John Henry Niemeyer was born on June 25, 1839 in Bremen, Germany. He was the son of Charles Henry and Margareta Dorettea (Otto) Niemeyer. In his childhood his parents removed to the United States, settling in Cincinnati, where the boy grew up.
John was educated in the city schools in Cincinnati. He also studied with Sébastien Cornu. His main work as a student, however, was done under Jacquesson de la Chevreuse, who was then carrying on the atelier of Ingres and the classical traditions of that master. Of all his teachers, de la Chevreuse influenced him most. During this time, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who had come to Europe to study, was supporting himself by cutting cameos in Paris. His evenings he spent with Niemeyer, who taught him what he himself had learned during the same day in the studio of de la Chevreuse. Saint-Gaudens in his greatness never forgot his youthful teacher. Later pupils who won renown were Frederic Remington and Bela Lyon Pratt.
About 1858 he was living in Indianapolis and working in a sign-painter's shop. In November 1860 he moved to New York City, and later taught in a school in New Jersey until he had enough money to go to Europe. In 1866 he was in Paris, where he pursued his studies for about four years. At the École des Beaux Arts he worked under Jean Léon Gér"me and Adolphe Yvon.
Niemeyer returned home in 1870, and in 1871 became professor of drawing in the Yale Art School. Here he remained until his retirement with the title emeritus in 1908, having in the interval been made Street Professor of Drawing. He came to be a great teacher of drawing, by some considered unsurpassed in the entire country. On the walls of the room in which he gave instruction he placed a quotation from Ingres, " Drawing is the probity of art. " For some years he gave lectures on the fine arts at Smith College, and assisted in laying the foundations of the art school and collection there. He exhibited his canvases in the annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design, of which he was made an associate member in 1905. He was also a member of the Society of American Artists and of the American Art Association of Paris. Competent critics, among them George De Forest Brush, considered his work unexcelled by any artist of his day in beauty and precision of line and perfection of modeling. In the Graduates Club (New Haven), Niemeyer is represented by fine portraits of President Woolsey (a full-length, painted in 1876), Professor Bernadotte Perrin, Professor William Dwight Whitney, and Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury. The Yale School of the Fine Arts owns his "Gutenburg Discovering Movable Types" (1872), a "Portrait of a Lady, " and a number of his masterly drawings from the antique, dating from his student days in Paris. In his private collection were examples of the work of Julian Alden Weir and John H. Twachtman, both lifelong friends, and of John La Farge.
One of Niemeyer's most admired canvases is his portrait of the late Theodore S. Gold, of Cream Hill, Cornwall. He was also notably successful in his portraits of Professor Hubert Newton--a fine piece of characterization and composition and beautiful in color--and of Dr. John Slade Ely, sometime dean of the Yale School of Medicine. Niemeyer also executed some bas-reliefs, among them a large medallion of William M. Hunt (1883) and "Lilith Tempting Eve" (1883). Among his etchings is a notable portrait of President Woolsey of Yale. His self-portrait hangs in the dean's office of the Yale School of the Fine Arts.
On July 10, 1888 he married Anna Beekman Talmage, a daughter of the Reverend Goyn Talmage of Port Jervis, New York, and a niece of Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage. She was a woman of strong mentality and had a keen appreciation of the fine arts.
