No Image Available
for Ernest Clifford Peixotto
1869 - 1940
Ernest Peixotto studied with Emil Carlsen at the School of the San Francisco Art Association. It was with Carlsen's encouragement that he went to Paris in 1888 for three years of study at the Académie Julian, under Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Henri-Lucien Doucet, and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. In the summers of these years he visited the colony of American Impressionists at Giverny, where he became a friend of the painter Theodore Robinson. During a brief return to San Francisco, he worked in commercial illustration and taught. In 1891 he re-enrolled at the Académie Julian in 1891 for another three-year period.
Peixotto again returned to San Francisco for about a year before settling in 1895 in New York, where he earned his livelihood in magazine illustration. In 1897 he received his first popular attention for his drawings in the Lark, a periodical he founded with Gellett Burgess, Willis Polk, and Bruce Porter. That year he married the painter Mary Glascock Hutchinson.
The couple went on a sketching trip for Scribner's Magazine to Europe in the summer of 1899 and remained for the next six years, based in Fontainebleau, France, and executing numerous magazine and book illustrations, including those for Theodore Roosevelt's Life of Oliver Cromwell (1904). Fontainebleau would remain a principal residence for the rest of his life. After 1905 Peixotto worked in Chicago and New York.
In 1911 he executed his first large, public mural commission, La Morte d'Arthur, for the Cleveland Public Library, and subsequently he began working extensively in this form. The majority of Peixotto's mural decorations were for private residences in both America and Europe.
During World War I Peixotto was one of eight artists commissioned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to accompany the Allied Expeditionary Force and make official visual records of American participation in the war. At war's end he was appointed director of the painting studio in the Army's art-training center, established in Bellevue, France. When this program was absorbed by into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1923, Peixotto was among its founders and served as chairman of its American Committee. Returning to New York in 1919, he became director of mural painting at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, a position he retained until 1926, when he resigned to concentrate on his own mural paintings.
Peixotto was president of the National Society of Mural Painters (1929-35) and of the School Art League, New York (1936-40); an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects and of the Architectural League of New York; and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He also served on the Art Commission of the City of New York (1935-40) and was director for murals, and a consultant on color, for the New York World's Fair of 1939-40.
Noting Peixotto's death, the Academy Council recognized particularly that he had "devoted a great deal of time to helping younger artists and to developing public art in this country."
Peixotto again returned to San Francisco for about a year before settling in 1895 in New York, where he earned his livelihood in magazine illustration. In 1897 he received his first popular attention for his drawings in the Lark, a periodical he founded with Gellett Burgess, Willis Polk, and Bruce Porter. That year he married the painter Mary Glascock Hutchinson.
The couple went on a sketching trip for Scribner's Magazine to Europe in the summer of 1899 and remained for the next six years, based in Fontainebleau, France, and executing numerous magazine and book illustrations, including those for Theodore Roosevelt's Life of Oliver Cromwell (1904). Fontainebleau would remain a principal residence for the rest of his life. After 1905 Peixotto worked in Chicago and New York.
In 1911 he executed his first large, public mural commission, La Morte d'Arthur, for the Cleveland Public Library, and subsequently he began working extensively in this form. The majority of Peixotto's mural decorations were for private residences in both America and Europe.
During World War I Peixotto was one of eight artists commissioned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to accompany the Allied Expeditionary Force and make official visual records of American participation in the war. At war's end he was appointed director of the painting studio in the Army's art-training center, established in Bellevue, France. When this program was absorbed by into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1923, Peixotto was among its founders and served as chairman of its American Committee. Returning to New York in 1919, he became director of mural painting at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, a position he retained until 1926, when he resigned to concentrate on his own mural paintings.
Peixotto was president of the National Society of Mural Painters (1929-35) and of the School Art League, New York (1936-40); an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects and of the Architectural League of New York; and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He also served on the Art Commission of the City of New York (1935-40) and was director for murals, and a consultant on color, for the New York World's Fair of 1939-40.
Noting Peixotto's death, the Academy Council recognized particularly that he had "devoted a great deal of time to helping younger artists and to developing public art in this country."
