Sears Gallagher (1869–1955) was a prolific, commercially successful American artist proficient in multiple media: drawing, etching, watercolor and oil painting. His work consists largely of landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes depicting his native Boston and northern New England, especially

Monhegan Island Monhegan () is an island in the Gulf of Maine located in Lincoln County, Maine, United States. A plantation, a minor civil division in the state of Maine falling between unincorporated area and a town, it is located about off the mainland. Th ...

, Maine. Illustrating magazines and books provided steady work and income, and his etchings and prints attracted popular demand. Gallagher took his art seriously, adapted new techniques, and was open to the influence of European Impressionism. During the height of his career his watercolors were favorably compared to those of

Winslow Homer Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...

(1836–1910) and F. W. Benson (1862–1910), and his etchings and drypoints to those of

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...

(1834–1903).

Chronology

1869 Born in South

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, April 30 1887–89 Studied and worked in the Boston studio of Italian-born painter Tommaso Juglaris (1844–1925) 1888 Met and began studying with Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott (1846–1925), English-born painter 1891 Exhibited 4 watercolors at

Boston Art Club The Boston Art Club, Boston, Massachusetts, serves to help its members, as well as non-members, to access the world of fine art. It currently has more than 250 members. History The Boston Art Club was first conceived in Boston in 1854 with the co ...

annual exhibition 1892 With Triscott, made first trip to Monhegan Island, Maine 1895 Married Charlotte Dodge, April 16 1895–96 Studied at Academie Julian in Paris 1897 Settled in

West Roxbury, MA West Roxbury is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts bordered by Roslindale and Jamaica Plain to the northeast, the town of Brookline to the north, the cities and towns of Newton and Needham to the northwest and the town of Dedham to the ...

1903 Travel and painting in England, France, Italy 1904 Son Bradford born, June 13 1906 Daughter Katherine born, November 13 1945 Last one-man exhibition at Grand Central Galleries, New York 1955 Died in West Roxbury, MA, June 9

Training and early career

Gallagher was born in South Boston to parents who were members of the city's mercantile class; his father was a cabinetmaker and stove merchant and his mother was a descendant of

Massachusetts Bay Colony The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the ...

pilgrims. He seems to have had a natural talent for drawing, remarked on by family and friends in his early years.Chambers, 2006, p. 2. During the time he was a student at the

English High School of Boston The English High School of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, is one of the first public high schools in America, founded in 1821. Originally called The English Classical School, it was renamed The English High School upon its first relocation ...

he also studied with artist George H. Bartlett (1839–1923) in a private night school. He had a drawing selected for exhibition at the

in 1887, when he was only 18. While launching his career as an illustrator for magazines and books, he also pursued a career as an artist of etchings and watercolors, enhancing that career through additional training, first in Boston and then in Paris. For about two years, from 1887 to 1889, he studied figure drawing and worked in the Boston studio of Italian-born art teacher and muralist, Tommaso Juglaris (1844–1925). Chambers, 2007, p. 162. Gallagher also received instruction, especially in the techniques of etching, from

Charles H. Woodbury Charles Herbert Woodbury (July 14, 1864 – January 21, 1940), was an American marine painter. Biography Charles H. Woodbury was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, where his earliest work was part of the oeuvre of the group later known as the ...

(1865–1946), an accomplished and successful artist who founded the Ogunquit School of Art in Maine. Gallagher and Woodbury remained lifelong friends. After Juglaris returned to Italy, Gallagher began studying with Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott (1846–1925), an English-born painter with a growing reputation in Boston. In the Rapids

In 1892, Triscott and Gallagher made a summer trip to Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine. Monhegan, which Gallagher visited regularly for the next 40 years and where he bought a house in 1904, was a frequent subject of his painting. Its rocky shore and bold cliffs appear in such works as ''Crashing Surf, Monhegan, Maine''. His summer visits to Monhegan were often followed by fishing and sketching trips in the fall to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In April 1895, Gallagher married Charlotte Dodge and shortly thereafter left on a honeymoon to Europe, beginning in England but with the apparent goal of settling in Paris for further instruction.Chambers, 2007, p.165. Like such other Americans as Woodbury, F. W. Benson,

Edmund Tarbell Edmund Charles Tarbell (April 26, 1862August 1, 1938) was an American Impressionist painter. A member of the Ten American Painters, his work hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonia ...

