Thomas Worthington Whittredge (May 22, 1820 – February 25, 1910) was an American artist of the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, ...

. Whittredge was a highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading Hudson River School artists including

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was no ...

and

Sanford Robinson Gifford Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880) was an American landscape painter and a leading member of the second generation of Hudson River School artists. A highly-regarded practitioner of Luminism, his work was noted for its ...

. He traveled widely and excelled at

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

painting, many examples of which are now in major museums. He served as president of 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 ...

from 1874 to 1875 and was a member of the selection committees for the 1876

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 ...

Centennial Exposition The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair to be held in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the ...

and the 1878 Paris Exposition, both important venues for artists of the day.

Childhood

Whittredge was born in a log cabin on the farm of his father, Captain Joseph Whittredge, near the

Little Miami River The Little Miami River ( sjw, Cakimiyamithiipi) is a Class I tributary of the Ohio River that flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed May 26, 2011 through five counties ...

not fifty miles northeast of

Springfield, Ohio Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County, Ohio, Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River (Ohio), Mad River, Buck Creek, and Beaver Creek, approxim ...

in 1820.Whittredge, Worthington, 1820-1910, S. (Sheldon) Keck, and John I. H. (John Ireland Howe) Baur. The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge, 1820-1910. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum Press, 1942. Prior to moving to Ohio and before Worthington was born, his family had lived in New England where his father was a sea captain. As a boy, Worthington was an avid trapper and by the age of sixteen, had made $400 from trapping animals, preparing, and selling their pelts (approx. $11,200 in 2020). He recalls his works, stating in his autobiography: "I certainly earned this sum. Often, in the coldest nights of winter, in rain, in snow and sleet, have I got out of my warm bed and gone sometimes as far as three miles to look after my traps and been home again in daylight, to begin my regular duties on my father's farm." During the first sixteen years of his life, he had little time, if any, for activities outside of the field and forests, and did not have any formal education until he was about seventeen.

Young Adult Life

At this time, his parents granted him permission to travel to

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, where he would live with his sister and work as a

house painter A house painter and decorator is a tradesman responsible for the painting and decorating of buildings, and is also known as a decorator or house painter.''The Modern Painter and Decorator'' volume 1 1921 Caxton The purpose of painting is to imp ...

. This decision to leave for Cincinnati was in part his desire to become an artist, an endeavor his father would find disgraceful, a claim supported by Whittredge's

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, as he states: "To him orthington's fatherthe very word 'artist' was an

anathema Anathema, in common usage, is something or someone detested or shunned. In its other main usage, it is a formal excommunication. The latter meaning, its ecclesiastical sense, is based on New Testament usage. In the Old Testament, anathema was a cr ...

, any man who proposed to spend his life dabbling with crayons and paints was, in my father's estimation, a lost soul, and, in addition, a very foolish one." Thomas Worthington Whittredge - Albert Gallatin - NPG

Thomas Worthington Whittredge - Albert Gallatin - NPG

Soon after beginning his work in house painting, he graduated to painting signs where he taught himself at night. He briefly made daguerrotypes and for a span of a few years painted portraits while traveling the country but soon became dissatisfied. Whittredge found his paintings "colorless, dark, ugly and not fit to exist." He found that portraits required too much draftsmanship, a skill he estimated himself lacking. Rather, he found his strengths lay in that of color and simplification, matching the stylistic demands for landscapes of the time. Of the portraits he painted, he considered his best work - which he considered "not a bad one" - to be of a gentleman he befriended,

Henry Ward Beecher Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the Abolitionism, abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery ...

