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Edward Redfield
1869–1965
BirthplaceBridgeville, Delaware, United States of America
Death placeCenter Bridge, Pennsylvania, United States of America
BiographyLandscape painter Edward Willis Redfield was a leader of a group of painters who worked in the area around New Hope, Pennsylvania in the early decades of the twentieth century creating vibrant representational images of the low hills and old farm buildings along the Delaware River. Redfield grew up in Camden, New Jersey, son of a successful fruit and flower wholesale dealer. As a six-year-old, he made a drawing of a cow that was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Redfield attended the venerable Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia between 1887 and 1889. There he became a close friend of fellow student Robert Henri, later a leader of the so-called Ashcan school of social realist painters. The two were deeply influenced by the legacy of Academy teacher Thomas Eakins, who had stressed both careful technical study and the importance of the artist's personal, sensual response to his subject.
Intending to become a portrait painter, Redfield went to Paris in 1889 and studied at the Académie Julian, a private school popular with visiting Americans, and the prestigious official École des Beaux-Arts. He painted landscapes during vacation travels in company with Henri, and came under the influence of impressionism, the contemporary movement to record optical effects of sunshine using bright, unblended colors applied in active brushwork. Redfield was particularly drawn to the anti-academic practice of working outdoors before the subject, painting directly on the canvas without the aid of preliminary sketches, and completing the painting quickly, "at one go." In 1891 one of his snow scenes was accepted for the important annual juried exhibition known as the Paris Salon.
Following marriage in 1893 to a young Frenchwoman, Redfield returned to the United States, settling on a farm adjacent to the Delaware River in Center Bridge, Pennsylvania. After the accidental death of their first child, the Redfields spent approximately one-and-a-half years in France, during which the painter deepened his interest in snow scenes and the rendering of transient effects of light and weather. His return to the United States was heralded by a solo exhibition of his landscapes at the Pennsylvania Academy. Redfield's success was considerable and he won numerous prizes and awards. As a painter of local landscape scenes characterized by vigorous realism, he thrived in a cultural climate of intense nationalism and faith in the regenerative power of American nature. His stamina in painting outdoors in winter was legendary.
Redfield became the center of a colony of artists associated with New Hope, Pennsylvania, near his lifelong home in Center Bridge. Beginning in 1902 he also painted in Boothbay, on the coast of Maine, where he was inspired to create seascapes. Following the death of his wife in 1947, Redfield burned a considerable number of his works and, his eyesight failing, he abandoned painting entirely the following year, almost two decades before his death at the age of ninety-six.
Intending to become a portrait painter, Redfield went to Paris in 1889 and studied at the Académie Julian, a private school popular with visiting Americans, and the prestigious official École des Beaux-Arts. He painted landscapes during vacation travels in company with Henri, and came under the influence of impressionism, the contemporary movement to record optical effects of sunshine using bright, unblended colors applied in active brushwork. Redfield was particularly drawn to the anti-academic practice of working outdoors before the subject, painting directly on the canvas without the aid of preliminary sketches, and completing the painting quickly, "at one go." In 1891 one of his snow scenes was accepted for the important annual juried exhibition known as the Paris Salon.
Following marriage in 1893 to a young Frenchwoman, Redfield returned to the United States, settling on a farm adjacent to the Delaware River in Center Bridge, Pennsylvania. After the accidental death of their first child, the Redfields spent approximately one-and-a-half years in France, during which the painter deepened his interest in snow scenes and the rendering of transient effects of light and weather. His return to the United States was heralded by a solo exhibition of his landscapes at the Pennsylvania Academy. Redfield's success was considerable and he won numerous prizes and awards. As a painter of local landscape scenes characterized by vigorous realism, he thrived in a cultural climate of intense nationalism and faith in the regenerative power of American nature. His stamina in painting outdoors in winter was legendary.
Redfield became the center of a colony of artists associated with New Hope, Pennsylvania, near his lifelong home in Center Bridge. Beginning in 1902 he also painted in Boothbay, on the coast of Maine, where he was inspired to create seascapes. Following the death of his wife in 1947, Redfield burned a considerable number of his works and, his eyesight failing, he abandoned painting entirely the following year, almost two decades before his death at the age of ninety-six.