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William Stanley Haseltine
1835–1900
BirthplacePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Death placeRome, Italy
BiographyA member of the second generation of the Hudson River school, America’s first school of landscape painting, William Stanley Haseltine is best known for his precise renderings of the rocky coast of New England. Haseltine was born in Philadelphia, son of a prosperous merchant. His mother was a painter and his brothers were also involved in artistic pursuits. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, Haseltine sketched in the countryside outside Philadelphia and studied with landscape painter Paul Weber (1823–1916), who introduced him to the disciplined drawing technique and romantic spirit of the German school. Haseltine completed his education at Harvard College and traveled to Germany with his mentor in 1854.
Haseltine settled in Düsseldorf, where he was deeply influenced by the landscape paintings of the German master Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910). There the young artist joined a thriving group of American expatriate artists, several of whom accompanied him on his travels throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Haseltine returned to the United States in 1858 and opened a studio in Philadelphia. The critical success of his Italian landscapes, particularly at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York, encouraged Haseltine to relocate to the city; in 1859 he established himself in the Tenth Street Studio Building, where his fellow tenants included many of the most important American landscape painters of the day.
Haseltine began sketching along the New England coast, visiting such popular tourist and artistic destinations as Mount Desert, Maine; Narragansett, Rhode Island; Nahant, Massachusetts; and New York’s Hudson River. His paintings of these settings were remarkable for their intense focus on rocks, subject of great popular and scientific interest among mid-nineteenth-century Americans at a time when new geologic theories of the earth’s origins were challenging traditional biblical accounts of creation. The scientific precision of Haseltine’s preparatory drawings and finished paintings reflect the influence of English art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who urged artists to depict nature in painstaking detail to reveal the perfect order of the divine plan.
Haseltine longed to return to Europe. In 1866 he moved to Paris, where experimentation with plein air (out-of-doors) landscape painting among contemporary French artists stimulated him to focus on the effects of light and atmosphere in his work. In 1869 Haseltine relocated to Italy; his brilliantly colored, large-scale oils as well as his watercolors of Italian subjects demonstrate his continuing preoccupation with rock formations. Haseltine made several extended visits to America but remained a lifelong member of the American expatriate community in Rome. A respected figure in both Europe and America, he served as an art judge for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and helped found the American School of Architecture, later the American Academy, in Rome. Shortly before his death in Rome, Haseltine traveled to the American West and Alaska with his son, Herbert, who later became a sculptor.
Haseltine settled in Düsseldorf, where he was deeply influenced by the landscape paintings of the German master Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910). There the young artist joined a thriving group of American expatriate artists, several of whom accompanied him on his travels throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Haseltine returned to the United States in 1858 and opened a studio in Philadelphia. The critical success of his Italian landscapes, particularly at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York, encouraged Haseltine to relocate to the city; in 1859 he established himself in the Tenth Street Studio Building, where his fellow tenants included many of the most important American landscape painters of the day.
Haseltine began sketching along the New England coast, visiting such popular tourist and artistic destinations as Mount Desert, Maine; Narragansett, Rhode Island; Nahant, Massachusetts; and New York’s Hudson River. His paintings of these settings were remarkable for their intense focus on rocks, subject of great popular and scientific interest among mid-nineteenth-century Americans at a time when new geologic theories of the earth’s origins were challenging traditional biblical accounts of creation. The scientific precision of Haseltine’s preparatory drawings and finished paintings reflect the influence of English art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who urged artists to depict nature in painstaking detail to reveal the perfect order of the divine plan.
Haseltine longed to return to Europe. In 1866 he moved to Paris, where experimentation with plein air (out-of-doors) landscape painting among contemporary French artists stimulated him to focus on the effects of light and atmosphere in his work. In 1869 Haseltine relocated to Italy; his brilliantly colored, large-scale oils as well as his watercolors of Italian subjects demonstrate his continuing preoccupation with rock formations. Haseltine made several extended visits to America but remained a lifelong member of the American expatriate community in Rome. A respected figure in both Europe and America, he served as an art judge for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and helped found the American School of Architecture, later the American Academy, in Rome. Shortly before his death in Rome, Haseltine traveled to the American West and Alaska with his son, Herbert, who later became a sculptor.