Artists in Action

Frederic Remington, an American artist Frederic Remington was born in 1861 in Canton, New York. Mr. Remington is considered one of the greatest western genre painters, sculptors, and illustrators of his time. During the Spanish-American war, Mr. Remington worked for the New York Journal under William Randolph Hearst as a war correspondent. Frederic Remington died on December 26, 1909 at his studio and home in New Rochelle, New York from the effects of an appendicitis attack. — Watercolor Masters: Frederic Remington © 2010 Greg Conley —

American "Maurice Brazil Prendergast was born in Boston, and trained in art as a painter of advertising placards in Boston and later in France and Italy. He returned to Boston in 1900. Prendergast was a member of The Eight, a group of artists led by Robert Henri. The group had an influential exhibition in 1908; they broke with the academic tradition that reigned at the time and proposed that painting be connected to everyday life. In 1914 he moved to New York City, where he spent the remainder of his life. His work is characterized by rich, powerful color applied...

American "John Pike Paints Watercolors," first published in 1978, is the title of the classic watercolor instruction book by artist John Pike. The book is filled with skilled step by step watercolor demonstrations that show his command of painting landscape and urban scenes with an eye for dramatic lighting and spontaneity. Mr. Pike's artistic career included stints working for the Jamaican Rum industry, creating advertising art and designing nightclubs in 1933. By 1945 he was in Korea documenting the U.S. occupation, resulting in a large body of work that can be found in military art archives and museums. In the...

American "Born and raised in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O'Keeffe became one of the first American modernists, the first woman to gain recognition for that style, and a signature painter of Southwest landscape and structures. She went to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-06 and studied with John Vanderpoel. She then attended the Art Students League in New York under William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox, and F. Luis Mora. At this time in New York, she first became aware of modernist art. Although O'Keeffe was an award-winning artist at the League, she quit painting from 1908 to 1912 to...

American Eliot O'Hara, namesake of the O'Hara watercolor box, was an influential American artist and teacher who greatly popularized watercolor painting in America. In the early 1930s O'Hara started publishing a series of instructional books that gave art students and art teachers a solid curriculum of study in the field of watercolor painting. Mr. O'Hara's books include Making Watercolor Behave (1932), Making the Brush Behave (1935), Watercolor Fares Forth (1938), Art Teachers Primer (1939), Watercolor At Large (1946), Watercolor With O'Hara (1966), and Portraits in the Making (1948). In the late 40s and early 50s O'Hara was commissioned to produce...

Thomas Moran - an American painter and printmaker "Thomas Moran was born in Lancashire, England, and, with his family, moved to the U.S. in 1844. Inspired to paint by his older brother, Moran studied privately in Philadelphia before returning to England for further study. While abroad, Moran was influenced by the hugely successful J.M.W. Turner, and Moran set about copying the master’s moody, atmospheric works. Returning to the U.S., Moran made painting expeditions to the monuments of the American West, first to Yellowstone, then continuing to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. The finely executed panoramas from these treks won Moran...

American Reginald Marsh is best known for his paintings of New York City daily life: burlesque shows, Coney Island, the Bowery, movie houses, and elevated trains. His favorite resource was Coney Island, where he would rapidly fill sketchbooks with drawings of the bathers in all postures and positions. With additional photographs he developed a fine sense of human form and anatomy. Reginald Marsh was born in Paris, son of two artists, but the family settled in New Jersey when he was two. He graduated Yale University in 1920 and moved to New York where he worked as an illustrator for...

American "John Marin was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Weehawken. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, studying with Thomas Anshutz, then studied at the Art Students League in New York, and from 1905 to 1909, studied in Europe. In Paris, he associated with the Fauvist circle. John Marin earned a reputation for abstract watercolor paintings influenced by Cubism and Futurism. He was one of the Taos, New Mexico Colony painters in the late 1920s, and his work is credited as an important precedent to Abstract Expressionism. Because he was so respected nationally,...