1851 - 1914
After graduating from Boston Latin School, Charles Sprague Pearce worked for five years in his father's business establishment. He painted in his spare time, but did not embark on an artistic career until 1872. Advice from William M. Hunt sent him to Paris rather than Munich, and after arriving in 1873, he remained in France for the rest of his life. Pearce studied for three years with L‚on Bonnat. Because of a debilitating respiratory illness, he generally spent winters in the South of France, Italy, or North Africa. He passed the winter of 1873-4, for example, with another expatriate, Frederick Bridgman, in Egypt.
Although he also painted portraits and landscape, Pearce was known primarily as a figure painter whose specialities were Oriental genre and (as of around 1883) French peasant scenes in the style of Jules Bastien-Lepage. He moved to a Parisian suburb, Auvers sur Oise, around 1885, but he remained active in Parisian art circles. His marriage to Louise C. Bonjean occurred in 1888. The artist's major American commission was a series of decorations for the Library of Congress, executed in 1896.
Pearce was an occasional exhibitor at Academy Annuals in the 1880s and 90s, but he did not become an Associate until the National Academy of Design merged with the Society of American Artists, to which he had been elected in 1886.
Although he also painted portraits and landscape, Pearce was known primarily as a figure painter whose specialities were Oriental genre and (as of around 1883) French peasant scenes in the style of Jules Bastien-Lepage. He moved to a Parisian suburb, Auvers sur Oise, around 1885, but he remained active in Parisian art circles. His marriage to Louise C. Bonjean occurred in 1888. The artist's major American commission was a series of decorations for the Library of Congress, executed in 1896.
Pearce was an occasional exhibitor at Academy Annuals in the 1880s and 90s, but he did not become an Associate until the National Academy of Design merged with the Society of American Artists, to which he had been elected in 1886.
