Henry Bainbridge McCarter (1864-1942) was an American illustrator and painter known for his influence on the modernistic art movements. McCarter worked as an illustrator in New York before becoming an instructor 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.Temple Gold Medal Joseph E. Temple Fund Gold Medal (defunct) was a prestigious art prize awarded by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts most years from 1883 to 1968. A Temple Medal recognized the best oil painting by an American artist shown in PAFA's annual e ...

Early life and education

McCarter was born 5 July 1864 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. In 1879, he began attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine arts where one of his instructors was

Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...

. However, he described the five years of his studies there as "lost years." In 1887, he went to Paris where he studied with

Puvis de Chavannes Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French painter known for his mural painting, who came to be known as "the painter for France". He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beau ...

Léon Bonnat Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat (20 June 1833 – 8 September 1922) was a French painter, Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Early life Bonnat was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in M ...

and Thomas Alexander Harrison of the

École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts The Beaux-Arts de Paris is a French ''grande école'' whose primary mission is to provide high-level arts education and training. This is classical and historical School of Fine Arts in France. The art school, which is part of the Paris Science ...

Career

While in Paris, McCarter became an apprentice in lithography to

Toulouse Lautrec Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in th ...

. He then returned to the USA and moved to New York to work as a graphic illustrator. McCarter drew illustrations for

Scribners Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawli ...

, Harpers,

McClure's ''McClure's'' or ''McClure's Magazine'' (1893–1929) was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with having started the tradition of muckraking journalism (investigative journ ...

and

Collier's ''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened in 1905 to ''Collie ...

magazines, among others. He also taught at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

. In 1902 he accepted a position as a watercolor teacher and the first instructor of illustration at his former school, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He was an instructor there for the next forty years. Although he began as an illustrator, by the 1920s McCarter concentrated on watercolor and oil painting of still lifes and landscapes. According to the art curator W. Douglass Paschal, McCarter "sought a path merging the compositional structures, brushwork and strong coloration of the

Post-Impressionists Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction aga ...

and Fauves he admired." McCarter became a strong advocate for modernism among his students at PAFA. Students who McCarter influenced included

Franklin C. Watkins Franklin Chennault Watkins (December 30, 1894 – December 4, 1972) was an American painter. Early life and education Born in New York City, Watkins was the son of Benjamin Franklin Watkins of Reidsville, North Carolina, and Shirley Chennault W ...

Charles Demuth Charles Henry Buckius Demuth (November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935) was an American painter who specialized in watercolors and turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism. "Search the history of Ameri ...

Norman Carton Norman Carton (January 7, 1908 – February 14, 1980) was an American artist and educator known for abstract expressionist art. He was born in the Ukraine region of Imperial Russia and moved to the United States in 1922 where he spent most of h ...

, and Arthur B. Carles.

Awards

Prizes awarded to McCarter included: bronze medal at the

Buffalo Exposition The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York, United States, from May 1 through November 2, 1901. The fair occupied of land on the western edge of what is now Delaware Park, extending from Delaware Avenue to Elmwood A ...

(1901), silver medal at the

Louisiana Purchase Exposition The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an World's fair, international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds tota ...

(1904), gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), the Beck Prize at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), the

Joseph Pennell Joseph Pennell (July 4, 1857 – April 23, 1926) was an American draftsman, etcher, lithographer and illustrator for books and magazines. A prolific artist, he spent most of his working life in Europe, and is known for his interest in landmarks, l ...

Memorial Prize for watercolor, PAFA (1940), the gold medal from

Art Club of Philadelphia The Art Club of Philadelphia, often called the Philadelphia Art Club, was a club in Philadelphia, founded on February 7, 1887, to advance the arts.

(1936),

Temple Gold Medal Joseph E. Temple Fund Gold Medal (defunct) was a prestigious art prize awarded by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts most years from 1883 to 1968. A Temple Medal recognized the best oil painting by an American artist shown in PAFA's annual e ...

at the 134th Annual Exhibition of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1938). He won the Fellowship Gold Medal for his “dreamlike and ethereal” oil painting titled ''Old Trappe Church'' in 1941.

Personal life

McCarter neither married nor had children. He died of a heart attack on 20 November 1942 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, aged 76. McCarter was buried at the Church of Messiah Cemetery in

Gwynedd, Pennsylvania Gwynedd is an unincorporated community in Lower Gwynedd Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. Gwynedd is located at the intersection of U.S. Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike. Notable person *Warder Cresson Warder Cresson (J ...

Selected works

File:On the City's Edge.jpg, ''On the City's Edge'', 1901, pen and ink drawing File:Great Nurse of Freedom.jpg, Illustration for the poem "The Sea is His" by

Edward Sandford Martin Edward Sandford Martin (2 January 1856 – 13 June 1939) was an American journalist and editor. Biography Edward S. Martin was born in 1856 on his grand-uncle Enos T. Throop's estate "Willowbrook" near Auburn, New York. The youngest son in his p ...

in 1898 Scribner's Magazine. File:Henry McCarter--Paul Verlaine--Gertrude Hall--1906.tif, From ''Poems of

Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the ''fin de siècle'' in international and ...

'', trans. by

Gertrude Hall Gertrude Hall (8 September 1863 – 28 February 1961), also known as Gertrude Hall Brownell, was an American writer of poems, short stories, novels, and nonfiction. She also translated works from the French. She was the second wife of American ...

, 1895 File:Three Women in a Garden.jpg, ''Three Women in a Garden'', 1922, oil on canvas,

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

References