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Ad Code: 4
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An example of work by John Tullidge
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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Biography from AskART:
| The following is from Richard S Cordery, of Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a Great Great Grandson of the artist:
John Tullidge was born in Weymouth, England on April 17, 1836, the son of John Edward Tullidge, a celebrated choir master, composer and tenor vocalist. The young John displayed artistic talent early, sketching scenes along the English seacoast, and at age 14 was apprenticed as a decorative painter, perhaps painting scenery for his father's musical productions.
Although he was not associated with a particular art school, and is reputed to have had no formal training outside of England, he evidently did receive some artistic schooling which served him well, for he was later considered "an excellent instructor of perspective, landscape painting and life drawing" at the Deseret Academy.
Tullidge painted in the so-called "Dusseldorf style" popular in Europe at the time, a style best exemplified by the work of Albert Bierstadt. One source has also asserted that Tullidge had a meager art education with William Mulready, an Irish artist in England."
Following in the path of his elder brother, Edward William ("Wheelock"), Tullidge, the prolific biographer, playwright, publisher, editor and chronicler of early Utah and Mormon history, he was converted to Mormonism by the missionary Orson Pratt, and subsequently immigrated to Utah from Liverpool, England in 1863 with his wife, Mary Jane Mathews, and his father, John Edward, for the elder gave a Haydn and Rossini concert at the Salt Lake Theatre that same year. Edward William was already well established in literary circles in Salt Lake City in 1863, and later in New
York City as a contributor to Harper's Monthly magazine.
Tullidge began life in America painting scenery at the Salt Lake Theatre, as well as murals for the ceremonial chambers of the Mormon Temple. Here he met, and befriended, the artists Danquart Weggeland and George M.Ottinger, also recent recruits to the faith working as scene painters and muralists, and together the three founded the short lived Deseret Academy of Fine Arts in 1863. Albert Bierstadt came to Utah the same year to paint landscapes.
In 1866, Alfred Lambourne arrived in Salt Lake City and began painting stage scenery at the theater, befriending Tullidge. Through the late 1860's, he established himself as an ornamental painter, specializing in lettering, graining and marbling, a talent he later passed on to his son Earnest John Tullidge.
In the Fair of 1869, John Elliot exhibited landscapes "of merit." By 1872 he had begun selling his easel works. The next year saw the arrival of Thomas Moran, who came to paint in Utah.
By 1874 Tullidge was associated with Weggeland in "art union raffles." He continued teaching art classes, exhibiting his work, and that of others, at his establishment "Tullidge & Co., Purveyor of Fine Paintings" in downtown Salt Lake City. The shop was kept open at night and was a meeting place for artists.
In 1877, two works by Tullidge were praised and sold to W. S. Godbe. The following year he found patronage at the hand of Samuel Sharp Walker, who fancied one of his country scenes. In the fair that year he won a bronze metal for "companion landscapes" and a diploma for the "best general display of oil paintings." By the end of the 1870's, Tullidge was being ranked with Ottinger, Weggeland and Lambourne.
In 1879, he served as an awards committee member during the fair and won
a silver medal for animal paintings copied from old masters. Later that year he was commissioned by the Walker Brothers to paint some Cottonwood Canyon scenes from original sketches, and completed one of his finest oil paintings, "American Fork."
In 1880 he sold two Pennsylvania scenes to S. S. Walker. The "Salt Lake Herald" said of these paintings: "In the handling of colors and in poetic effect, combined with delicacy of touch, this gentleman ranks high."
Just weeks after that review, Tullidge sent four landscapes to Owen Pierpont, the silver mining magnet of Denver, who had purchased them on a recent visit to Salt Lake City. Pierpont became an important patron, as were members of the Walker family.
In 1881 Tullidge's painting "Sunset" was purchased for $125.00, and handsome sum at the time, and later that year Ottinger founded the Utah Art Association, which became the Utah Art Institute, with Tullidge and others. At the Fair of 1881, he combined efforts on several "dog studies" with Weggeland and exhibited their work jointly.
Little is known of the last few years of his life. Certainly, by the 1890's, a revolution had taken place in the art world, and 19th-century landscape painters, including the Hudson River school, were suddenly out of favor. John Tullidge died on June 20, 1899. Alfred Lambourne delivered his eulogy, "A Farewell To My Friend John Tullidge", which was later published among Lambourne's letters. Of his "attractive" landscapes, one critic wrote that "a calm luminism prevails."
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