PAINTING PALACE
Source Supplier of Oil Paintings

James Carroll Beckwith was a landscape, portrait and genre painter whose style ranged from academic to impressionist later in his career. He is best known for his portraits and genre paintings, which earned him the highest recognition in 1881 - 1883. He was talented in mural painting, but portraiture paid the most money during his lifetime, so he painted portraits.

Born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1852, Beckwith, who intensely disliked his first name, James, moved with his parents to Chicago, where he began to study art with Walter Sherlaw in 1868. In 1871, he moved to New York City, to study at the National Academy of Design under Lemuel Wilmarth. He also taught for many years at the Art Students League, and was reportedly a very popular teacher.

In 1873, he went to Paris to study with Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran. He also studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and with Leon Bonnat. John Singer Sargent became a good friend in Paris, and the two shared a studio. In 1877, they assisted Carolus-Duran with a ceiling decoration in the Louvre. His friendship with Sargent was ongoing for the rest of his life.

Beckwith has received several awards including Honorable mention at the Paris Exposition of 1889 and Gold Medal at the Atlanta Exposition,1895. In 1893, Beckwith painted many murals in Paris and Chicago. He lived in Italy from 1910 to 1914 and painted many plein-air studies of monuments, buildings, and landscapes. Although he was in poor health for two years before his death in New York City in 1917, Beckwith continued to paint almost until the end.

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