William Trost Richards Art

3 antique oil on board miniature seascape paintings by William Trost Richards, depicting rocky, seaside cliffs / hills (Capri, Naples); a rocky beach (Near Hartland Point); and the ruins of a castle in a hilly landscape (Gulf of Naples). Wide, beveled giltwood frames with ridged borders and carved outer edge. "A native of Philadelphia, William Trost Richards (1833 - 1905) had a fifty-year career as a noted landscape and marine painter whose mature work combined extremely detailed aspects of nature with atmospheric qualities. He was especially innovative for his time because he borrowed informal composition techniques from the Pre-Raphaelites of England, painting lights and colors outdoors as he actually observed them. His formal education ended at age thirteen when he quit school to support his family by working as a commercial draughtsman designing ornamental metal fixtures. He studied painting privately with William Stanley Haseltine and Paul Weber from whom he learned a meticulous graphic technique. He was supported by local persons in Philadelphia who financed a year of study in Europe from 1855 to 1856, and in 1867, he went abroad for a second time. He did numerous pencil drawings and paintings of Italy and Switzerland and much painting along English coasts. By the 1850s, he had decided that landscape was his favorite subject matter and was especially inspired by American poetry but was much more inspired by American landscape painting, especially that of John Kensett and Frederic Edwin Church. He did a series of brilliant Adirondack landscapes and also coastal landscapes and marine subjects from New Jersey to Maine. The latter part of his career, he was firmly established as a coastal and marine painter, ever fascinated by the tumultuous phenomenon of water hitting rocks and beach. His works on paper--watercolor and pencil drawings--were some of his earliest and most important contributions, and hundreds of them survive in spite of an 1854 studio fire. Having been working in oil for some time, he began working in watercolor in the late 1860s, which was linked to his growing interest in the seashore. Watercolor was best for plein air sketching and was excellent for expressing the atmospheric effects he sought to achieve. Two patrons of his watercolor painting were Elias L. Magoon and George Whitney...

A fine and important painting by the celebrated American Hudson River School painter William Trost Richards (1833-1905), the painting depicting the coastline at sunset Atlantic City, NJ, signed and dated 1875. This watercolor is fresh to the market from a private American collection, in the same family hands since the 1920's and housed in the original bronzed frame, condition is all original, we at Bloomsbury Fine Art had the work professionally remounted in archival acid free materials and UV glass. Condition is excellent. Framed: 20.25" tall x 30.25" wide x 1" deep At sight: 10.5" tall x 20.5" wide William Trost Richards was born in Philadelphia and began to draw at a young age. At thirteen he was forced to leave school to support his family and found a job designing ornamental metal fixtures. He continued to study art, eventually taking classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and exhibiting his first work there in 1852. In 1855 he made the first of several trips to Europe to look at art. An admirer of the great American landscape artists of his day, Frederic Edwin Church and John F...

In this unique work on paper titled “Study of Three Coastal Scenes,” William Trost Richard paints three separate studies of varied coastal scenes featuring boats.

Signed and dated lower left of center: WMT. Richards 1875