Robert Wylie

Background

Robert Wylie was born in 1839, at Douglas, in the Isle of Man, and was taken to the United States by his parents when a child.

Education

The family settled in Philadelphia, Pa. , where Wylie began his art studies as a pupil of the Pennsylvania Academy, and worked for a time as an ivory carver. His work attracted the attention of the directors of the institution, and about 1864 they sent him to France to continue his training. In Paris he entered the École des Beaux-Arts and worked under Jean-Léon Gérôme. He also became a pupil of Antoine-Louis Barye, the famous sculptor of animals. At the Paris Salon of 1869 he exhibited his "Reading the Letter from the Bridegroom, " and at the Salon of 1872 he received a second-class medal for his "Breton Fortune-Teller. " Other Salon exhibits were "Baz-Walen, demandeur en mariage dans la Basse-Bretagne" (1870), "L'Accueil de l'Orphelin, Bretagne" (1873), and "Le Conteur de Légendes" (1878). According to the Salon catalogue of 1878 he was a pupil of Thomas Couture.

Career

About 1865 he established himself at the little fishing village of Pont-Aven, where he lived and worked until the time of his death. Among his American colleagues there were Frederick A. Bridgman, William L. Picknell and Clement Swift. The pictures Wylie sent to the Salon made a profound impression on French painters and led several of them to join the artist colony at Pont-Aven. In that place he was well known not only to the artists but also to the peasantry; at the sale of his studio effects after his death, his humble neighbors vied with each other to obtain souvenirs. His more important works are "Death of a Vendean Chief, " in the Metropolitan Museum, New York; "Mendicants" and "Card Players, " privately owned in Baltimore; "Breton Group, " privately owned in Philadelphia; and "A Fortune-Teller of Brittany" (1872), in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. His paintings are few in number, for he was not prolific. He died on February 4, 1877, Pont-Aven, France as the result of an aneurism.

Achievements

• Robert Wylie was a distinguished artist, who was one of the founding members of the artist's colony in Pont- Aven, France and was one of the first of the many post-Civil War American artists to become fascinated by the subject of peasantry. Robert Wylie won a medal of the second class at the Paris Salon of 1872.

Membership

From 1860, Robert Wylie was a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, now one of the nation's oldest artists' clubs.

Connections

Robert Wylie was unmarried.

colleague:

Clement Nye Swift

Clement Nye Swift was an American artist, associated with the Pont-Aven School.

colleague:

Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Frederick Arthur Bridgman was an American artist, known for his paintings of "Orientalist" subjects.

colleague:

William Lamb Picknell

William Lamb Picknell was an American painter of landscapes, coastal views and figure genres.