. In 1843, Whittredge returned to Cincinnati where he began as a landscape artist, learning much himself, but also learned from other artists in his area, whether they lived there or were simply passing through. During the 1840s, there was a great desire for landscapes which Whittredge painted many of during this time, and he quickly gained a good reputation locally from locals, who he would spend his time conversing with, as well as wealthy patrons who would sponsor his work. In 1846, he sent one of his landscapes to the

in New York, where it was accepted. The President of the Academy of the time,

Asher B. Durand Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796, – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School. Early life Durand was born in, and eventually died in, Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He was the eighth ...

sent Worthington a complimentary note for his work. Worthington Whittredge in His Tenth Street Studio

Adult life

Worthington wanted to visit Europe and obtained many advance orders on paintings, so that he would have work once he arrived in the foreign land. His intention for traveling to Europe was threefold; to refine his craft and become a better painter, study the works of contemporary artists, whose work exists in Europe, and receive instruction from current masters of the art. On his was to Europe, he stopped in London on his 29th birthday, May 22, 1849. Arriving in Germany he settled at the Düsseldorf Academy, a major art school of the period, and studied with

Emanuel Leutze Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (May 24, 1816July 18, 1868) was a German-American history painter best known for his 1851 painting '' Washington Crossing the Delaware''. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Biography Leutze was born ...

. At Düsseldorf, Whittredge befriended Bierstadt and posed for Leutze as both

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

and a steersman in Leutze's famous painting, '' Washington Crossing the Delaware'', now in the collection of the

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 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He is associated with the

Düsseldorf school of painting The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the A ...

. Whittredge spent nearly ten years in Europe, meeting and traveling with other important artists including

Sanford Gifford Sanford Robinson Gifford (July 10, 1823 – August 29, 1880) was an American landscape painter and a leading member of the second generation of Hudson River School artists. A highly-regarded practitioner of Luminism, his work was noted for its ...

. He returned to the United States in 1859 and settled in New York City where he launched his career as a

artist painting in the Hudson River School style. Crossing the River Platte by Worthington Whittredge, 1871

Whittredge journeyed across the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

to the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

in 1865 with

and

John Frederick Kensett John Frederick Kensett (March 22, 1816 – December 14, 1872) was an American landscape painter and engraver born in Cheshire, Connecticut. He was a member of the second generation of the Hudson River School of artists. Kensett's signature works ...

. The trip resulted in some of Whittredge's most important works—unusually oblong, sparse

s that captured the stark beauty and linear horizon of the Plains. Whittredge later wrote in his autobiography, "I had never seen the plains or anything like them. They impressed me deeply. I cared more for them than for the mountains... Whoever crossed the plains at that period, notwithstanding its herds of buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits, could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence." Whittredge moved to

Summit, New Jersey Summit is a city in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is located on a ridge in northern- central New Jersey, within the Raritan Valley and Rahway Valley regions in the New York metropolitan area. At the 2010 United Sta ...

, in 1880 where he continued to paint for the rest of his life. He died in 1910 at the age of 89 and was buried upon his death in the Springfield, New Jersey cemetery.

Works

Whittredge's paintings are now in the collections of numerous museums, including the

, the

Utah Museum of Fine Arts The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is the region's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works ...

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

, the

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 ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

and the

Louvre Museum The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

Paris, France Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. More can be seen below in the Gallery.

Gallery

File:The Trout Pool.jpg, ''The Trout Pool'' (1870) File:Worthington Whittredge - Landscape with Haywain - 1975.20 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tiff, ''Landscape with Haywain'' (1861) File:Thomas Worthington Whittredge - Crow's nest.jpg, ''Crow's Nest'' (1848) File:The Old Hunting Grounds by Worthington Whittredge, 1864.jpg, ''The Old Hunting Grounds'' (1864) File:Worthington Whittredge - Indian Encampment.jpg, ''Indian Encampment'' (c.1870) File:Evening Glow by Worthington Whittredge.jpg, ''Evening Glow'' (unknown) File:Whittredge Worthington The Camp Meeting.jpg, ''The Camp Meeting'' (1874)

Notes

External links

*
Gallery of Paintings by Worthington Whittredgewww.ThomasWorthingtonWhittredge.org
99 works by Worthington Whittredge
Reynolda House Museum of American Art''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 Whittredge (see index)
''Hudson River school visions: the landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Whittredge (see index) {{DEFAULTSORT:Whittredge, Worthington 1820 births 1910 deaths 19th-century American painters 19th-century American male artists American male painters 20th-century American painters Hudson River School painters People from Summit, New Jersey People from Springfield, Ohio Artists of the American West 20th-century American male artists