of Art is the fine art museum on the University of Notre Dame campus, near South Bend, Indiana. With about 30,000 works of art that span cultures, eras, and media, the Snite Museum's permanent collection serves as a rich resource ...
.
He was also known as Alexander Wyant and A. H. Wyant.
References
Other sources
*
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington, DC.
External links
''American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School'' an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Wyant (see index)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wyant, Alexander Helwig
1836 births
1892 deaths
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American landscape painters
People from Port Washington, Ohio
People from Keene, New York
Hudson River School painters
People from Defiance, Ohio
19th-century American male artists