Adam Emory Albright American California Impressionist Artist signed, ink drawing, 1898, 14 x 20", 21 x 27 1/2" framed.
Born in Monroe, Wisconsin, Adam Albright was one of the first students at the newly established Art Institute of Chicago from 1881 to 1883 and went on to become a noted landscape, still life, and figure painter, especially of country children. Likely some of his earliest work was done in Kansas because he was a graduate of Kansas University.His style was Impressionism mixed with Realism, and strongly opposing the Modernism of the early 20th century, he said: "They give you boiled squash with a mule's foot on it and call that art." (Richter 24)At the Chicago Art Institute, he was a student of Henry Fenton Spread and John Vanderpoel. He also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1883 to 1886 with Thomas Eakins, and in Paris with Benjamin Constant and also in Munich. He established his studio in Chicago in 1888 and became President of the Chicago Watercolor Club and was a member of the Chicago Academy of Design. Apparently early in his career, he chose his subject of juvenile subjects for which he became famous, and after the Columbian Exposition when he was exposed to Impressionism, his work became more colorful and sun filled. From 1908, he spent many summers at the art colony of Brown County, Indiana, and from 1917 frequently spent winters in Arizona where he painted desert landscapes and figures. He was a teacher at the Albright Atelier, in Lamar, Missouri and also lived in Winnetka and Warrenville, Illinois.About him, William Gerdts wrote: "No other Chicago artist's work was so widely exhibited at the Art Institute; . . . A constant flow of articles appeared about the artist and his work, all praising his innate sympathy with childhood and with the rural environment and referring to him as the 'James Whitcomb Riley of the Brush.' " (Art Across America, Vol 2).

14 x 20 in

10 lb