Background
John Whetten Ehninger was born in New York City, the son of George and Eliza (Whetten) Ehninger.
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JOHN WHETTEN EHNINGER
Edit ProfileEducation
He graduated B. A. from Columbia College in 1847.
Immediately after taking his degree, he was sent to Europe to study painting, spending his earlier years at Düsseldorf, with Leutze.
Career
On his second visit to Europe he worked in the Paris studio of Thomas Couture, an eminent historical painter who carried on the traditions of Gros and Paul Dela- roche. He visited the principal European art galleries and in 1850 attained his first popular success with “Peter Stuyvesant, ” illustrating an incident in Washington Irving’s History of New York, which was engraved for the American Art Union. He made many trips to Europe, the last one of which occurred a year before his death. While abroad he made illustrations for the Illustrated Times and the Illustrated Nett's. He also drew designs for gift editions of Longfellow’s Courtship of Miles Standish, Hood’s Bridge of Sighs, and Ye Legende of St. Gwendoline, founded upon one of Tennyson’s Idylls. The latter illustrations were reproduced by photographs.
He died suddenly of apoplexy at Saratoga Springs, N. Y. , where for years he had made his home.
Achievements
Membership
National Academy of Design
Personality
In the words of a contemporary critic, “Not only has he proved a faithful student of the elements of his art, but he has attained a degree of practical skill and manifested an individuality rarely achieved in so brief a period” (Tuckerman, post, p. 462). According to the same authority he was regarded as “one of the most accomplished draughtsmen among American artists of his period. ”
Connections
Some ten years before his death he had married a Miss Beach.
