Background
Thomas Worthington Whittredge was born on May 22, 1820 in Springfield, Ohio, the son of Joseph Whittredge.
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Worthington Thomas Whittredge
Edit ProfileEducation
He received his first instruction in art in Cincinnati, where even then there were some good pictures and a lively interest in local art. In 1849 he went abroad to study and remained for ten years. He spent half this time in Düsseldorf, where for three years he studied continuously under Andreas Achenbach.
Career
During five later winters he lived in Rome, but made visits to London, Antwerp, Paris, and other cities. In Düsseldorf he met Albert Bierstadt and Emanuel Leutze, the latter of whom became a life-long friend. Leutze painted his portrait in Düsseldorf, representing him as a young cavalier, wearing a ruff, with sword in one hand and hat in the other, the latter held against his hip (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Years later John W. Alexander painted his portrait for the National Academy of Design. This too shows him as a picturesque figure, a man of fine presence and physique. When Leutze painted his famous "Washington Crossing the Delaware, " it was Whittredge in an old uniform worn by the General who posed for the figure of Washington. Upon his return to the United States in 1859, Whittredge established himself in New York with a studio on Tenth Street in what was then the artists' quarter. His first exhibit was a painting, "The Roman Campagna, " done in Rome, which he entered in the exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1859. He was elected an Academician in 1861, and served as president of the Academy in 1865 and from 1874 to 1877. In his connection with the Academy he rendered conscientious service, devoting himself to promoting the interests of his fellow Academicians. He is said, on good authority, to have had "a lifelong habit of kindness and generosity". As a painter Whittredge gave himself to depicting the gentler aspects of nature. In 1866 with Sanford R. Gifford and John F. Kensett he made a trip to the far West and painted a number of pictures of the country between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, but it was the woods and streams of New York State and New England that he loved best and painted most feelingly. Like all the painters of the Hudson River School, he strove earnestly to represent on canvas exactly what he saw. He was technically well trained and sensitively appreciative of beauty, and his pictures, despite their over-emphasis on detail, possess an individuality and charm that give them lasting value. He was awarded a bronze medal at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (1876), and silver medals at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo (1901) and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (1904). The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns his "Evening in the Woods, " "Camp Meeting" (1874), and, notably, "The Trout Pool. " The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. , has "Trout Brook in the Catskills" (1875). He is represented in other well-known museum collections. Among his early works the most famous is "The Poachers, " frequently reproduced through the medium of lithography. Whittredge died in Summit, N. J.
Achievements
Connections
He was married on October 16, 1867, at Geneva, N. Y. , to Euphemia Foote, by whom he had four children.
