|
(1857-1927)
Edward Henry Potthast, son of a German
cabinet maker, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio
on June 10, 1857. By the age of thirteen he was
enrolled in art school and at sixteen he was
working as an artist at Strobridge Lithography
Co. His studies in Munich and Paris in the 1880's
introduced him to the Impressionists and in 1896
Potthast moved to New York where he worked
as a free-lance magazine illustrator for some
years before devoting all of his time to painting.
Potthast was known as a modest, shy, and
diligent person who painted almost every day.
A bachelor who enjoyed life, much of Potthast's
work focused on leisure activity, especially that
of women and children. As a mature artist,
Potthast's fame rests on his beach scenes,
completed in the last twenty years of his life.
These paintings display the unique synthesis of
the American Realist's subject matter and the
American Impressionist's painting technique
particular to Potthast's large body of work left
at the time of his death in 1927.
|
|
|
