George de Forest Brush
1855
–1941
BirthplaceShelbyville, Tennessee, United States of America
Death placeHanover, New Hampshire, United States of America
BiographyGeorge de Forest Brush was raised in Danbury, Connecticut, and studied at New York’s National Academy of Design before moving to Paris in 1873. There he studied with the famed figural painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), from whom he absorbed the academic ideals of exacting draftsmanship and anatomical modeling.
Brush returned to the United States in 1880 and supported himself partly through magazine illustration while beginning to exhibit his paintings. The following year, he departed for the West with his brother and created a substantial body of work depicting Indigenous communities. After moving to New York, Brush taught at the Cooper Union and at the Arts Students League. In 1886, he married a student, sculptor Mary Taylor Whelpley (1866–1949), known as Mittie, who, along with the couple’s many children, would become his most important model. The Brushes joined the artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, to which they returned for several summers until 1899, when they made Dublin, New Hampshire, their home base. Brush and his family moved frequently, however, spending two years in Paris in 1890–1892, visiting England in 1898, and living intermittently in Florence between 1903 and the outbreak of World War I.
Around 1892 Brush began to focus his artistic career on his growing family in a series of portraits and figural images; he also painted formal commissioned likenesses. His work increasingly indicated his interest in the art of the Italian Renaissance—both its classical ideals of repose and its technical emphasis on careful draftsmanship, seamless modeling in paint, and the layering of transparent glazes to create rich, velvety surfaces. Brush evoked his sitters in modern images that draw parallels between past and present: evincing both tenderness and gravity, his mother-and-child images portray distinct individuals who yet represent timeless types. Exquisitely finished and often placed in striking hand-carved frames, Brush’s paintings were consistently in demand and won several prizes, notably a gold medal at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In his later years, Brush returned to the Native American themes of his early career and his paintings assumed a new coloristic intensity and a dynamic curvilinearity. A fire in the artist’s New Hampshire studio in 1937 destroyed much of his work, but Brush continued to paint until shortly before his death at age eighty-five.
Brush returned to the United States in 1880 and supported himself partly through magazine illustration while beginning to exhibit his paintings. The following year, he departed for the West with his brother and created a substantial body of work depicting Indigenous communities. After moving to New York, Brush taught at the Cooper Union and at the Arts Students League. In 1886, he married a student, sculptor Mary Taylor Whelpley (1866–1949), known as Mittie, who, along with the couple’s many children, would become his most important model. The Brushes joined the artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, to which they returned for several summers until 1899, when they made Dublin, New Hampshire, their home base. Brush and his family moved frequently, however, spending two years in Paris in 1890–1892, visiting England in 1898, and living intermittently in Florence between 1903 and the outbreak of World War I.
Around 1892 Brush began to focus his artistic career on his growing family in a series of portraits and figural images; he also painted formal commissioned likenesses. His work increasingly indicated his interest in the art of the Italian Renaissance—both its classical ideals of repose and its technical emphasis on careful draftsmanship, seamless modeling in paint, and the layering of transparent glazes to create rich, velvety surfaces. Brush evoked his sitters in modern images that draw parallels between past and present: evincing both tenderness and gravity, his mother-and-child images portray distinct individuals who yet represent timeless types. Exquisitely finished and often placed in striking hand-carved frames, Brush’s paintings were consistently in demand and won several prizes, notably a gold medal at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In his later years, Brush returned to the Native American themes of his early career and his paintings assumed a new coloristic intensity and a dynamic curvilinearity. A fire in the artist’s New Hampshire studio in 1937 destroyed much of his work, but Brush continued to paint until shortly before his death at age eighty-five.