No Image Available
for Frederick Crowninshield
American, 1845 - 1918
Crowninshield attended the Boston Latin School, where he met another future muralist, Edwin Blashfield; he graduated from Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1866. Within the following two years, he married short-story writer Helen S. Fairbanks, studied briefly with William Rimmer, and left for a European sojourn that lasted more than a decade. Crowninshield was a well-traveled student, working under Thomas Rowbotham in England; Jean Achille B‚nouville in Rome; Thomas Couture at Villers-le-Bel; and Alexandre Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, which he entered in 1872. He also spent three years in Sienna studying fresco painting. This experience was later the basis of extensive writing and lecturing on "true" mural painting, done in fresco, as opposed to the common contemporary procedure of carrying out a work in oil on canvas in the studio which then was mounted to its destined architectural destination.
Crowninshield returned to Boston in 1878, and secured a job teaching under Otto Grundman at the Museum of Fine Arts. In this position, which he retained for nearly seven years, he instructed such young Boston talents as Frank Benson, Robert Reid, and Edmund Tarbell. He also operated a summer school in Richmond, Massachusetts, in this period, where Daniel Chester French was briefly a student in 1883.
Relocating to New York in 1886, Crowninshield became known for his murals and stained-glass designs. His thoughts on mural painting in such forms as his 1888 Figure Painting Applied to Architecture; a series of articles written after a trip to Italy in 1890-01 published in Scribner's in 1893; and a lecturer delivered at Columbia University as part of an art instructional program organized by the Academy for the University. In addition, Crowninshield helped organize the National Society of Mural Painters; served as vice president of the New York Architectural League; and was first president of the Fine Arts Federation of New York, 1900-09. Besides his extensive activity in the fine arts, Crowninshield had time and talent to write and bring to publication five volumes of poetry.
Five years after his election as Associate, Crowninshield resigned his membership in the Academy. He wrote privately to John White Alexander, who had just assumed the Academy presidency, of his disappointment at not having been advanced to full Academician. At its meeting of May 18, 1909, the Council tabled his letter of resignation, and never officially recognized it. That year Crowninshield left America to assume the directorship of the American Academy in Rome. He passed the remaining years of his life in Italy, and in painting landscapes and watercolor studies of architecture.
It is likely that Fowler and Crowninshield's acquaintance stemmed from their both having executed mural decorations for the Hotel Waldorf; they also had in common their work as writers. Fowler's posing of his subject is absolute profile, was perhaps a reference to Crowninshield's professed admiration for the art of the Italian Renaissance.
Crowninshield returned to Boston in 1878, and secured a job teaching under Otto Grundman at the Museum of Fine Arts. In this position, which he retained for nearly seven years, he instructed such young Boston talents as Frank Benson, Robert Reid, and Edmund Tarbell. He also operated a summer school in Richmond, Massachusetts, in this period, where Daniel Chester French was briefly a student in 1883.
Relocating to New York in 1886, Crowninshield became known for his murals and stained-glass designs. His thoughts on mural painting in such forms as his 1888 Figure Painting Applied to Architecture; a series of articles written after a trip to Italy in 1890-01 published in Scribner's in 1893; and a lecturer delivered at Columbia University as part of an art instructional program organized by the Academy for the University. In addition, Crowninshield helped organize the National Society of Mural Painters; served as vice president of the New York Architectural League; and was first president of the Fine Arts Federation of New York, 1900-09. Besides his extensive activity in the fine arts, Crowninshield had time and talent to write and bring to publication five volumes of poetry.
Five years after his election as Associate, Crowninshield resigned his membership in the Academy. He wrote privately to John White Alexander, who had just assumed the Academy presidency, of his disappointment at not having been advanced to full Academician. At its meeting of May 18, 1909, the Council tabled his letter of resignation, and never officially recognized it. That year Crowninshield left America to assume the directorship of the American Academy in Rome. He passed the remaining years of his life in Italy, and in painting landscapes and watercolor studies of architecture.
It is likely that Fowler and Crowninshield's acquaintance stemmed from their both having executed mural decorations for the Hotel Waldorf; they also had in common their work as writers. Fowler's posing of his subject is absolute profile, was perhaps a reference to Crowninshield's professed admiration for the art of the Italian Renaissance.
