Frank Duveneck

Polling Landscape, 1881

oil on canvas

16 x 24 in.

Gift of Mrs. Charles P. Mattingly, in memory of Charles Stayton Drake

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Born in Covington, Kentucky, Frank Duveneck began his art training as an apprentice to a church decorator in Cincinnati before traveling to Munich to study at the Royal Academy. While there Duveneck shared a studio with William Merrrit Chase. After returning to Cincinnati, he painted portraits, decorated churches and taught art classes.  He returned to Europe and opened an art school in Munich and Polling in Bavaria where he trained Americans who became known as the “Duveneck Boys.”  He also opened a studio in Italy and spent winters in Florence and summers in Venice.  His painting began to change from the dark interiors of his Munich style to the brighter palette of Impressionism, but much of his work continued to exhibit the style of his Munich training.  At the turn of the century Duveneck returned to Cincinnati and taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy, spending summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts between trips to Italy, France, and Germany. 

Duveneck absorbed the basic principles of the Munich Academy’s teaching – strong brushwork and the manipulation of dark color tonalities, - but he later developed his own ideas, drawn especially from the practices of French Barbizon artists.  This influence appears in Polling Landscape in the simple composition with its sketch-like quality.

Reference

Michael Quick.  American Painter Abroad: Frank Duveneck’s European Years, Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1887.  ISBN-13: 978-0931537073