Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer

Walter Launt Palmer’s snow scenes earned him a reputation as a master of capturing winter on canvas. Influenced primarily by the regionalist principles of the Hudson River School, Palmer’s travels through the Catskill Mountains, Hudson River Valley, Paris and Venice are reflected in his landscapes, as well as his domestic interiors and portraits. 

Born into an artistic Albany, New York household Palmer grew up and interacted with many of the artistic luminaries of his time including Frederic E. Church, James and William Hart, George Boughton, Homer Dodge Martin, and Edward Gay. Palmer studied portrait painting with Charles Loring Elliot and landscape painting with Frederic Church in his early teens, and at the age of eighteen had his work accepted for a show at The National Academy of Design in New York.

In 1873 the Palmer family traveled to Europe and visited Scotland, France, Germany and Italy. While there Palmer studied with Charles Carolus Duran. During his time in Europe Palmer also spent time with many other artists including John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, and Frank Duveneck. On his first visit to Venice Palmer was struck by the city’s natural and historical beauty and began painting its canals, churches, buildings, and interiors, subjects which he returned to often throughout his career.
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At the age of twenty-four Palmer had become a protégé of Frederick Church, and ultimately shared a studio with him in New York city from 1878-1881. When Palmer and Church parted ways professionally, Palmer returned briefly to Europe and upon his return moved back to his native Albany. In 1890 he married Georgianna Myers, daughter of an Albany department store magnate, who unfortunately died in childbirth two years later. Palmer later married Zoe de Vautrin Wyndham.

A large number of Palmer’s canvases were painted from Palmer’s detailed notes, sketches, and photographs, which he compiled over time. He also was extremely meticulous about keeping records of his works, something he and Frederick Church had in common. 

While Palmer’s many Venetian scenes were in vogue among his clients and provided a steady income for the artist, he was equally if not better known for his luscious renditions of snowy woods and streams. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired his snowscape Silent Dawn. Many of his winter scenes earned him awards and prizes from various art clubs. Palmer attributed much of his success with winter snow scenes to painters John Ruskin and other Pre-Raphaelites who inspired his experimentation with blue shadows on traditional white snow. He was able to capture the variations of colors reflected in the winter landscapes around the Hudson River Valley. In 1908, the New York Times art critic covering Palmer's annual exhibition at the Noe Galleries in New York wrote,
        
        Mr. Palmer is a devotee of the bleak and wintry season of
        the year, when everything is snowed under, that is, except
        Mr. Palmer's work, and all but one of these fourteen pictures
        are snow scenes-- the exception is a hot, turgid, sunny
        Venice... as rosy red and warm as his snow pictures
        are blue and blue, and Mr. Palmer is no less happy in both.¹

Walter Launt Palmer lived in Albany from 1882 until 1932 when he died of pneumonia. The Walter Launt Palmer Collection now resides in the Library at the Albany Institute of History & Art and includes diaries and personal papers, photographs, and his studio books, which document the provenance of much of Palmer’s work.

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1876 into an artistic family, Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel's mother was an artist, and her great grand-father a Royal Academician in London. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Vanderpoel and in New York City with William M. Chase. 

For several years she taught at the AIC and established a reputation in Milwaukee as a portrait painter. A commission from the Sante Fe Railroad Company to paint scenes in their ticket offices brought her to California. 

Arriving in San Francisco in 1903, she became a pupil of William Keith. Learning of her proposed move to Southern California, Keith suggested that she contact Elmer Wachtel. A romance blossomed and they married in 1904. After Elmer’s death in 1929, she was inactive for a few years but continued to live in their Arroyo Seco home; by the early 1930s she was painting and exhibiting again. 

Mrs. Wachtel worked exclusively with watercolors until after her husband’s death and then used both watercolor and oil. Regular exhibitions with both the New York and California Watercolor Societies made her paintings popular on both coasts. Her early works are tighter and more meticulously detailed than those produced after 1920. After her marriage, the artist dropped the "u" in her surname and spelled it "Kavanagh". She died at her home in Pasadena in 1954.

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

Jay Connaway

A student of the sky, waves, and snow-covered hills of Maine and Vermont, Jay Connaway belonged to the generation that presented the region as timeless and quiet in the face of modernity and ensured that the image of New England maintained a prominent role in the American imagination. 

Connaway enjoyed a reputation as one of the most promising young marine painters of the 1920s. Prolific, well-known, and highly regarded both as an artist and a teacher, Connaway moved to Maine in 1922 and took up permanent residence on Monhegan Island with his wife Louise in 1931. For 17 years, Connaway observed and painted the ocean and its many moods in the tradition of Winslow Homer and Rockwell Kent before moving to Vermont in 1947 where he lived out his life.

Born in Indiana, Connaway studied in New York City at the Arts Students League under William Merritt Chase before interrupting his studies to volunteer for service in the First World War. Upon discharge from the army, Connaway studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts before returning to the United States and settling in New England. Sticking to his guns as abstraction gained in popularity in the years after World War II, Connaway’s bold brushwork and subtle palate served as hallmarks of his unique style of masculine Impressionism.

Connaway enjoyed close to 90 one-man shows in his lifetime. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1933 and a full academician in 1943. His work was exhibited at the leading galleries of his day, including Macbeth, Vose, Kennedy, and Doll & Richards. In his own lifetime Connaway’s vision of the landscape of New England could be found hanging at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Martha Walter

A Philadelphia native, Martha Walter (1875-1976) studied art at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art from 1895–98 and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. She was taught by William Merritt Chase. She won the school's Toppan Prize and Cresson Traveling Scholarship. In 1909 also she won the school's Mary Smith Prize for the best painting by a resident female artist. On her scholarship she traveled to Spain Italy, the Netherlands and France. In France she received tuition from Rene Menard and Lucien Simon at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

She went on to teach art at Chase's New York School of Art.

Her estate was purchased in the late 1960s by the David David Gallery of Philadelphia.

Martha Walter

Martha Walter

Martha Walter

Martha Walter

Martha Walter

Martha Walter