Jean Leon Gerome Ferris was an American painter best known for his series of 78 scenes from American history, entitled The Pageant of a Nation, the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist.
Background
He was born in Philadelphia, derived his name, as well as, in some respects, his manner as an artist, from Jean Leon Gerome, the celebrated painter of France.
His mother, Elizabeth Anastasia (Moran) Ferris, was a sister of the Philadelphia artists Edward, Peter, and Thomas Moran.
His father, Stephen James Ferris, was a painter and etcher of note in old Philadelphia, when Christian Schussele was the teacher of painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Education
Gerome Ferris began his studies in Philadelphia under his father and Schussele.
He studied for a time in London and in Madrid, and traveled through France, Spain, and Morocco painting small scenes of the life he saw, making these early efforts in genre in order to acquire from studies of the living model technique later to be used in his interpretation of history.
Career
The former was a devotee of Gerome and Fortuny, and in 1881 he took his son to Spain to pursue the footsteps of the latter artist. The younger Ferris thus began his career in an atmosphere of the finest of the fine arts, where his tradition and inspiration were coupled with vigorous drawing and educated fidelity to fact.
In Granada, where his father was painting a portrait of the Marquesa de Heredia, Ferris sold to that lady the first of his pictures. Beginning thus in the land and under the shadow of Fortuny it was natural, as a next step, for him to enter the Academie Julian in Paris in 1884 to study under Bouguereau, and while there to receive from the great artist for whom he was named the "most valuable personal criticism, " and the direction to confine his attention to historical painting.
In 1888 he went to England and Belgium to furnish his mind for the delightful and engrossing task he had adopted. He made studies of the seventeenth century, its architecture, customs, dress--always with the idea of a series of paintings of the history of his own country.
He had considerable skill in handicraft; and built in miniature the boats, the caravels, and the battleships he painted. The accurate knowledge thus gained imparted a sense of reality to his canvases.
The secret of his art was the application of the careful technique caught from France to the things of home. About 1900 he began the series of some seventy historical paintings which constituted his greatest work. They carry the spectator from the adventures by sea of the early settlement of America, through all the stages of the unfolding drama of the nation's development down to Abraham Lincoln.
Two later scenes were added, "A Word to the Kaiser" in 1902, and a marine, "Sunk Without Trace, " in 1917. It was the artist's purpose to give consecutively the story of the American people. To effect this object he arranged with the City of Philadelphia that all his work would be shown, appropriately, in that room in Independence Hall where Washington was inaugurated in 1793.
The collection now (1930) hangs in a special gallery in Congress Hall as a loan to the city and under agreements that forbid its being scattered.
The antique paper used in this book, the insignia and postmarks, all from the hand of the artist, would deceive a connoisseur, if the title of the volume were not given as "Sundri Impostures Innocentes: Pictor J. L. G. Ferris, Philadelphia, MCMXXVIII. "
He died in Philadelphia, where he had lived most of his fruitful and happy life.
Achievements
He made special study of early American vehicles and ordnance, and turned over to the New York Historical Society and the National Museum much of the data he accumulated; models constructed on the basis of his studies are now in Congress Hall Museum, Philadelphia.
Views
His exquisite and delicate art savored of the Gallic master, but with the difference that it was devoted to native American subjects.
Quotations:
At the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts he acquired the gift of drawing, of which his son wisely said: "What success I may have had in depicting the human face and expression is owing to his instruction. He knew more about the fundamental principles of their production than any artist I have ever met" (information from Mrs. Ferris)
Personality
His humor showed itself in his droll smile and in such deft extravaganzas as his volume of silhouettes of the great ladies and gentlemen of the Revolution, many known, not a few invented, and only one genuine.
Ferris was whimsical, genial, and witty.
Connections
On May 17, 1894, he had married Annette S. Ryder of Brewster, New York. They had one daughter who died before her father.
