American, 1816 - 1872
Kensett's father, Thomas, an engraver, emigrated to America from England in about 1800. The son, at the age of twelve, entered the engraving shop run by his father and uncle, Alfred Daggett, in New Haven, Connecticut. Throughout the decade of the 1830s he pursued his career as an engraver, working in Albany, New York, and New York, as well as New Haven. He had higher ambitions, however: to be a painter of landscapes, and as such he made his debut in the Academy annual exhibition of 1838. Two years later, in company with fellow engraver-painters, Asher B. Durand, John W. Casilear, and Thomas P. Rossiter, he went to Europe.
For two years from his arrival in the summer of 1840, Kensett was based in Paris, first sharing quarters with Rossiter, and later with Benjamin Champney. He was fully occupied in studying from the Old Masters in the Louvre, painting scenes of the the countryside near the city, and working at engraving as a means of supporting himself. The next two years he was in London, where he maintained much the same regimen. When he returned to the Continent in June 1845, the business that had held him in England, collection of a modest inheritance, had relieved him from further need to pursue engraving work. After a summer touring Germany and Switzerland, Kensett settled in Rome, where he remained for another two years. The summer of 1847 was passed in Florence and Venice, and then, after final visits to Paris and London, Kensett returned to America, arriving in New York just at the close of the year.
During this extended stay abroad Kensett regularly sent his work back to New York for exhibition and sale. He was well represented in the Academy annuals of 1845 and 1847; the American Art-Union acquired eight of his paintings in 1846. Consequently he had attained some standing in the artistic community by the time he established his studio in the New York University Building in 1848, and that position rapidly grew. The works he showed in the Academy annual of that year attracted great popular and critical admiration, and placed him securely in the first ranks of American landscape painters. The paintings that continued to result from his annual summer sketching trips to the Catskill and Adirondack mountain regions, Niagara Falls, and Lake George in New York; the White Mountains in New Hampshire; Narragansett Bay and Newport in Rhode Island (and occasional excursions to the West of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers) sustained and expanded that reputation throughout his life.
However, Kensett was also singularly loved and respected for his personal qualities: his support of his fellow-artists, general sweetness of nature, and energy and skill in assuming a public role in the arts. In 1859 he was appointed, with Henry Kirke Brown and James R. Lambdin, to the presidential advisory commission on the decoration of the Capitol Building. At about the same time he was active in the founding of the Artists' Fund Society. He chaired the Art Committee of the New York Sanitary Fair, held in 1865 to raise funds for the medical needs of the Union Army; and in 1870 he was among the organizers of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Academy, Kensett served on the Council 1850-51, was a visitor to the school for the 1852-53 season, was returned to the Council for terms 1858-59, 1861-62, and from 1863 to 1866. During the latter period he was among the most active Academicians in raising the money to erect the Academy's building at Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, which opened in April 1865.
Kensett did not take students in a formal sense, but his characteristic generosity of spirit caused him to be helpful to a number of rising landscapists whose work shared his particular affinity for expansive, but undramatized, light-filled views. Although their association is not fully documented, perhaps no other mid-nineteenth century landscapist was more indebted to Kensett for guidance than James Suydam.
The essential cause of Kensett's untimely death was characteristic of his life. His unsuccessful attempt to save the artist Vincent Colyer's wife from drowning in the waters of Long Island Sound, off Darien, Connecticut, led to pneumonia, and he died from heart failure shortly thereafter.
The unusual emotionalism of the Academy's eulogy reflected the shock of the loss:
Resolved that on the death of J. F. Kensett, N. A. we the Academicians, both as artists and as friends, have suffered one of the severest wounds yet inflicted on us by the Scythe of Time, which has cut off from our body one of the most earnest and emminent of us Academicians, from the profession one of our most brilliant ornaments, and from Society at large a singularly amiable and acccomplished gentleman.
Resolved that we hold in the highest admiration, and will endeavor to emulate the disinterested zeal, stopping at no personal sacrifice, with which he labored for the welfare of the Academy and other institutions.
Resolved that we shall always remember with the kindest regard, his affection and self-sacrificing devotion to his brother artists, his gentle and loving heart, his unswerving integrity, and the many virtues of his noble character.
The extent of the esteem in which the American art community held Kensett is best demonstrated by the formal assembly three weeks following his death of "The Artists of Rome," among whom at the time were Louis Lang (who had shared living quarters in New York with Kensett from 1852), George P. A. Healy, William Haseltine, Elihu Vedder, George A. Baker, George Henry Hall, George Inness, Charles C. Coleman, William Wetmore Story, Randolph Rogers, Eugene Benson, and Luther Terry, for the purpose of doing honor to his memory. Story read to them several accounts of Kensett's funeral and obituaries from the New York papers, which "were listened to with deep and pathetic interest by the friends of the beloved and lamented John F. Kensett." The group then passed a number of resolutions testifying to much the same admiration of the man and his art, and sorrow at his loss, as expressed in the Academy's eulogy. These proceedings and resolutions were elegantly engrossed in several copies and sent to the Academy, the Century Association, and the Artists' Fund Society.
