Julian Alden Weir
American, 1852-1919
Weir was born on August 30, 1852, the second to last of sixteen children, and raised in West Point, New York. His father was painter Robert Walter Weir, a professor of drawing at the Military Academy at West Point. Julian Weir received his first art training at the National Academy of Design in the early 1870s before enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1873. While in France he studied under the famous French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, and became good friends with Jules Bastien-Lepage. Weir met James McNeill Whistler in London before returning to New York City in 1877. Upon his return to NYC, Weir became a charter member of the Society of American Artists and continued exhibiting his work at the National Academy of Design, where he first displayed his paintings in 1875. He earned wages through portrait commissions and teaching art classes at the Cooper Union Women’s Art School, the Art Students League and in private classes. In the 1880s Weir moved to rural Ridgefield, Connecticut after having acquired farm property through his marriage to Anna Baker in 1883. While here, he strengthened his friendship with artists Albert Pinkham Ryder and John Henry Twachtman. The art of Weir and Twachtman was especially well-aligned, and the two sometimes painted and exhibited together. Both taught at the Art Students League. In 1889, the two artists exhibited and sold a large portion of their paintings at Ortgies Gallery in New York. Weir was also close friends with the still life and landscape painter Emil Carlsen who summered with Weir on his farm, before purchasing his own home in Falls Village, Connecticut. The pastoral setting of his farms held a special place in Weir’s heart. They were a healthy escape from the hustle and bustle of urban New York City. Weir loved working in the city, but it often became too much for him to bear. Branchville and Windham served as comfortable getaways. By 1891 Weir had reconciled his earlier misgivings about impressionism and adopted the style as his own. During the remainder of his life Weir painted impressionist landscapes and figurative works, many of which centered on his Connecticut farms at Branchville and Windham. His style varied from traditional, vibrant impressionism to a more subdued and shadowy tonalism. He also became skilled at etching. As a rule, his paintings done after 1900 showed a renewed interest of the academicism prevalent in the work of his younger days, with subjects treated less realistically and a greater emphasis placed on drawing and design. In 1897, Weir became a member of the Ten American Painters, generally known as The Ten, a group of painters who left the Society of American Artists in late 1897 to protest the what they saw as the overemphasis on Classical and Romantic Realism over Impressionism by the Society. The Ten exhibited for twenty years until its demise.
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