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Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) was an American installation artist, sculptor, and early pioneer of assemblage art. Born in Fairfield, Washington, Kienholz grew up on a wheat farm, where he learned carpentry, metalwork, and mechanics. He studied briefly at Washington College of Education while simultaneously working various odd jobs, but left school before earning a degree, deciding instead to move to Los Angeles in 1953 to launch his career as an artist. In 1956, Kienholz established NOW Gallery, a space for California artists to present their work without discrimination of medium or style. For the next several decades, he created installations and assemblages of found objects that pushed the boundaries of creativity while commenting on everything from racial and gender stereotypes to the hypocrisy of American consumerism. Read More

Jonas Lie (1880-1940) expressed an early interest in painting and from the age of twelve took art lessons first in Norway, then France and New York City, where he moved in 1893. To help support his mother and sister, Lie began working as a textile designer at a cotton factory in New York in 1897, but he refused to give up on dreams of becoming an artist. While working at the factory, Lie attended evening classes at the National Academy of Design, Cooper Union, and the Art Students League, improving and building upon his design skills. Lie kept up this grueling pace, working days and painting nights, until 1906, when he quit his factory job in order to focus on painting full time. Read More

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) established a reputation as one of the premier portrait artists of her generation, whose skill and aesthetic were compared to those of Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. Beaux grew up in Philadelphia, raised by a grandmother and two aunts who ensured that fine art, music, and literature were an integral part of her childhood. Skilled at drawing, Beaux attended art classes as a teenager, and made frequent visits to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she encountered many American and European masterworks that would influence her later paintings. Read More

Syracuse native Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916) was primarily a self-taught artist. He likely learned the basics of image composition from his father, a successful portrait and landscape photographer, before enrolling in the newly founded College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University in 1873. After leaving school without a degree in 1875, Ranger worked in his father’s photography studio, retouching landscape negatives. Outside of work, he painted watercolor landscapes, first displaying his work at local businesses and then nationally in major cities, such as Boston and New York. Read More

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), an accomplished Hudson River School landscape painter, grew up in Hudson, New York, where his father’s business ventures in banking and ownership of an iron foundry provided the family with great wealth. Gifford attended Brown University from 1842 to 1843 before leaving school in pursuit of becoming an artist. In 1845, Gifford began to study at the New York City studio of John Rubens Smith, a painter, printmaker, and influential art instructor, and in 1846, Gifford enrolled at the Antique School of the National Academy of Design, where he received further artistic training. Inspired by the work of Thomas Cole, often referred to as the father of American landscape painting, Gifford became consumed by his love for landscapes and departed from portraiture to focus solely on painting the natural world. Read More