Oliver Dennett Grover (1861

Earlville, Illinois Earlville is a city in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,613 at the 2020 census, down from 1,701 at the 2010 census. The city is part of the Ottawa, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area. History The Earlville Post Office ...

– 1927

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

), was an American landscape and mural painter, the son of lawyer Alonzo Jackson Grover.

Early life

Grover's family moved to Chicago early in his life. There he spent much of his time sketching at the Academy of Design. Showing great promise he was enrolled at Munich’s Royal Academy in 1879, where he studied under

Frank Duveneck Frank Duveneck (né Decker; October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919) was an American figure and portrait painter. Early life Duveneck was born in Covington, Kentucky, the son of German immigrant Bernhard Decker. Decker died in a cholera epidemic whe ...

.Opitz, Glenn B., ''Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers'', Apollo Books, Poughkeepsie, NY, 1988 At the age of 19 he exhibited at Munich’s International Exposition. Grover followed Duveneck to

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

and

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

, and then went on to study in Paris from 1883 to 1885 under

Gustave Boulanger Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger (25 April 1824 – 22 September 1888) was a French figurative painter and academic artist and teacher known for his Classical and Orientalist subjects. Education and career The Néo-Grecs and the Prix de Rom ...

Jean-Paul Laurens Jean-Paul Laurens (; 28 March 1838 – 23 March 1921) was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style. Biography Laurens was born in Fourquevaux and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexa ...

and Lefebvre.

Later years

He returned to Chicago in 1885 and was appointed as an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago for five years, also opening a studio and founding the Western Art Association. Between 1887 and 1892 he served on the faculty of the Chicago Art Academy. Ada Walter Shulz was among his pupils. The First Yerkes Prize was awarded to Grover in 1892 for his painting "''Thy Will Be Done''" showing a woman devastated by news she had just received, and which was exhibited at the

World’s Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

. Grover's reputation as a traditional painter and art authority was by this time firmly established in Chicago. He painted the "''Harem Scene''" in 1899, his contribution to the Orientalist genre. He exhibited three Venetian sketches at the St. Louis Universal Exposition, also showing at the

Pennsylvania Academy The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and Private university, private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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 ...

. He painted murals for the James Blackstone Memorial Library in the mid 1890s and for the Blackstone Memorial Library in Chicago in 1903, his lunettes there representing ''Art'', ''Literature'', ''Science'' and ''Labor''. His "''Ponte Vecchio''", "''Florence''" and "''Rocky Shore: Lake Garda''" were displayed at the

Panama–Pacific International Exposition The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, United States, from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely s ...

. Grover became an Associate of the

in 1913. During the last years of his life, he also became a board member of the Association of Arts and Industries which was a major influence in Chicago design in the 1920s and 1930s. Grover concentrated on portraits, landscapes and decorative designs, often making trips to Europe. Travelling to the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

he produced a number of landscape paintings of Banff.

Gallery

File:Oliver Dennett Grover04.jpg, ''Thy Will Be Done'' (1892) File:Oliver Dennett Grover03a.jpg, ''Harem Scene'' (1899)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grover, Oliver Dennett 1861 births 1927 deaths American muralists 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists