Washington Allston

Infobox Person
name = Washington Allston


birth_date = November 5, 1779
birth_place = Near Georgetown, South Carolina
death_date = July 9, 1843
death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
occupation = Painter
Poet

Washington Allston (November 5, 1779 - July 9, 1843) was a U.S. poet and influential painter, born in Waccamaw, South Carolina. Allston pioneered America's Romantic movement of landscape painting. He was well known during his lifetime for his experiments with dramatic subject matter and his bold use of light and atmospheric color.

Biography

Allston was born on a plantation on the Waccamaw River near Georgetown, South Carolina. His mother Rachel Moore had married Captain William Allston in 1775, though her husband died in 1781, shortly after the Battle of Cowpens. [Hubbell, Jay B. "The South in American Literature: 1607-1900". Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 274.] Moore remarried to Dr. Henry C. Flagg, the son of a wealthy shipping merchant from Newport, Rhode Island.Hubbell, Jay B. "The South in American Literature: 1607-1900". Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 275.]

Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina for a short time before sailing to England in May 1801. He was admitted to the Royal Academy in London in September, when painter Benjamin West was then the president. [Hubbell, Jay B. "The South in American Literature: 1607-1900". Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 276.]

From 1803 to 1808 he visited the great museums of Paris and then for several years those of Italy, where he met Washington Irving in Rome, [Burstein, Andrew. "The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving". Basic Books, 2007:43. ISBN 978-0-465-00853-7] and Coleridge, his lifelong friend. In 1809 Allston married Ann Channing, sister of William Ellery Channing. Samuel F. B. Morse was one of Allston's art pupils and accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811. After traveling throughout western Europe, Allston finally settled in London, where he won fame and prizes for his pictures.

Allston was also a published writer. In London in 1813, he published "The Sylphs of the Seasons, with Other Poems", republished in Boston, Massachusetts later that year. [Hubbell, Jay B. "The South in American Literature: 1607-1900". Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 277.] His wife died in February 1815, leaving him saddened, lonely, and homesick for America. [Hubbell, Jay B. "The South in American Literature: 1607-1900". Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 278.]

In 1818 he returned to the United States and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for 25 years. He was the uncle of the artists George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg, both of whom studied painting under him.

In 1841 he published "Monaldi," a romance illustrating Italian life, and in 1850, a volume of his "Lectures on Art, and Poems". [Ware's "Lectures on the Works and Genius of Washington Allston" (Boston, 1852) and "Artist Biographies, Allston" (1879).]

Allston died on July 9, 1843, at age 64. Allston is buried in Harvard Square, in "the Old Burying Ground" between the First Parish Church and Christ Church.

Recognition

Allston was sometimes called the "American Titian" because his style resembled the great Venetian Renaissance artists in their display of dramatic color contrasts. His work greatly influenced the development of U.S. landscape painting. Also, the themes of many of his paintings were drawn from literature, especially Biblical stories.cite web | author=Vetter, H.F | title=Poets of Cambridge, USA | work=Harvard Square Library (2006) | url=http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/allston.php | accessdate=2007-06-12]

His artistic genius was much admired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Ralph Waldo Emerson was strongly influenced by his paintings and poems, but so were both Margaret Fuller and Sophia Peabody, wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The influential critic and editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold dedicated his famous anthology "The Poets and Poetry of America" to Allston in 1842. [*cite book | title=The First Century of American Literature: 1770–1870 | last=Pattee | first=Fred Lewis | publisher=Cooper Square Publishers | location=New York | edition=Hardback | date=1966 | pages=279] Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 17 years after Allston's death, wrote that: "One man may sweeten a whole time. I never pass through Cambridge Port without thinking of Allston. His memory is the quince in the drawer and perfumes the atmosphere." [Hubbell, Jay B. "The South in American Literature: 1607-1900". Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 275.]

Washington Allston coined the term "objective correlative," which T. S. Eliot described as a situation or a chain of events that acts as a formula and is used in art to evoke emotion.

The west Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Allston is named after him.

Gallery

References

External links

*gutenberg author|id=Washington_Allston|name=Washington Allston
* in the New Students Reference Work.