William Louis Sonntag Sr. (1822–1900) was an American landscape painter.

Life and work

Born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1822, he traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, at the age of 21 and perfected his technique. Becoming an established and highly regarded landscape artist, he began making trips to Florence, Italy in 1853. Several of these trips were made with his friend

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. In 1856, Sonntag permanently moved to New York to become a leading painter of

Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...

landscapes of several scenes from his travels in Italy. Sonntag was a member of the group known as the Hudson River School. Some of his paintings go beyond the movement to a grandiose expression of

Manifest Destiny Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the 19th century in the United States, 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. There were three basic tenets to the concept: * The special vir ...

. There is strong evidence that several of Sonntag's pieces were scenes he had seen from photographs only. ''Grand Canyon, Yellowstone River, Wyoming'', for example, is a landscape that Sonntag never traveled to. It is most likely based on a photograph taken by

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of the canyon in 1885. His son, William Louis Sonntag Jr. (1869–1898), was also a painter, and an illustrator.

Gallery

File:Brooklyn Museum - Scene in the White Mountains - William Louis Sonntag - overall.jpg, ''Scene in the White Mountains'',

Brooklyn Museum 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 ...

File:On_the_Potomac_Sonntag.jpg, ''On the Potomac'', Walters Art Museum File:Autumn Morning on the Potomac LACMA M.58.33.jpg, ''Autumn Morning on the Potomac'', LACMA

References

External links

''American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Sonntag Sr. (see index). * *

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sonntag, William Louis American landscape painters 1822 births 1900 deaths Artists from Pennsylvania Artists from Cincinnati Hudson River School painters 19th-century American painters American male painters 19th-century American male artists