Lovell Birge Harrison (October 28, 1854, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 1929) was an American genre and landscape painter, teacher, and writer. He was a prominent practitioner and advocate 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 ...

Life

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 ...

, Birge Harrison was the brother of artist

T. Alexander Harrison Thomas Alexander Harrison (January 17, 1853 in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaOctober 13, 1930 in Paris, France), was an American marine painter who spent most of his career in France. Career He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Ph ...

. He studied first 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.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 ...

as a positive influence on his own teaching style.Biography, The Johnson Collection
He then went to Paris on the advice of

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...

to study with

Carolus-Duran Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (Lille 4 July 1837 – 17 February 1917 Paris), was a French painter and art instructor. He is noted for his stylish depictions of members of high society in Third Republic France. Biograph ...

and at the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...

under

Cabanel Alexandre Cabanel (; 28 September 1823 – 23 January 1889) was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter. According to ''Diccionario Encicloped ...

. In 1881 Harrison exhibited at the

Paris Salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

, and in 1882 his Salon entry, ''Novembre'', became one of the first paintings by an American artist to be purchased by the French government. Discussing the painting years later Harrison attributed its handling to "A Scandinavian painter (who) had shown me the secret of atmospheric painting....and....the importance of vibration and refraction in landscape painting."Gerdts, et al, 230 The paintings of this period included peasant subjects that showed the influence of

Jules Bastien-Lepage Jules Bastien-Lepage (1 November 1848 – 10 December 1884) was a French painter closely associated with the beginning of naturalism, an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement. His most famous work is his lan ...

. The limited palette and wistful mood of the early works would continue to be distinguishing features of Harrison's later landscape paintings. Lowell Birge Harrison Novembre

Harrison met the Australian painter Eleanor Ritchie in the course of his summer landscape travels; they married and returned to America, where he began to exhibit annually 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 fin ...

, and after 1889 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. Temporarily forced to stop painting on account of ill health, he spent considerable time between 1889 and 1893 traveling in Australia, the

South Seas Today the term South Seas, or South Sea, is used in several contexts. Most commonly it refers to the portion of the Pacific Ocean south of the equator. In 1513, when Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa coined the term ''Mar del Sur'', ...

, and

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...

, and wrote and illustrated articles for publication. In 1891 Harrison and his wife moved to California, but after her death in 1895 while expecting their first child, Harrison remarried and moved to

Plymouth, Massachusetts Plymouth (; historically known as Plimouth and Plimoth) is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Located in Greater Boston, the town holds a place of great prominence in American history, folklore, and culture, and is known as ...

, where he became a leader of the Tonalist school. He then relocated again, this time to

Woodstock, New York Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States, in the northern part of the county, northwest of Kingston, NY. It lies within the borders of the Catskill Park. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 in 2000 ...

at the turn of the century where he founded a school based on his experiments in Tonalism. In 1906 Harrison helped found the Art Students League Summer School in Woodstock, where his pupils would include his niece, the architect and painter

Margaret Fulton Spencer Margaret Fulton Spencer (1882–1966) was a painter and early American woman architect who designed and built the architecturally unique dude ranch Las Lomas Estates outside of Tucson, Arizona. She was the second woman to become a member of the Am ...

. He became known especially for his paintings of landscapes in the snow. Harrison received numerous prizes and medals, including the gold medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1910. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1910,

National Institute of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqua ...

New York Water Color Club 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 ...

Society of American Artists The Society of American Artists was an American artists group. It was formed in 1877 by artists who felt the National Academy of Design did not adequately meet their needs, and was too conservative. The group began meeting in 1874 at the home of ...

, and was director of the landscape school of the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school at American Fine Arts Society, 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 ...

. In 1909 Harrison's lectures were published in a book entitled ''Landscape Painting''; the book was cited as "a standard work for students, and was referred to as "a fine commentary on the technique of the craft."''The New York Times'', November 14, 1909
/ref> According to art historian

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 ...

, Harrison was then "the leading writer in America on contemporary landscape painting."Gerdts, 296 Harrison's writing reveals an interest in the retinal perception of color, and in tonal harmony; he believed that the term

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

was descriptive not merely of the recent movement in French painting, but referred to any work done "honestly and sincerely" before nature. Harrison's painting exemplified the lessons he taught, emphasizing the practice of open-air observation rather than technical facility. Harrison's pupils included

Florence Ballin Cramer Florence Ballin Cramer (1877–1971) was an American modernist artist known for her landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and nudes, each tending to have what one close observer called "a clearly expressed a mood or attitude as well as presenti ...

Mary Gine Riley Mary Gine Riley (April 22, 1883 - February 1, 1939) was an American painter. Her middle name is sometimes given as Grimes. Riley was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Charles Valentine Riley and Emilie Conzelman Riley, and spent most of h ...

and

Florence Thaw Florence Thaw (February 17, 1864 – March 5, 1940) was an American painter. Born in New York City, Thaw studied with Abbott Handerson Thayer and L. Birge Harrison in that city; she also attended the Académie Julian in Paris. She was married to ...

Paintings

* ''Winter twilight'' (1910, 30 x 40 cm) * ''Meadow in the Connecticut'' * ''November'' (1881, musée des beaux-arts de Rennes, France) * ''Le moulin rouge'' (1909) * ''Fifth Avenue in Winter'' * ''A Puff of Steam''

Notes

Sources

''Harrison Genealogy Repository''

''Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design'', p. 249
* Gerdts, William H. ''American Impressionism''. Abbeville, 1984. * Gerdts, William H., et al. ''Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France 1865–1915''. Terra Foundation of the Arts, 1992.
Biography, The Johnson Collection

''The New York Times'', November 14, 1909
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Harrison, Lovell Birge Artists from Philadelphia 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters 1854 births 1929 deaths Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts National Academy of Design members Art Students League of New York faculty Painters from Pennsylvania American genre painters American landscape painters 20th-century American non-fiction writers American art writers People from New Hope, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Impressionism 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Students of Thomas Eakins Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists