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Ad Code: 3
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from Auction House Records.
View of the Upper Colorado River
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Richard Kern exhibited landscape and figure studies beginning 1840 in Philadelphia where he was a drawing instructor and known for accuracy and detailing in drawing. As one of three Philadelphia brothers who were survey artists, he spent much of his career in the American West. Indians killed two of the brothers including Richard, age 32, by Paiute Indians on October 26, 1853 near Sevier Lake, Utah.
His first trip West included his brothers, Edward and Benjamin, and was the Fourth Expedition of John C. Fremont. Richard was topographical draftsman of the 1848-1849 winter part of the trip. Fremont and his father-in-law, Senator Thomas Benton, financed the trip to find a railway route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean along a westward route from the Rio Grande River.
However, a guide led the group astray, and Fremont, dealing with starvation and Indian attacks, and death, including Benjamin Kern, headed the group south and then westward along the Gila River
in Arizona to California. They later retraced their route, and
accomplished their original objective by following latitudes between 37
and 38 degrees to San Francisco, but none of the Kern brothers were
among those reaching San Francisco on this part of the exhibition.
In September 1849, Richard with his brother Edward went on the Simpson Expedition to Navajo country, and Richard did paintings of Anasazi cliff dwellings, Chaco Canyon and the Sandia Pueblos. In 1851, Richard Kern was a part of the Sitgreaves expedition on the Colorado River, and in 1853, he joined the railway survey party of Captain John Gunnison from Independence, Missouri to Salt Lake City along the old Santa Fe Trail. However, it was on this trip that he lost his life.
Sources:
NNDB: tracking the entire world: John C. Fremont
http://www.nndb.com/people/885/000049738/
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
Peggy and Harold Samuels, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| | Born Philadelphia, PA, 1821; died Sevier Lake, UT, 1853. Survey artist. Painter, specialized in landscapes. Kern was with John C. Fremont's 1848-49 winter expedition. As "second assistant and artist" to the 1849 exploration campaign of John M. Washington, he did the first published views of Canyon de Chelly and White House Ruin. In 1851, he was a part of the Sitgreaves expedition on the Colorado River, and in 1853, he served as “topographer and artist” for the railway survey party of Captain John Gunnison from Independence, MO to Salt Lake City, UT along the old Santa Fe Trail. The route went through Kansas where he likely made sketches but none have been found. | Source:
SOURCES:
Susan Craig, "Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945)"
Taft, Lorado. History of American Sculpture. New edition with supplemental chapter by Adeline Adams. New York: Macmillan Co, 1930.; AskArt, www.askart.com, accessed Jan. 19, 2005; Weber, David J. Richard H. Kern: Expeditionary Artist in the Far Southwest, 1848-1853. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985) | | This and over 1,750 other biographies can be found in Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945) compiled by Susan V. Craig, Art & Architecture Librarian at University of Kansas. |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Richard Kern is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Taos Pre 1940
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