George de Forest Brush
George de Forest Brush
1855 - 1941
American painter. He began his formal training at the National Academy of Design in New York and in 1873 entered the atelier of JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME in Paris, studying there and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for almost six years. Soon after his return to the USA in 1880, he was elected to the Society of American Artists. Thereafter he spent much time on both sides of the Atlantic, beginning in the American West and including lengthy stays in Paris, Florence, New York and Dublin, NH, where he purchased a farm in 1901.
Brush first attained prominence as a painter of Indian life, which he observed while living in Wyoming and Montana in 1881. His pictures (completed in the studio but frequently based on studies done in situ) focus on everyday life and domestic tribal customs, with strict attention paid to documentary detail, a trait adopted from Gérôme and exemplified in the Moose Chase (1888; Washington, DC, Smithsonian Amer. A. Mus.). In the 1890s Brush painted his first family group, the theme for which he is best known. Invariably his own wife and children posed for these works, for example Mother and Child (1894; New York, Met.). Brush imbued this and similar works with a feeling of holiness without the use of Christian iconography. [Ross C. Anderson. "Brush, George de Forest." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 4, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T011840.]
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