Birge Harrison Born in Philadelphia in 1854, Harrison received his early artistic instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1876 he met Sargent in Philadelphia at the Centennial Expo. and was advised by him to continue his studies under Sargent's own master, Carolus-Duran, Harrison left for Paris in 1876. He enrolled in Carolus-Duran's atelier in August 1877 and the following year attended Alexandre Cabanel's classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1882 Harrison received official recognition when Novembre became one of the first paintings to be purchased by the French government. At this time he spent his summers working in Brittany and Giverny in Normandy. He traveled extensively in India, Australia, Asia and Africa during which time he did illustrative work for Scribner's, Century and Harper's magazine. Upon Returning to the United States, his early work represented Tonalist landscapes and city scenes. In 1905 he helped found the Art Students League Summer School in Woodstock, NY and was later credited as being one of the founding members of that art colony. A critic once said "Harrison understood the narrative content in order to emphasize the landscape's decorative and emotional elements. He imparted a theme of transience in his works by the barrenness imparted in his paintings." Often this melancholy mood was reinforced by a solitary figure, often pensive and withdrawn. Harrison then left his early style of Tonalism for a more plein-air technique picked up from Jules Bastien-Lepage with whom he studied with at Pont-Aven. Then came another major breakthrough in his style when he was shown by an unidentified Scandinavian painter the "secret of atmospheric painting...[and] made clear to me... the importance of Vibration and refraction in landscape painting." He was known for landscape's, New York, Los Angeles; Quebec, streets and Indians. Harrison was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1910, the most prestigious honor that could be bestowed on an American artist. He exhibited regularly at the Society of American Artists, the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1889 until his death in Woodstock, NY in 1928.

Biography with permission from AskArt.com

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