William Louis Sonntag, Sr.
William Louis Sonntag, Sr. (1822-1900) was an American landscape painter. Born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1822 , he traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio at the age of 21 and perfected his technique. Becoming an established and highly regarded landscape artist, he began making trips to Florence, Italy in 1853. Several of these trips were made with his friend Robert Scott Duncanson. In 1856, Sonntag permanently moved to New York to become a leading painter of Romantic landscapes of several scenes from his travels in Italy.[1] Sonntag was a member of the group known as the Hudson River School. Some of his paintings go beyond the movement to a grandiose expression of Manifest Destiny.[2] There is strong evidence that several of Sonntag's pieces were scenes he had seen from photographs only. Grand Canyon, Yellowstone River, Wyoming, for example, is a landscape that Sonntag never traveled to. It is most likely based on a photograph taken by Frank Jay Haynes of the canyon in 1885.[1]
Gallery
On the Potomac, collection of Walters Art Museum
Grand Canyon, Yellowstone River, Wyoming collection of Birmingham Museum of Art
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References
- 1 2 Birmingham Museum of Art (2010). Birmingham Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection. London: Giles. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-904832-77-5. Retrieved 2011-06-24.
- ↑ Birmingham Museum of Art (1993). Masterpieces East and West: from the Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art. Birmingham, Alabama. p. 194. ISBN 0-931394-37-6. Retrieved 2011-07-16.
External links
- American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Sonntag, Sr. (see index)