(1862–1938), and

Childe Hassam Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...

(1859–1935), Gallagher joined the ateliers of

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 Alexand ...

(1838–1921) and

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (also known as Benjamin-Constant), born Jean-Joseph Constant (10 June 1845 – 26 May 1902), was a French painter and etcher best known for his Oriental subjects and portraits. Biography Benjamin-Constant was bor ...

(1845–1902) at the

Académie Julian The Académie Julian () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number a ...

and settled in to study and paint. Two of his watercolors from his work there were selected for inclusion in the 1896

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 ...

. By the time he and his wife returned to Boston in 1896, his reputation as a watercolorist and his success in Europe established him as an important young artist. Gallagher purchased a house in West Roxbury, MA, close to Boston, in 1897 and settled into a life of middle-class ease, remaining in the same house until his death. A son, Bradford, was born in 1904, and a daughter, Katherine, in 1906.

Mature career

Before 1900, Gallagher had eight exhibits in Boston, Providence, and Lowell: one of oil paintings and the rest watercolors and pen and ink drawings. The pace of exhibitions picked up considerably after the turn of the century, with a total of 46 between 1900 and 1929 and then tapered off to 11 between 1930 and 1939 and three in the 1940s. His exhibitions were routinely and positively reviewed in the two major art journals of the period, ''The Art News'' and ''American Art News'', as well as in the popular press, and his work was collected by individuals and major museums. Gallagher undertook numerous commissions to illustrate books and magazines. He did a series of 40 etchings of iconic Boston buildings and landscapes that were widely distributed and followed these with series on New York, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. Sales of his paintings and prints and his work as an illustrator earned Gallagher a steady income. He complemented this with teaching at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

's evening school.

Reputation and assessment

Gallagher enjoyed early success, both financially and in popular response, and through the 1920s and 1930s he occupied a prominent position in the American art world, being favorably compared to artists like Woodbury, Benson, and even Winslow Homer (1836–1910). His work was reviewed, for example, by the influential art critic Loring Holmes Dodd and included in a 1960 publication in which Dodd collected articles he had published over the years in the Worcester Evening Gazette. The collection presented Gallagher in the company of such other prominent illustrators and etchers as N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, and Howard Pyle. A 2012 exhibit catalog noted Gallagher's strength as a watercolorist: “Gallagher had a proclivity for calm and peaceful places, and he rendered images that elicit the feelings evoked by his sites in the viewer. He did so by the use of flowing washes of harmonious color and by holding detail to a minimum so as to sustain unity across a pictorial surface. Avoiding strong contrasts and abrupt spatial transitions, he favored soft tonal gradations and measured distances. The influences of impressionism on his art may be seen in his frequent use of animated and summary brushwork to express transitory aspects of nature and in his tendency to incorporate the tone of his paper’s reserves in a work as means of adding the sparkle of sunlight to a scene. Overall his art is characterized by an understated restraint, as he sought to emphasize the beauty of his subjects over a display of his technical versatility." Gallagher's reputation peaked around the time of World War II, and although he continued to paint and do etchings, by the time of his death he was rarely mentioned in academic and popular discussions of American art. In the 21st century, his work enjoyed only two exhibitions: prints at the

Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also the Library for the Commonwealth (formerly ''library of last recourse'') of the Commonweal ...

in 2007, and 34 watercolors at Spanierman Gallery in New York in 2012. Gallagher's low visibility might be explained by the very fact of his prolific output; he produced a quantity of work that may have diminished the relative value of individual paintings and earned him the label of being a "popular" artist rather than a master. It may also be that the large output necessitated repetition in subject matter and style, resulting in so many versions of similar scenes (for example, those of waves and rocks at Monhegan Island) that few attained individual recognition. Despite the wide circulation of his paintings and etchings in his lifetime and his own later work as a teacher of art, Gallagher seems not to have had a distinctive influence on other artists. Whatever his current reputation, Gallagher's work is worthy of respect. At core, he was a draftsman and painter with a superb capacity to evoke buildings, scenes, and figures. The underlying strength of his drawing is complemented by his skillful brushwork and strong sense of color. That he produced beautiful landscapes and seascapes, delightful book and magazine illustrations, and sharply defined etchings should be enough to draw attention to this successful artist, a notable American impressionist.

Collections

Gallagher's works are held in the following public institutions, among others:

Boston Athenaeum Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most ...

