Background
William Birch was born on April 9, 1755, in Warwickshire, England, the son of Anne, née Russell, and physician Thomas Birch.
( William Russell Birch (1755-1834) has long been recogni...)
William Russell Birch (1755-1834) has long been recognized as the first artist to achieve true commercial success in depicting American scenes for the domestic market. In his early career in London, Birch was influenced by the landscape painters whose work arose in the rich artistic ferment he encountered there in the 1770s and 1780s. After immigrating to Philadelphia in 1794, Birch sought to make his living recording scenes of the young republic, the better to promote "taste" in architecture and landscape design. The illustrations in his copperplate books soon proved to be vehicles for developing uniquely American pictorial subject matter. Of these, The City of Philadelphia in 1800 became very successful, going through four editions from 1800 to 1828. Birch's third publication, The Country Seats of the United States, first published in 1808, was the result of the engraver's travels through the mid-Atlantic, as well as his intimate knowledge of the Philadelphia region. Both of Birch's American books are of considerable importance in documenting the cultural developments of the young nation. The Country Seats of the United States consists of twenty plates depicting eighteen estates, all but one of which were located on the eastern seaboard between Mount Vernon in the south and New York City in the north, with many properties along the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia. The remaining property in New Orleans was included to represent the recent Louisiana Purchase. Reproduced in its entirety with twenty color plates, this edition includes Birch's introduction and comments on the images, and a biographical essay situating Birch within his world and discussing the individual sites Birch depicted.
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(20.05" x 25.05" William Russell Birch Brock Livingston fr...)
20.05" x 25.05" William Russell Birch Brock Livingston framed premium canvas print reproduced to meet museum quality standards. Our museum quality canvas prints are produced using high-precision print technology for a more accurate reproduction printed on high quality canvas with fade-resistant, archival inks. Our progressive business model allows us to offer works of art to you at the best wholesale pricing, significantly less than art gallery prices, affordable to all. This artwork is hand stretched onto wooden stretcher bars, then mounted into our 3" wide gold finish frame by one of our expert framers. Our framed canvas print comes with hardware, ready to hang on your wall. We present a comprehensive collection of exceptional canvas art reproductions by William Russell Birch.
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William Birch was born on April 9, 1755, in Warwickshire, England, the son of Anne, née Russell, and physician Thomas Birch.
William was educated at Bristol and London and was apprenticed to a jeweller, Thomas Jeffreys, and to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Birch showed in 1775 two miniatures, "Head of Psyche" and "Jupiter and Io", at the Society of Artists. In 1781 he exhibited an enamel miniature, "Mother and Child, " at the Royal Academy and in 1782 he was represented at the Academy by a "Portrait of a Child Going to Bed. " His one work published in England was the Délices de la Grande Bretagne (1789), a portfolio depicting ancient buildings and scenery. Its stippled plates are beautifully rendered, with good feeling for romantic and dramatic effects.
In 1794 Birch came to America. He engraved a series of twenty-eight Views of Philadelphia (1798 - 1800), and a smaller series, published in 1808, of plates depicting American country seats. He also designed a famous New York City view (1803) with white horse in the foreground. Some of his prints are inscribed as "drawn, engraved and published by W. Birch, Springland, near Bristol, Pennsylvania"; others as "drawn and engraved by W. Birch & Son, Philadelphia. "
Justly celebrated is his miniature portrait of George Washington, which was among the historic relics inherited and collected by William Lanier Washington and dispersed after exhibition at the Anderson Galleries, New York, in 1917. Of this work Elizabeth Bryant Johnson, author of Original Portraits of Washington, is quoted in the exhibition catalogue as writing: "It is said in outline to be precisely like the first Stuart, though the unpleasant impression arising from the false teeth is happily avoided. " This miniature, according to W. S. Baker, was painted in 1796 from life by request of Mr. Van Staphorst of Holland, a friend of American independence. Birch's contemporary, William Dunlap, wrote of it, "I remember seeing a miniature of Washington, executed by him in enamel; which I thought very beautiful, and very like Trott's copy from Stuart's original picture. My impression is that it was copied from Trott. Birch could design. " This brief estimate of Birch's ability coincides with twentieth-century opinion.
William Birch gained his reputation chiefly through his miniatures on enamel. During his career he made portrait enamels of many people including copies of portraits of George Washington, by Gilbert Stuart. In 1785 Birch was awarded a medal of the Society of Arts for excellence in his art and improvements in its processes.
( William Russell Birch (1755-1834) has long been recogni...)
(20.05" x 25.05" William Russell Birch Brock Livingston fr...)
