Washington Allston

Washington Allston
Self-portrait, 1805 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Short Name: Washington Allston
Full Name: Allston, Washington, 1779-1843
Birth Year: 1779
Death Year: 1843

Allston, Washington. (Waccamaw, South Carolina, November 5, 1779-July 9, 1843, Cambridge Port, Massachusetts). American painter and author. Graduated Harvard 1800. Went to London in 1801, Paris in 1803, Rome in 1805, returned to England 1810-1818. While in England, 1815, confirmed in the Anglican Church, and from then on devoted himself to an intensive cultivation of the Christian virtues. The Sylphs of the Seasons, first book of poems, published in 1813. Monaldi, a romance, published 1841. A sonnet of 14 lines entitled "Immortality" in Lectures on Art and Poems of 1850, ed. by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. provided the text for a hymn "To Think for aye; to breathe immortal breath" in Hymns for all Christians, 1869.

-Carlton York Smith, DNAH Archives

Wikipedia Biography

Washington Allston 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.

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