Willard Leroy Metcalf

Youth

It spent the first years of its life in a farm of the Maine. It begins its artistic formation in a wood-carver in Boston. The painter landscape designer George Loring Brown became then his Master. With Brown, it spends the summer months in the White Mountains where it makes its first studies of landscapes. It is then one of the first stock-brokers of the school of the Musée of the Art schools of Boston.

Thanks to its interest for the Ornithology and its talent, it takes part in 1881 in a forwarding in the south-west of the United States. With the New Mexico and in Arizona it makes many illustrations for the reviews Harpers and Century which gains a broad success.

France

Thanks to this success, it is in measurement, 1883 to leave to study with the Académie Julian of Paris where its Masters will be Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. Metcalf studied all the tendencies of the French painting of the 19th century. In addition to the academic painting of the school of Barbizon, he studies also the Impressionnisme and visits Bridge-Swallow-hole and Giverny, where with Theodore Robinson, he founds there a colony of American artists in the vicinity direct of Claude Monet.

At the time of a study trip in Tunisia and to the Morocco, Metcalf painted in 1887 of the typical scenes of street. The following year, with the Living room of Paris, its painting of the Arab gone will be particularly appreciated.

Return to the USA

In 1888, Metcalf goes back to Boston, where its works exposed to the St Botolph Club find thanks to the eyes of criticisms. In 1891, it is established with New York. At that time, Metcalf earns its living thanks to illustrations, while teaching and by the sale of some portraits. The so much awaited success of its paintings of landscapes arrives only in 1896. With its painting of the Port of Gloucester , during the annual exposure of the Society off American Artists , it gains the prestigious Webb' S Prize .

Royal Cortissoz (1869-1948) which was critic art to the New York Daily Tribune was an enthusiastic admiror of Metcalf. On several occasions it published Monographie S of the painter. As of 1906, Metcalf also gains a sharp success near the public thanks to its landscapes. Its preferred subjects are the landscapes of the Berkshire, Cornish, Springfield, Casco Bay and the peninsula of Damariscotta in Maine.

He dies on March 9th, 1925 in New York.

Some works

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