Ernest Parton

Description

Summer Landscape with House & Figure

10 x 14

Oil on Board

For more than fifty years, the expatriate American artist Ernest Parton enjoyed great success in England with his paintings of the English and French countryside.  A true cosmopolitan, Parton did works combining elements of the Hudson River School tradition that he was trained in as a young man with influences drawn from the French Barbizon School and the late-Victorian landscape movement to create a sophisticated international style that made him a sought after and affluent London painter.

Parton won his fame by showing his works in the major salons and exhibitions of the day including the Royal Academy, The Royal Scottish Academy, the National Academy of Design in New York, the Paris Salon, the Exposition Universelle in Paris and the Chicago World’s Fair.  The large-scale paintings that he completed for these major shows and expositions – works such as The Waning of the Year orWhen Lingering Light Greets Night’s Pale Queen  – were reproduced in art magazines and as fine prints, securing his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ernest Parton was born into a large and talented family who lived in the riverside community of Hudson, New York, located in the Hudson River Valley, just north of New York City.  His father George Parton (1812-1872), who came from Birmingham, England, immigrated to the United States in 1833 and married Elizabeth Woodbridge of Mystic, Connecticut the following year.

In 1875, two of Ernest Parton’s works were accepted by the Royal Academy, and he began a long run of success in the Academy’s annual exhibitions.  In 1876, he painted extensively on the Continent, doing sketches at Lake Como and painting in the Italian countryside.  In 1877 his interest in the French Barbizon School sharpened, and he became part of a circle of Anglo-American painters who spent their summers in the French countryside.  In 1879, the Royal Academy’s Chantrey Bequest purchased Parton’s picture The Waning of the Year for the permanent collection.

In addition to his English subjects, Parton traveled and painted extensively in France, and contemporary critics saw a marked difference between his French and English pictures.  While most of his paintings were painted at the end of the day, which used to be called “Eventide,” the French paintings tended to be more atmospheric, revealing the influence of the Barbizon School.  This influence was inevitable as he was part of a circle of painters that painted and socialized in the small village of Grez-sur-loing, a short distance from Barbizon.

Excerpted from a biography written by Jeffrey Morseburg copyright 2006, published on AskArt.com