Biography from Pierce Galleries, Inc.:
| John Joseph Enneking (1841-1916) was born in Ohio in 1841 and was
orphaned at a young age. He began to paint at the age of five and
developed a natural talent before travelling East to New York and
Massachusetts. He trained in Germany, Italy and France and he was
the first American to return from Paris in 1874 after having painted
with Claude Monet, Pissarro and Renoir in Monet’s gardens at Argentueil
(where Enneking painted Monet’s wife and child).
Because Enneking was an influential Boston painter, he spoke to many
artists about the innovations of the French Impressionists and because
of him hundreds of Boston area painters sailed for Paris to study in
France.
Although he exhibited all over the U.S. and Europe, Enneking was his
own man and did not like becoming a member of clubs or organizations
that promoted artists. He became one of the most sought after
American landscape painters in the U.S. and was Boston’s Park
Commissioner for many years. In 1916, before his death in Boston,
a dinner in his honor was attended by hundreds of artists, and he was
crowned with a wreath of laurel.
Enneking is unfairly called “the painter of New England sunsets,”
probably because he is one of the only painters who can effectively
paint sunsets in a realistic manner. However, he commonly painted en
plein aire on locations in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts
and New York and critics have claimed his canvases are so refined that
it looks as if “he painted with crushed jewels."
The most sought after canvases by Enneking are those that predate 1875
and his apple blossom canvases in which light sparkles within small
daubs and dashes of impressionistic brushwork.
In 1972 the first biography of the artist was written and published by Patricia Jobe Pierce, John Joseph Enneking, American Impressionist, and she is compiling the artist's Catalogue Raisonne.
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Biography from Turak Gallery of American Art:
| During
the last quarter of the 19th century, Enneking was one of the most
popular landscape painters of New England - and one of its most
successful financially. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted in the
Union army but was severely wounded and returned to Cincinnati. In 1868
he went to Boston, where he studied lithography and began to paint
landscapes.
The catalyst for his success came while studying
in France during the 1870s on an extended stay, and when he is said to
have painted with Monet. Enneking returned to Boston in 1876, and in
1878, his first solo in Boston sealed his reputation. Beginning in the
early 1880s he spent summers in North Newry. Manse. He also painted
frequently in the White Mountains, favoring its trout brooks and
woodland scenes. He was particularly admired for his twilight scenes of
wooded areas in late autumn. In 1915 he was honored with a testimonial
dinner attended by more than 1,000 people.
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Biography from AskART:
| One of New England's prominent landscape artists of the late nineteenth
century, John Joseph Enneking painted in a variety of styles including
Hudson River School, Tonalism and Impressionism. Although he
cannot be easily slotted into any one of those
categories, he was best known for Tonalist forest scenes at
twilight. Enneking had a strong, love and respect for the
landscape, and his conservationist views led to his election as a Park
Commissioner in Boston.
Enneking, with his wife and two daughters, made his first trip to
Europe in 1872 and stayed four years, which give him an opportunity to
observe the influences of both academic art and new styles, especially
Tonalism and the budding Impressionism. These experiences
meant he was exposed to European styles before his peer artists who
composed The Boston School including Frank Benson and Edmund
Tarbell. Enneking associated with Tonalist Camille Corot,
Barbizon
School painter Jean Millet, and Impressionists Claude Monet and Camille
Pissarro. The subdued palette of the Barbizon painters, dominated by
shades of brown and green, deeply influenced his painting as did the
plein-air painting technique of them and the Impressionists.
Enneking
was born on an Ohio farm near Minster and was raised on his parent's
farm where he, loving the landscape, took long walks with his
mother. However, his parents died when he was sixteen, so he
moved in with an aunt and uncle in Cincinnati.
There he had his first exposure to art and determined to
become an artist. He took his first classes in the city at St. Mary's College.
During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army and badly
injured, returned to Cincinnati where he took a long time to
recover. He then set off for New York to start his art career,
but learned that Boston was the place considered the center of culture
in America.
In 1868, he moved
to Boston where he studied lithography and painting with Samuel
Gerry. Shortly after settling in Boston, Enneking met Frederick Porter Vinton,
considered an important Boston painter, and from him, got a letter of
introduction to Leon Bonnat, one of the more famous painters and
teachers in France. This boost combined with Enneking's
general interest in furthering his education, led to the four-year trip
to Europe that so strongly impacted hs career. He studied
landscape painting at the Munich Academy in Germany and figure
painting in Paris where his teacher for three years was Leon
Bonnat. He also
worked with the French Barbizon-School landscape painters, Charles
Daubigny and Louis Boudin.
In
1876,
he returned to the Boston area and settled with his family near the
city at Hyde Park where he had a studio with large windows and wide
vistas. Two years
later, he had his first solo exhibition, which "sealed his reputation."
(Falk,
1050). In addition to fine art painting, Enneking became an
active illustrator whose clients included Scribner's, Harpers
and other magazines. He also gave private art lessons,
"cheerfully available to young people interested in painting." (Hunter,
96).
He spent much time painting in the New England countryside, and in the
early 1880s, bought a place in North Newry, Maine near New Hampshire
where he painted in
the White Mountains. In the spring and fall, he frequently
traveled south including to Duxbury and Cape Cod.
Enneking's
paintings were honored throughout his lifetime. In 1915, a
testimonial dinner was held for him at the Copley Plaza in Boston with over one-thousand persons
attending. He was crowned by Cyrus Dallin with a laurel wreath, signifying victory and high accomplishment.
Sources:
Elizabeth Ives Hunter, "John Joseph Enneking", American Art Review, February 2006, pp. 96-98
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
William Gerdts, American Impressionism
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
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