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{{Short description|American artist}}

factoids

| birth_place = Near Georgetown, South Carolina, U.S.mf=yes717795}}| death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.| field = PaintingPoetry| training = | movement = | notable_works = | patrons = | influenced by = | influenced = | awards = | elected = Ann Channing (1809–15)|Margaret Remington Dana (1830-43)}}| website = }}Washington Allston {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|ARA}} (November 5, 1779 – July 9, 1843) was an American painter and poet, born in Waccamaw Parish, 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. While his early artworks concentrate on grandiose and spectacular aspects of nature, his later pieces represent a more subjective and visionary approach.BOOK, Norwich, John Julius, Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia Of The Arts,weblink limited, Oxford University Press, 1990, 978-0198691372, USA, 13,

Biography

File:Washington Allston by Gilbert Stuart.jpeg|thumb|left|180px|Allston painted by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1818. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkMetropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkAllston was born on a rice 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.BOOK, Hubbell, Jay B., The South in American Literature: 1607–1900, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954, 274, 9780822300915,weblink Moore remarried to Dr. Henry C. Flagg, the son of a wealthy shipping merchant from Newport, Rhode Island.BOOK, Hubbell, Jay B., The South in American Literature: 1607–1900, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954, 275, 9780822300915,weblink Named in honor of the leading American general of the Revolution,Planters, Pirates & Patriots: Historical Tales from the South Carolina Grand Strand, Rod Graff, Pelican Publishing, 2006 Washington 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 Schools in London in September, when painter Benjamin West was then the president.ODNB, 75361, Allston, Washington, (File:Washington Allston - Landscape with Lake (1804).jpg|thumb|250px|Landscape with Lake (1804))(File:Washington Allston - Italian Landscape - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|250px|Italian Landscape)File:Washington Allston - Elijah in the Desert - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|250px|Elijah in the Desert, 1818, Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMuseum of Fine Arts, BostonFrom 1803 to 1808, he visited the great museums of Paris and then, for several years, those of Italy, where he met Washington Irving in RomeBOOK, Burstein, Andrew, The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving, Basic Books, 2007, 43,weblink 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.BOOK, Hubbell, Jay B., The South in American Literature: 1607–1900, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954, 277, 9780822300915,weblink His wife died in February 1815, leaving him saddened, lonely, and homesick for America.BOOK, Hubbell, Jay B., The South in American Literature: 1607–1900, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954, 278, 9780822300915,weblink In 1818, he returned to the United States and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for twenty-five years. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1826.WEB, Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A,weblink American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 15 April 2011, He was the uncle of the artists George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg, both of whom studied painting under him.The first American exhibition of Allston's work was in 1827 when twelve of his paintings were shown at the Boston Athenæum.Swan, Mabel Munson. The Athenæum Gallery 1827–1873: The Boston Athenæum as an Early Patron of Art (Boston: The Boston Athenæum, 1940)In 1830 Allston married Martha Remington Dana (daughter of Chief Justice Francis Dana), the sister of the novelist Richard Henry Dana Sr.; Dana was a cousin of Allston's first wife.BOOK, Flagg, Jared Bradley, The Life and Letters of Washington Allston, New York: Charles Scribner, 1892,weblink 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 63. 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.WEB, Vetter, H.F, Poets of Cambridge, USA, Harvard Square Library (2006),weblink 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.*BOOK, The First Century of American Literature: 1770–1870, Pattee, Fred Lewis, Cooper Square Publishers, New York, 1966, 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."Boston painter William Morris Hunt was an admirer of Allston's work, and in 1866 founded the Allston Club in Boston, and in his arts classes passed on to his students his knowledge of Allston's techniques.Wright, Nathalia. The Correspondence of Washington Allston, Published by University Press of Kentucky, 1993, {{ISBN|0-8131-1708-9}}The Oxford English Dictionary cites Allston as the first to use the term Objective Correlative in 1850."objective correlative, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2021. The term, subsequently made famous by T.S Eliot in essay on Hamlet (1919), denotes a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of a particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.The west Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Allston is named after him, as is Allston Way, in the "Poets Corner" neighborhood of Berkeley, California.{{Clear}} (File:Dana-Allston grave.jpg|thumb|Allston was buried in the Dana family plot in the Old Burying Ground.)

Gallery

Image:Storm Rising at Sea.jpg|Storm Rising at Sea, 1804, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MassachusettsImage:Moonlit Landscape.jpg|Moonlit Landscape, 1809, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MassachusettsImage:Allston, Washington - Coast Scene on the Mediterranean, oil on canvas, 1811.jpg|Coast Scene on the Mediterranean, 1811, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South CarolinaImage:1811 PoorAuthor RichBookseller byWashingtonAllston MFABoston.jpeg|The Poor Author and the Rich Bookseller, 1811Image:Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Washington Allston retouched.jpg|Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1814, Dove Cottage, Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere, EnglandImage:1815 DonnaMencia byWashingtonAllston MFABoston.jpeg|Donna Mencia in the Robber's Cavern, 1815File:Washington Allston - Hermia and Helena - Google Art Project.jpg|Hermia and Helena, (from A Midsummer Night's Dream) from c. 1818Image:1819 Beatrice byWashingtonAllston MFABoston.jpeg|Beatrice, 1819, Museum of Fine Arts, BostonImage:1831 SpanishGirl byWashingtonAllston MMA.jpg|The Spanish Girl in Reverie, 1831File:Two Artists in the Old Library, Washington Allston's Picture, 'Jacob's Dream', Hanging over the Fireplace ('The Artist and the Amateur').jpeg|Two Artists in the Old Library, Washington Allston's Picture, 'Jacob's Dream', Hanging over the Fireplace ('The Artist and the Amateur'), J. M. W. Turner, 1827File:William Ellery Channing by Allston.jpg|Portrait of William Ellery Channing File:Washington Allston, American - Scene from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (Katharina and Petruchio) - Google Art Project.jpg|Scene from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (Katharina and Petruchio)

Additional works

{{external media | width = 210px | float = right | headerimage=(File:Washington Allston - Elijah in the Desert - Google Art Project.jpg|210px)| video1 = Allston's Elijah in the Desert, SmarthistoryALLSTON'S ELIJAH IN THE DESERT > PUBLISHER =SMARTHISTORY AT KHAN ACADEMY ACCESS-DATE =JANUARY 4, 2013, }}

• A Landscape after Sunset, c. 1819, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

References

{{Reflist}}

Sources

• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC weblink

Further reading

• Allston, Washington, Lectures on Art and Poems, 1850 (facsimile ed., with Monaldi, 1841, 1967, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, {{ISBN|978-0-8201-1001-1}}).

External links

{{Wikisource author}}{{commons category|Washington Allston}}

• {{Art UK bio}}
• s:P in the New Students Reference Work.
• Google Art Project, Washington Allston
• Guide to Washington Allston's papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Washington Allston at American Art Gallery
• {{Gutenberg author | id=3817}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Washington Allston}}
• {{Librivox author |id=12690}}
• EB1911, Allston, Washington,
• Washington Allston letter fragment, 1818 Mar. 2 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
• Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections

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