Worthington Whittredge
Worthington Whittredge
1820 - 1910
American painter. With little education but with a longing to be an artist, he went at the age of 17 to Cincinnati, OH, where he served an apprenticeship as a sign painter to his brother-in-law Almon Baldwin (1800–70). In the summer of 1842 Whittredge opened a daguerreotype studio in Indianapolis, IN, but left the following summer when it proved an unsuccessful venture. He then joined B. Jenks to work as a portrait painter in Charleston, WV, but dissolved the arrangement because of his partner’s alcoholism. Thereafter Whittredge decided to concentrate on landscapes, though he is documented as having painted some earlier. His first surviving landscape, Scene near Hawk’s Nest (1845; Cincinnati, OH, A. Mus.), is in the picturesque manner of the Hudson River school painter Thomas Doughty. A year later he adopted the style of Thomas Cole, as did William Lewis Sonntag, with whom he defined a distinctive regional style. Around the same time Whittredge began painting directly from nature. Rolling Hills (Atlanta, GA, High Mus. A.) has a light-filled palette that suggests contact with the Philadelphia artist Russell Smith (1812–96).
Despite his growing success, Whittredge decided to go to Europe for further training. After securing sufficient commissions from Cincinnati patrons, he left in May 1849, accompanied by Benjamin McConkey. They settled in Düsseldorf, and, like other American painters, Whittredge enjoyed the benefits of the Düsseldorf Akademie without formally enrolling in it, thanks to the protection of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. He lived for a year in the attic of the landscape painter Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910), then became a member of the circle around Carl Friedrich Lessing, whom he accompanied on a tour of the Harz Mountains in 1852. From 1853 his paintings, such as Summer Pastorale (Indianapolis, IN, Mus. A.), follow the naturalistic vein of Lessing’s follower Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Whittredge spent the summer of 1856 sketching in Switzerland with Albert Bierstadt; in September they moved to Rome, where they were joined later by Sanford Robinson Gifford and William Stanley Haseltine. Whittredge remained in Italy for three years painting scenic landscapes as souvenirs for tourists; like Landscape near Rome (1858; Youngstown, OH, Butler Inst. Amer. A.), these are in the prevailing Düsseldorf style.
Whittredge seems to have returned to America in 1859. After visiting Newport, RI, and Cincinnati, he moved to New York, where he rented quarters in the recently completed Tenth Street Studio Building and gained almost immediate recognition. In 1860 he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design, New York, becoming a full member two years later. View of West Point (Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.), the first work he painted after returning from Europe, shows that initially he experienced great difficulty adjusting to the differences in topography and style between American and European landscapes. However, his membership of the Century Club put him in contact with the mainstream of American art and thought. Through his friendships with the painter Asher B. Durand and the poet William Cullen Bryant, Whittredge developed a mature style that is seen in his great forest landscape, Old Hunting Ground (1864; Winston-Salem, NC, Reynolda House).
In summer 1866 Whittredge joined General John Pope’s inspection tour of the Missouri Territory, which consolidated his vision of the United States. He travelled to Colorado in 1870 with John Frederick Kensett and Gifford, and again in 1871 with John Smillie. Such Western scenes as Crossing the Ford (1867–70; New York, C. Assoc.) are unusual in treating the frontier not as mountainous vistas but as a pastoral Eden. The height of his career came in the mid-1870s: he served two terms as President of the National Academy of Design (1874–7) and was a prominent member of the paintings committees for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, responsibilities that kept him from painting.
By the late 1870s there was an evident change in Whittredge’s style, inspired by the Barbizon school. Such scenes of Newport of the early 1880s as Second Beach (Minneapolis, MN, Walker A. Cent.) show the heightened plein-air style of Charles-François Daubigny. In 1880 Whittredge moved to Summit, NJ, and his work from the mid-1880s, notably Dry Brook, Arkville (Manchester, NH, Currier Gal. A.), is marked by a new introspection under the influence of George Inness, who lived near by. By 1890 Whittredge had reverted to his earlier Hudson River school style, but he continued to experiment with the latest tendencies, including a modified Impressionism in Artist at his Easel (New York, Kennedy Gals). In 1893 he visited Mexico with Frederic Edwin Church, and he continued to paint with some regularity to the age of 83. [Anthony F. Janson. "Whittredge, Worthington." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 15, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T091451.]
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