Aaron Draper Shattuck
Aaron Draper Shattuck
1832 - 1928
American painter. He began his career as a portrait painter in Boston, MA, but moved to New York in 1852 to enrol in antique and life classes at the National Academy of Design; he first exhibited there in 1855. During his studies he turned to landscape painting, becoming a successful member of the second generation of the HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL. Such wilderness and marine paintings as Autumnal Snow on Mt Washington (1856; Poughkeepsie, NY, Vassar Coll., Frances Lehman Loeb A. Cent.) combine precise foreground detail with a more painterly realism in the middle- and background, following the Hudson River tradition. Inspired by the American Pre-Raphaelite movement, Shattuck produced a number of carefully observed nature studies including Leaf Study with Yellow Swallowtail (c. 1859; Santa Barbara, CA, Jo Ann and Julian Ganz jr priv. col.). Many of his works also reveal a knowledge of the Luminist aesthetic, with its concentration on soft, lyrical light and colour and a quiet, poetic evocation of nature. During the 1870s Shattuck’s subject-matter shifted from wilderness to pastoral themes, reflecting the growing taste in America for the mood of Barbizon school pictures. Because of his discontent with the art world and a dissatisfaction with his own work, complicated by a serious illness, Shattuck stopped painting in 1888. Thereafter he experimented in horticulture and animal breeding and invented a patented metal key for stretching canvases. [John Walker Myers. "Shattuck, Aaron Draper." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T078056.]
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