For two years from his arrival in the summer of 1840, Kensett was based in Paris, first sharing quarters with Rossiter, and later with Benjamin Champney. He was fully occupied in studying from the Old Masters in the Louvre, painting scenes of the the countryside near the city, and working at engraving as a means of supporting himself. The next two years he was in London, where he maintained much the same regimen. When he returned to the Continent in June 1845, the business that had held him in England, collection of a modest inheritance, had relieved him from further need to pursue engraving work. After a summer touring Germany and Switzerland, Kensett settled in Rome, where he remained for another two years. The summer of 1847 was passed in Florence and Venice, and then, after final visits to Paris and London, Kensett returned to America, arriving in New York just at the close of the year.
During this extended stay abroad Kensett regularly sent his work back to New York for exhibition and sale. He was well represented in the Academy annuals of 1845 and 1847; the American Art-Union acquired eight of his paintings in 1846. Consequently he had attained some standing in the artistic community by the time he established his studio in the New York University Building in 1848, and that position rapidly grew. The works he showed in the Academy annual of that year attracted great popular and critical admiration, and placed him securely in the first ranks of American landscape painters. The paintings that continued to result from his annual summer sketching trips to the Catskill and Adirondack mountain regions, Niagara Falls, and Lake George in New York; the White Mountains in New Hampshire; Narragansett Bay and Newport in Rhode Island (and occasional excursions to the West of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers) sustained and expanded that reputation throughout his life.
However, Kensett was also singularly loved and respected for his personal qualities: his support of his fellow-artists, general sweetness of nature, and energy and skill in assuming a public role in the arts. In 1859 he was appointed, with Henry Kirke Brown and James R. Lambdin, to the presidential advisory commission on the decoration of the Capitol Building. At about the same time he was active in the founding of the Artists' Fund Society. He chaired the Art Committee of the New York Sanitary Fair, held in 1865 to raise funds for the medical needs of the Union Army; and in 1870 he was among the organizers of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Academy, Kensett served on the Council 1850-51, was a visitor to the school for the 1852-53 season, was returned to the Council for terms 1858-59, 1861-62, and from 1863 to 1866. During the latter period he was among the most active Academicians in raising the money to erect the Academy's building at Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, which opened in April 1865.
Kensett did not take students in a formal sense, but his characteristic generosity of spirit caused him to be helpful to a number of rising landscapists whose work shared his particular affinity for expansive, but undramatized, light-filled views. Although their association is not fully documented, perhaps no other mid-nineteenth century landscapist was more indebted to Kensett for guidance than James Suydam.
The essential cause of Kensett's untimely death was characteristic of his life. His unsuccessful attempt to save the artist Vincent Colyer's wife from drowning in the waters of Long Island Sound, off Darien, Connecticut, led to pneumonia, and he died from heart failure shortly thereafter.
The unusual emotionalism of the Academy's eulogy reflected the shock of the loss:
Resolved that on the death of J. F. Kensett, N. A. we the Academicians, both as artists and as friends, have suffered one of the severest wounds yet inflicted on us by the Scythe of Time, which has cut off from our body one of the most earnest and emminent of us Academicians, from the profession one of our most brilliant ornaments, and from Society at large a singularly amiable and acccomplished gentleman.
Resolved that we hold in the highest admiration, and will endeavor to emulate the disinterested zeal, stopping at no personal sacrifice, with which he labored for the welfare of the Academy and other institutions.
Resolved that we shall always remember with the kindest regard, his affection and self-sacrificing devotion to his brother artists, his gentle and loving heart, his unswerving integrity, and the many virtues of his noble character.
The extent of the esteem in which the American art community held Kensett is best demonstrated by the formal assembly three weeks following his death of "The Artists of Rome," among whom at the time were Louis Lang (who had shared living quarters in New York with Kensett from 1852), George P. A. Healy, William Haseltine, Elihu Vedder, George A. Baker, George Henry Hall, George Inness, Charles C. Coleman, William Wetmore Story, Randolph Rogers, Eugene Benson, and Luther Terry, for the purpose of doing honor to his memory. Story read to them several accounts of Kensett's funeral and obituaries from the New York papers, which "were listened to with deep and pathetic interest by the friends of the beloved and lamented John F. Kensett." The group then passed a number of resolutions testifying to much the same admiration of the man and his art, and sorrow at his loss, as expressed in the Academy's eulogy. These proceedings and resolutions were elegantly engrossed in several copies and sent to the Academy, the Century Association, and the Artists' Fund Society.