;

Colby College Museum of Art The Colby College Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Founded in 1959 and now comprising five wings, nearly 8,000 works and more than 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Colby Colleg ...

; Farnsworth Museum;

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

;

Portland Museum of Art The Portland Museum of Art, or PMA, is the largest and oldest public art institution in the U.S. state of Maine. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882. It is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District in Portland, Maine. Hi ...

(Maine);

Harvard Art Museums The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

; Smith College Museum;

New Britain Museum of American Art The New Britain Museum of American Art is an art museum in New Britain, Connecticut. Founded in 1903, it is the first museum in the country dedicated to American art. A total of 72,000 visits were made to the museum in the year ending June 30, 20 ...

;Print Club of Albany;

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

;

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...

. The catalog accompanying an exhibit of Gallagher's watercolors at the Spanierman Gallery in 2012 lists additional collections in which his work is represented, although these have not been independently verified: the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

;

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...

; the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

, Washington, D. C.; the

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

; the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

; and the

Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, Paris. His work was also part of the painting event in the art competition at the

1932 Summer Olympics The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held duri ...

Exhibitions

This list of exhibitions is based on Chambers's research and verified in news accounts in relevant issues of American Art News and The Art News. 1891 Boston Boston Art Club annual (4 watercolors) 1893 Boston Boston Art Club annual (3 watercolors) 1894 Boston Foster Brothers (pen & ink drawings) 1894 Providence same as Foster Brothers 1894 Lowell Westcott Studio (watercolors) 1896 Boston Boston Art Club (oil) 1896 Boston Foster Brothers 1898 Boston Boston Art Club 1900 Paris Universal Exposition 1901 Boston Boston Society of Watercolor Painters 1903 Boston Kimball Gallery (watercolors) 1903 Boston Boston Society of Watercolor Painters 1904 Boston Kimball Gallery (watercolors) 1905 Boston Hatfield's Gallery (watercolors) 1911 Boston Doll & Richard's Gallery (portraits & etchings) 1911 Boston Doll & Richard's Gallery (watercolors) 1912 Lowell Lowell Art Association 1912 Boston New Art Gallery of C. F. Libbie & Co.(watercolors) 1914 Boston Boston Art Club 1915 Boston Doll & Richard's Gallery (1st lithograph) 1916 Boston Doll & Richard's Gallery 1917 Boston Doll & Richards 1918 Boston Doll & Richards 1918 NYC Kennedy Galleries 1919 Boston Boston Art Club annual (painting) 1919 Boston Doll & Richards 1920 NYC Kennedy Galleries (watercolors) 1921 NYC Kennedy Galleries (7 etchings) 1921 Boston Doll & Richards 1922 NYC Anderson Galleries (arranged by Brooklyn Society of Etchers) 1922 NYC Kennedy & Co. (with G. E. Burr) 1922 Boston Irving-Casson Galleries (10 Boston etchings) 1922 Boston Doll & Richards 1922 Chicago Chicago Society of Etchers (jury & Logan Prize) 1922 Boston Doll & Richards 1923 Boston Goodspeed Print Shop 1923 Washington Corcoran (drypoints & etchings) 1923 Boston Doll & Richards (watercolors) 1923 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1923 Concord,NH Concord Art Association 1924 Boston Boston Art Club 1924 Boston Doll & Richards 1925 Boston Guild of Boston Artists 1925 Boston Doll & Richards 1926 Boston Doll & Richards (watercolors) 1926 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1927 Boston Doll & Richards (watercolors) 1927 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1928 Boston Doll & Richards 1928 NYC Macbeth Galleries 1928 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1928 Boston Doll & Richards (watercolors) 1929 Boston Doll & Richards (watercolors) 1929 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1930 Boston Boston City Club 1930 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1931 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1932 Boston Foster Brothers 1932 Boston Guild of Boston Artists 1932 Boston Doll & Richards (etchings) 1933 Boston Guild of Boston Artists (watercolors) 1935 Boston Doll & Richards 1936 Boston Doll & Richards 1938 Boston Doll & Richards 1939 Boston Doll & Richards 1940 Boston Doll & Richards 1943 Boston Guild of Boston Artists (watercolors) 1945 NYC Grand Central Galleries

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gallagher, Sears 1869 births 1955 deaths 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters Académie Julian alumni People from West Roxbury, Boston Olympic competitors in art competitions Painters from Massachusetts 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists