John F. Francis (August 13, 1808 – November 15, 1886) was an American painter, primarily of

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

Biography

Francis was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, Pennsylvania. Predominantly self-taught as an artist, he worked until 1845 as a portrait painter in central and eastern Pennsylvania. Francis's portraits reveal his early fascination with minute detail. In 1845 Francis began exhibiting 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.Philadelphia Art Union; both museums promoted American artists by awarding paintings to subscribers using lottery-like drawings. It was in this period that he began to concentrate on still lifes, which had been established as a popular genre in Philadelphia by

Raphaelle Peale Raphaelle Peale (sometimes spelled Raphael Peale) (February 17, 1774 – March 4, 1825) is considered the first professional American painter of still-life. Biography Peale was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the fifth child, though eldest survivin ...

and other painters. His first known still life is dated 1850, and by 1854 he had ceased to paint anything else. Francis became known as a leading painter of luncheon and dessert still lifes, developing an intricate vocabulary of forms required by his specialized subject.

William H. Gerdts William Henry Gerdts Jr. (January 18, 1929 – April 14, 2020) was an American art historian and professor of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Gerdts was the author of over twenty-five books on American art. An expert in American Impressio ...

writes, "Of all the mid-century still-life specialists, Francis was the most painterly. There is often a freshness and a brio to his paint application that successfully balance his sure delineation of form and his establishment of texture." Nearly all of his paintings depict fruits and desserts. He painted many replicas of his works, with his style displaying little change over the course of his career. According to art historian

Alfred Frankenstein Alfred Victor Frankenstein (October 5, 1906 – June 22, 1981) was an art and music critic, author, and professional musician. He was the long-time art and music critic for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' from 1934 to 1965. He was noted for champ ...

, "his blond, high-keyed palette always provides one of the most distinctive accents in a general exhibition of American still life". Few of his paintings can be dated after 1872, and none after 1880. He was for the most part forgotten by the time of his death in Jeffersonville, West Norriton, in 1886. In 2013 a pair of his still lifes was appraised at $100,000.

References

Citations Bibliography * *

External links

American paintings & historical prints from the Middendorf collection
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Francis (no. 20) {{DEFAULTSORT:Francis, John (painter) 1808 births 1886 deaths 19th-century American painters American male painters American still life painters Artists from Philadelphia People from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Painters from Pennsylvania 19th-century American male artists