Birge Harrison American, 1854-1929

Overview

Birge Harrison is recognized as one of America's leading Tonalist painters. A native Philadelphian, Harrison studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he credited Thomas Eakins as a major influence. As a Tonalist, Harris was well known for his subtle paintings of winter landscapes and street scenes.  His landscapes often featured dark, neutral hues.

Birge Harrison, sometimes referred to as Lovell Birge Harrison, was born in Philadelphia in 1854. He was the son of Apollos and Margaret Belden Harrison, brother of Alexander and Butler, and cousin to Elizabeth R. Finley (the three youths also became artists). Harrison was a descendant of the English solider Thomas Harrison, major-general to Oliver Cromwell (Thomas signed the death warrant of Charles I in 1649).

 In 1874 Harrison began taking art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Shortly after, he met John Singer Sargent who persuaded Harrison to travel to Paris with him to continue his art education. Harrison left for Paris in 1875. There he studied figure painting with Alexandre Cabanel and Émile-Auguste Carolus-Duran at the École des Beaux-Arts for the next four years. During this time, Harrison also sketched and painted outdoors at artist colonies in Pont-Aven and Concarneau in Brittney and Gréz-sur-Loing thirty miles south of Paris. This shift in practice began his increasing focus on landscape painting.

Harrison admired the work of the French impressionists but expressed reservations about their use of intense colors. He became more responsive to the quieter, evocative style of the Barbizon school, with its more romantic concept of nature, and became known for his poetic depictions of winter landscape.

 In 1883 Harrison married artist Eleanor Henderson at St. Georges, Bloomsbury, London. The same year, poor health forced Harrison to return to America where he began working as a freelance illustrator for magazines such as Scribner’s, Harper’s, and Atlantic Monthly. In search of clean air and picturesque landscapes, Harrison travelled extensively with his wife within America and abroad over the next decade. The exact chronology of his travels is unclear; however, contemporary catalogues suggest he spent time living among the Hopi and Navajo people in Arizona and New Mexico, and traveled to remote locales such as Sri Lanka, South Africa, and India.

 In 1893 Harrison returned to America and settled in Santa Monica for a few years. After his wife died in childbirth in 1895, he moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts and married Jenny Seaton in 1896. In 1904, at the invitation of Ralph Whitehead, Harrison and his wife moved permanently to Woodstock, New York where he became the painting instructor in the Arts and Crafts Colony at Byrdcliffe.

 Harrison was a prominent teacher and in 1906 he persuaded the Art Students League to relocate its summer school to Woodstock. Harrison became the first painting instructor at the new summer school, a position he held for the next five years. In 1909 Harrison published a collection of his seminars in a book titled Landscape Painting. In this volume Harrison describes specific painting techniques and expresses his thoughts on topics such as “The Importance of Fearlessness in Painting” and “The Future of American Art.” He writes to students of painting: “Be courageous. Always dare to the limit of your knowledge and just a little beyond . . . Aim to tell the truth; but if you have to lie, lie courageously. A courageous lie has often more virtue than a timid truth.” This book became the standard text on the subject and was referred to as "a fine commentary on the technique of the craft."