Christopher High Shearer (1846–1926) was a prolific American painter in

Berks County, Pennsylvania Berks County ( Pennsylvania German: ''Barricks Kaundi'') is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 428,849. The county seat is Reading. The Schuylkill River, a tributary of the Delaware Ri ...

, known primarily for his large

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

paintings. Christopher Shearer was born May 18, 1846, in

Reading, Pennsylvania Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philade ...

to Christopher and Catherine Shearer. As a boy, Shearer spent time in the

studio A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design ...

s of

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

s Francis Daniel Devlan and John Heyl Raser. At age 18, Christopher showed an interest in painting professionally, and became a student of both Devlan and Raser. His father helped him by building him a studio in the backyard of his farm in Shearertown (present day Muhlenberg Township). At the age of 21, Shearer opened his own studio in Reading and was very successful in selling his works locally. By age 27 Shearer was nationally recognized artist. He later traveled to Europe, abandoning his wife Sallie Shearer and their sons, and studied in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

and

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. Shearer exhibited his works at the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

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in 1876. In 1878, on a return trip 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 ...

, he was awarded a Gold Medal by the Düsseldorf School of Art. He also exhibited many of his works in a studio he opened in Reading in 1883. Shearer was a teacher as well as an artist. He held many art classes in his Reading studio to encourage the development of art in Berks County and elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Shearer was instrumental in the founding of the

Reading Public Museum The Reading Public Museum is a museum in West Reading, Pennsylvania. The museum's permanent collection mainly focuses on art, science, and civilization. It also has a planetarium and a arboretum. Collection The museum's art collection contai ...

.Malmberg, Valerie. ''Artists of Berks County an Overview 1850-1920'', p. 29 As a friend of Dr. Levi Mengel (the founder of the museum), Shearer was appointed the museum's chief art

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

until his death. He also enjoyed collecting

butterflies Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

s and bugs and kept detailed records and drawings of these

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

s. Shearer died in Reading in 1926. Many of his works now hang in the Reading Museum or private collections. His paintings are part of several collections, including ones in Canada, Australia, Germany, and the United States.

References

*Malmberg, Valerie. ''Artists of Berks County an Overview 1850-1920'' *Morton Montgomery. ''Biographies from Historical and Biographical Annals''

External links

Artwork by Christopher Shearer

Notes

19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters 1846 births 1926 deaths People from Berks County, Pennsylvania 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists {{US-painter-stub