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  Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932) Sunset on the California Coast Oil on artist's card stock 9 ¾ x 14 inches

  Gavin Spanierman

As a painter, Lockwood de Forest's aim was to translate a truthful visual experience onto a flat surface. Whether working as a designer, decorator, or landscape artist, de Forest always maintained that art should have a useful purpose. Lockwood de Forest made many excursions abroad which deepened his familiarity with European painting and sculpture. It was in Rome in 1868 where he began to study art seriously, working closely with one of America's most celebrated Hudson River School painters, Frederic Edwin Church. De Forest followed Church's philosophy in which he believed the glories of nature and power should translate through the canvas. He echoed Church's credo stating, "My idea in painting is to make everyone who looks at my pictures think of real nature, and not me or the way the painting is done." 

De Forest had much success as a painter, exhibiting at prestigious institutions such as the National Academy of Design and the Century Club. He painted hundreds of sketches of Californian sites, Santa Barbara in particular, as well as the Pacific Northwest, Maine, the Grand Canyon, Mexico, Massachusetts, and Alaska. Today de Forest's work is featured in the collections of many prominent American museums such as the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and New-York Historical Society.

Lockwood de Forest
Observer of Nature
On View April 18 - May 31 

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