Charles Sprague Pearce Biography | Oil Paintings

Charles Sprague Pearce in early 1873 at the age of twenty-two, arrived in Paris and enrolled in the studio of Léon Bonnat, an Academic painter who had attained a high degree of prestige with genre scenes, history paintings, and portraits. Early the next year, Pearce and Frederic Arthur Bridgman, also a student in Bonnat’s studio, left for Egypt and spent three months traveling down the Nile. The following year Pearce left Paris once again, this time traveling to Algeria, to immerse himself more in Orientalist culture and painting. In the late 1880s, Pearce continued his interest in peasant themes while also integrating pastoral paintings. He remained a yearly exhibitor at the Paris Salon, in addition to exhibiting in international shows in Belgium, England, Germany, and America.

During his career Charles Sprague Pearce generally follow these same categories of painting, first concentrating on Biblical history paintings, then he moved on to portraits and, during the latter part of his career, peasant genre scenes and also decorative work, notably for the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

He received medals at the Paris Salon and elsewhere, and was made Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, decorated with the Order of Leopold, Belgium, the Order of the Red Eagle, Prussia, and the Order of the Dannebrog, Denmark.

Among Charles Sprague Pearce best-known paintings are The Decapitation of St John the Baptist, Prayer, The Return of the Flock, and Meditation. Charles Sprague Pearce spoke to a clientele and a public that appreciated his images specifically because they were in the same vein as many of the preceding artists of the nineteenth century.

Art Movement: Realism, Orientalism.
Artists Influencing Charles Sprague Pearce: Léon Bonnat.
He Traveled To France, Belgium, Prussia, Germany, Denmark, Egypt, England Algeria.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.